Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, those twin titans of the British left, have decided to fling themselves once more into the political fray, brandishing a new party that’s as yet unnamed, unformed, and, one suspects, utterly doomed. It’s a venture so steeped in idealism and so bereft of pragmatism that it could only have sprung from the fevered dreams of two people who believe the answer to Britain’s woes lies in a good old-fashioned Marxist sing-along. Let us, with the weary resignation of those who’ve seen this pantomime before, dissect this latest attempt to resurrect the corpse of Corbynism, skewer its absurdities, and mourn the workers it claims to champion but will surely alienate.
First, let’s address the pièce de résistance of this fledgling enterprise: the name, or rather, the lack thereof. In a move that screams strategic genius, Corbyn and Sultana have launched their revolutionary movement under the placeholder moniker “Your Party.” Yes, Your Party. It’s as if they’ve taken a leaf from the book of a particularly uninspired marketing intern, tasked with naming a generic brand of breakfast cereal. “What shall we call it, Jeremy?” one imagines Sultana asking, her eyes aglow with the fire of rebellion. “Oh, I don’t know, Zarah,” Corbyn mumbles, stroking his beard as if it might yield answers. “Let’s ask the people. They’ll decide. Democracy, you see.” And so, they’ve outsourced the naming process to the masses, via a website that’s already creaking under the weight of 70,000 sign-ups and the inevitable squabbles over whether “Arise” sounds too much like a self-help seminar or “The Collective” too much like a Soviet tractor factory. The result? A party that’s not so much a movement as a focus group gone rogue, destined to be christened something like “Votey McVoteFace” if the public’s puckish sense of humour prevails. Truly, this is the stuff of revolutions.
But the name, or lack thereof, is merely the first symptom of a deeper malaise: this party’s raison d’être as a magnet for the far-left protest vote. Corbyn and Sultana, with their fists raised and their rhetoric dialled to eleven, have positioned themselves as the standard-bearers for every disgruntled socialist who ever scrawled “Capitalism is Theft” on a placard. Their manifesto, such as it is, promises “a mass redistribution of wealth and power,” an end to arms sales to Israel, and a foreign policy that might as well be subtitled “Peace, Love, and Nationalization.” It’s a wishlist that would make Karl Marx blush and Fidel Castro nod approvingly from the great cigar lounge in the sky.
But here’s the rub: the voters they’re courting—those disillusioned souls who feel Labour has betrayed them by daring to govern rather than agitate—aren’t exactly a silent majority. Polls suggest this new party could snag a respectable 10% of the vote, particularly among the 18-24 crowd who think tweeting is activism and Corbyn is Che Guevara with a bus pass. Yet, in their zeal to outflank Labour on the left, Corbyn and Sultana are blissfully ignoring the elephant in the room: the working-class voters who’ve already defected, not to their banner, but to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Oh, the irony! While Corbyn and Sultana dream of a proletarian uprising, the actual proletariat—those gritty, no-nonsense workers in the Red Wall seats—have been quietly slipping away to Reform, lured by Farage’s plain-talking populism and a promise to stick it to the elites in a language they understand. Reform’s recent surge, polling at a whopping 27-34% in some surveys, owes much to its ability to channel the frustration of those who feel ignored by Westminster’s chattering classes. Meanwhile, Corbyn and Sultana are offering what? A lecture on Gaza, a sermon on wealth taxes, and a party name to be determined by committee. It’s as if they’ve mistaken the British working class for a sociology seminar at SOAS. The workers, dear comrades, aren’t clamoring for your “real change”; they’re voting for Farage because he promises to fix the potholes and keep the migrants out, not because they’ve read Das Kapital and found it lacking. By splitting the left-wing vote, Corbyn and Sultana are handing Reform a gift-wrapped opportunity to consolidate their gains, leaving Labour to fend off attacks from both sides while the Tories sip champagne and watch the chaos unfold.
And then there’s Corbyn himself, the cuddly grandpa of British politics, whose avuncular charm and allotment-tending demeanour belie a rather less wholesome record. This is a man who, with a twinkle in his eye and a jam jar in his hand, has repeatedly cozied up to groups that make the average voter’s skin crawl. Let’s not mince words: Corbyn’s long history of sharing platforms with apologists for Hamas and Hezbollah, his reluctance to unequivocally condemn the IRA, and his steadfast support for regimes like Venezuela’s—all while cloaked in the rhetoric of “peace and justice”—paint a picture not of a kindly old socialist but of a man whose moral compass points firmly toward the nearest picket line, regardless of who’s holding the sign.
His defenders will cry context, but context doesn’t erase the fact that Corbyn’s brand of radicalism is less about uplifting the downtrodden than about cheering for anyone who hates the West. And Sultana, for all her fiery eloquence, is cut from the same cloth, railing against “genocide” in Gaza while conveniently ignoring the complexities of a conflict that doesn’t lend itself to hashtag activism. Together, they’re not so much a political party as a traveling roadshow for every grievance the far left holds dear, from Palestine to public ownership, with a side order of sanctimony.
The tragedy here is not just that Corbyn and Sultana are out of touch—though they are, spectacularly so—but that they genuinely believe they’re the answer to Britain’s fractured politics. They see themselves as the vanguard of a new dawn, when in reality they’re the architects of a cul-de-sac. Their party, whatever it ends up being called, will likely fizzle out faster than a Momentum rally in a rainstorm. The Greens, already wary of this upstart, are circling like vultures, ready to absorb any disaffected lefties who realize that “Your Party” is less a movement than a midlife crisis with a website. And the workers? They’ll keep voting for Reform, not because they’re crypto-fascists, but because Farage speaks their language—blunt, unpolished, and free of the jargon that Corbyn and Sultana seem to think passes for inspiration.
In the end, this new party is less a threat to Labour than a gift to Nigel Farage, who must be chuckling into his pint at the thought of the left eating itself alive. Corbyn and Sultana, with their unnamed party and their unmoored ideals, are like two people shouting into a void, convinced it’s an amphitheatre. They’ll rally the faithful, sure—those 70,000 sign-ups aren’t nothing—but they’ll never win back the workers who’ve already decamped to Reform’s simpler, angrier vision. As for the name, I suggest they go with “The People’s Front of Islington,” if only to avoid confusion with the “Popular Front of Islington.”.