New left-wing party in UK touted to challenge government on Gaza

Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn seek support for a ‘Farage of the left’ party

Zarah Sultana says the project will involve “other independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country”. PA

Former Labour MP Zarah Sultana has said she will co-lead a new British political party with Jeremy Corbyn, declaring that the current UK government is an “active participant in genocide” in Gaza.

Ms Sultana – who had the Labour whip suspended last year – urged people to “join us” as she took to X, formerly Twitter, to say she had left Labour after 14 years to launch a new party with the former leader.

On Friday, Mr Corbyn said “discussions are ongoing” about his part in the plan, leading to some speculation that her announcement is premature.

He congratulated Ms Sultana on her “principled decision” to leave Keir Starmer’s party and said that the “democratic foundations of a new kind of political party will soon take shape”.

Referring to the next general election, Ms Sultana said: “In 2029 the choice will be stark: socialism or barbarism.”

Alastair Campbell, the former Downing Street director of communications under Tony Blair, said he would not “underestimate” how much the government’s handling of the situation in Gaza has led people to question “what is Labour about?”.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There feels to me to be a gap between the scale of the challenges facing the country as the public feel them, and the sorts of policy responses coming forward.”

Ms Sultana, who represents Coventry South, said the project would also involve “other independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country”.

She said that “Westminster is broken but the real crisis is deeper” and the “two-party system offers nothing but managed decline and broken promises”.

Jeremy Corbyn, second left, and Zarah Sultana, second right, on a picket line. Ms Sultana says will co-lead a new party with Mr Corbyn. PA

Setting her project out as a left-wing alternative to Reform which has gained popularity with its call to change traditional politics, her strongest criticism of the government is its stance on Gaza.

Ms Sultana said the “truth is clear” and added: “This government is an active participant in genocide. And the British people oppose it. We are not going to take this any more.”

She said a “billionaire-backed grifter is leading the polls, because Labour has completely failed to improve people’s lives”. Reform, led by Nigel Farage, is projected in the latest polls to win the next election, pushing Labour into second place, despite only currently having five seats in parliament.

“Across the political establishment, from Farage to [Prime Minister Keir] Starmer, they smear people of conscience [who are] trying to stop a genocide in Gaza as terrorists,” she wrote, referring to the activist group Palestine Action, which the government intends to proscribe as a terrorist group.

A High Court hearing will decide today if it can go ahead immediately or if it should be suspended to allow the group to make the case for a legal challenge.

The move was announced after two Voyager aircraft were damaged at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on June 20. Palestine Action claimed responsibility for the incident, which police said caused around £7 million worth of damage.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans to proscribe Palestine Action on June 23, stating that the vandalism of the two planes was “disgraceful” and that the group had a “long history of unacceptable criminal damage”. MPs backed her proposal on Wednesday.

The British government supports a two-state solution and has called for a ceasefire in Gaza. It has introduced sanctions against two Israeli ministers but has faced criticism from within the party for not taking a tougher stance against Israel.

Ms Sultana said Britain was not “an island of strangers” but an “island that’s suffering”, taking issue with words used by Mr Starmer in a speech about illegal migration. He later said he regretted using the words due to their echoes of a speech by Enoch Powell, an MP who came to represent racism in 1960s Britain.

“We need homes and lives we can actually afford, not rip-off bills we pay every month to a tiny elite bathing in cash,” she said. “We need our money spent on public services, not forever wars.”

Her announcement comes in the week that Mr Starmer U-turned on plans for welfare reform following a rebellion from Labour backbenchers.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is riding high in the polls. PA

Ms Sultana was one of seven MPs who had the Labour whip suspended last summer when supporting an amendment to the government's two-child benefit cap policy. Four of the seven had the whip restored this year but Ms Sultana was not among them.

John McDonnell, another of the suspended MPs who has not had the whip restored, posted on X that he was “dreadfully sorry” to see Ms Sultana quit the party.

“The people running Labour at the moment need to ask themselves why a young, articulate, talented, extremely dedicated socialist feels she now has no home in the Labour Party and has to leave,” he said.

Mr Corbyn led Labour from 2015 to April 2020, stepping down after the party’s loss at the 2019 general election.

He was suspended from Labour in 2020 after he refused to fully accept the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s findings that the party broke equality law when he was in charge, and said anti-Semitism had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.

He was blocked from standing for Labour at last year’s general election and expelled in the spring of 2024 after announcing he would stand as an independent candidate in his Islington North constituency, which he won with a majority of more than 7,000.

Last year, Mr Corbyn formed the Independent Alliance with other independent members of the Commons.

Asked on ITV’s Peston programme this week whether that group could turn into an official party, Mr Corbyn said they had “worked very hard and very well together” over the last year in Parliament.

He added: “There is a thirst for an alternative view to be put.”

“That grouping will come together, there will be an alternative,” he later said.

Responding to Ms Sultana’s statement, a Labour spokesperson said: “In just 12 months, this Labour government has boosted wages, delivered an extra four million NHS appointments, opened 750 free breakfast clubs, secured three trade deals and four interest rate cuts lowering mortgage payments for millions.

“Only Labour can deliver the change needed to renew Britain.”

Ms Cooper said Ms Sultana has “always taken a very different view” from the government.