Jeremy Corbyn sets up ‘Your Party’ to attract leftwing voters from Labour

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Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana are set to hold a “founding conference” for their new political party that seeks to outflank Labour from the left, creating a fresh problem for UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. 

Corbyn led Labour from 2015 to 2020, during which time membership tripled as he enthused large numbers of leftwingers with his uncompromising socialist politics. But the party also suffered its most calamitous defeat at a general election for nearly a century. 

Corbyn and Sultana on Thursday announced a new website called “yourparty.uk” in which they said it was “time to build a new kind of political party — one that belongs to you”. 

They added: “Soon we’ll host an inaugural founding conference so you can help shape how your party works, what it stands for and how we organise to win.”

Despite the name of the website, Sultana said on X that the new party was “not called Your Party”. 

The website says it is managed by the “Peace and Justice Project”, a company founded by Corbyn in 2021 and has patrons including economist Yanis Varoufakis, American activist Noam Chomsky, former PLO spokesperson Diana Buttu, former Bolivian president Evo Morales, filmmaker Ken Loach and ex-Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.

In March 2023 Labour’s national executive committee voted to block Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate after he said the scale of antisemitism within the party had been “dramatically overstated” by his opponents. In last year’s general election he won as an independent candidate in his seat of Islington North.

Corbyn and Sultana, who recently quit as a Labour MP, believe they can tap into a growing anger among the left about Starmer moving the party to the right in recent years.

The prime minister has slashed Britain’s aid budget to fund higher defence spending, taken a hard line on immigration, and was recently blocked from trying to cut £5bn from benefit payments to disabled people.

The pair used their founding statement to call for “mass redistribution of wealth and power”, involving higher taxes on “the very richest in our society”. 

They promised an NHS free from privatisation and the nationalisation of energy, water, rail and mail as well as “standing up to fossil fuel giants”.

The organisers of the new “anti-austerity and anti-war” party hope to persuade some of the more leftwing trade unions to give it financial backing. 

“It’s time for a new kind of political party, one that is rooted in our communities, trade unions and social movements . . . one that belongs to you,” they said. 

The fledgling party is also likely to pick up support from some voters concerned about Israel’s actions in Gaza, despite the growing criticism of the Netanyahu government by senior cabinet ministers including Starmer. 

“Keir Starmer and David Lammy both belong in The Hague,” Sultana said last week. 

In Thursday’s statement, Corbyn and Sultana said millions of people were horrified by the government’s “complicity in crimes against humanity”, adding: “We will keep demanding an end to all arms sales to Israel.” 

Last September, Starmer’s government suspended some — but not all — export licences to Israel for arms used in military operations in Gaza, after a British government review found possible breaches of international humanitarian law by Israel.