By Jeremy Dewar
Thousands have flocked to local meetings and rallies, even over summer, to listen and debate the new party announced by Zarah Sultana on 24 July. Over 800,000 have signed up online, most of those in the first few days. The time is ripe for a new party of the working class.
If even a fraction of these numbers becomes active party members, then the provisionally named Your Party could turn out to be a historic left break from Labour. Our task is to turn it into a break from Labourism and towards revolutionary socialism.
Disillusion
Two important negative factors have emerged to make this moment possible. First is the dramatic fall from grace of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Its support has dropped from 33.7% in the July 2024 election to just 20% in a BMG poll for the i newspaper (30/08/25). Membership has collapsed from 532,046 at the end of Corbyn’s reign to 333,235 today.
Cuts to benefits for children, for the sick and disabled, for the elderly have shamed even loyal Labour MPs. Their failure to repair the NHS and public services have driven workers to strike action. Most of all Labour’s staunch support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and banning of Palestine Action have disgusted millions.
Alongside this Labour seem incapable of combatting the rise of Reform UK, and behind them the organised bands of fascists, such as Britain First, Patriotic Alliance and Homeland Party. Instead Yvette Cooper has joined in the scapegoating of migrants and refugees, deporting thousands to Afghanistan and Eritrea, etc. Diane Abbott righty attacked Starmer for failing to denounce Farage’s pledge to deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers.
Hope
But it would be wrong to name only fear as a driving factor behind the surge for a new left party. People are also driven by hope.
Hope for bold measures to eradicate poverty and prejudice, if necessary, taking over the banks and major corporations to plan a cleaner, brighter Britain, with jobs and training for all. Hope for equality for women, Black and Asian people, for the trans and wider LGBT+ community.
Hope also for real internationalism. Millions want to see Britain stop arming Israel and resist the drive to war and rearmament. Instead of tiptoeing around the bully Trump, they want to stand up to him.
Hope, last but not least, for an end to capitalism and steps towards a socialist future, where migrants are welcomed, where jobs, housing and services are available to all, where production is planned to meet the needs of the many, not the greed of a few.
Dangers and opportunities
Of course the announcement of a new party and the enthusiastic response are not the same as it coming into being. There are many pitfalls and obstacles in the way of its realisation.
The first is that the party becomes merely an electoral vehicle for the ambitions of various sects and careerists. Elections only record the balance of class forces at any given time. To change that balance, we need a party that intervenes boldly in the class struggle, not one that just turns up occasionally to ask for votes.
The second is that the party lacks real grassroots democracy, and relies on plebiscites, online votes to rubber stamp the leaders’ decisions. This was the method that wrecked Momentum and eventually the mass Labour Party in the Corbyn years of 2015–19. Many of those same people are in Your Party’s inner circle today.
A third danger would be that the new party restricts its programme to policies that could possibly get through parliament and escape blockade by the courts, the banks and a hysterical press campaign.
This approach often conceals a desire for a cross-class coalition with the Greens and the nationalists, but it would be a disaster for the working class just as much as compromise with the Labour right has proven to be.
Only a programme that mobilises millions to themselves take the measures that challenge and overcome the rules of capitalism and imperialism can radically change Britain and be worthy of calling socialist.
What next?
Nevertheless these are only dangers today. They are not yet facts. That depends on the class struggle, which we must take into the new party formations that are springing up around the country.
Workers Power supporters will actively promote these initiatives. We do not hide our belief that only the overthrow of the capitalist system and state can combat war, poverty and environmental disaster. And that only a revolutionary party can lead this struggle. But as a start we will work with anyone committed to building a fighting, democratic, working class party.
