The new left-wing party in the process of being launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana might lack a name, a leader and a policy platform beyond tackling “the crises in our society with a mass redistribution of wealth and power” and “campaigning for the only path to peace: a free and independent Palestine”. What it doesn’t lack is potential supporters.
New polling by Ipsos, seen exclusively by the New Statesman, finds that one in three people who voted Labour in 2024 would consider voting for the new Corbyn-Sultana initiative. That figure rises to nearly half (46 per cent) among 2024 Labour voters who would consider voting for an alliance between this new party and the Greens.
The new outfit says that more than 700,000 people have already signed up on the “Your Party” website to register their support. For context, Reform UK made national headlines by claiming to have surpassed the Conservatives’ membership numbers by hitting 130,000 members last December. Of course, registering for Your Party is free, while there are fees for becoming actual members of political parties (£25 a year for Reform, £39 for the Conservatives, and £70.50 for Labour at the standard rate). But the scale of interest in the new venture is striking, even when virtually nothing is known about it six weeks after Sultana dramatically announced she was quitting Labour to set up some kind of alternative.
The potential for a left-wing option for those dismayed by the direction Keir Starmer’s government has taken in its first year has long been discussed. In June, before Sultana’s announcement, George Eaton reported on new polling from More in Common which suggested a “new Corbyn-led party” would win 10 per cent of the vote. Nearly two months later, Ipsos finds that has doubled: 20 per cent of voters consider themselves very or fairly likely to back the Corbyn-Sultana offering, rising to 33 per cent among voters aged 16-34. (A reminder: under government plans the voting age will be lowered to 16 at the next general election.)
The biggest unknown – other than the party’s to-be-determined name – is how it interacts with the Green Party. The Greens are spending the summer engaged in a furious leadership contest, with MP duo Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay facing off against the “eco-populist” London Assembly member, Zack Polanski. (If you missed the debate between Polanski and Ramsay on the New Statesman podcast, check it out and watch the sparks fly.) As Megan Kenyon pointed out for the NS, Polanski has argued that “the Greens should occupy a more progressive, populist space on the left in order to confront the infectious populism of Nigel Farage’s Reform. He has called for a wealth tax, a better approach to net zero and a more robust left-wing position on immigration.” In vibe terms, that is very similar to what’s being offered by Corbyn and Sultana. Is there space on the left of British politics for two rival populist parties?
Most pollsters and strategists are sceptical, which is why there has been so much talk of some kind of pact or alliance – informal or otherwise – between the two to avoid splitting the vote. The Ipsos polling finds that, while the public on the whole is unsure on the merits of a pact, there is widespread support among people planning to vote for either option: 70 per cent of people who say they would vote for the new left-wing party (it really needs to decide on a name, if only for the sake of word counts) would back an alliance, as would 60 per cent of Green Party supporters.
This isn’t surprising: an alliance is the best way of avoiding the left-wing vote being split and wasting a whole load of votes. But given how antagonistic the Green leadership contest has already become, plus how much debate and confusion there is over who will lead the new left-wing party, negotiations for how such a pact might work are unlikely to be smooth. Insurgent populism works best when there is a single big-name, charismatic leader (just ask Nigel Farage).
Nonetheless, almost a third of Brits – 31 per cent – would consider voting for a united ticket. That rises to 51 per cent for voters aged 16-34.
“These figures show that a new left-wing party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana has the potential to shake up British politics,” says Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos. “A significant number of younger people are at least prepared to consider voting for it and a majority of those aged under 35 say they would consider voting for some kind of alliance between the new party and the Greens. Clear policies around change, the NHS, poverty and wealth taxes could be popular.”
That should sharpen focus in Downing Street: however chaotic the launch may have been, and whatever the fate of the last group of high-profile MPs who decided to start their own initiative (farewell, the Independent Group), the appetite for a challenger to the left of Labour is real.
[See also: What the Bell Hotel closure reveals about the asylum housing stalemate]
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