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It is less than two years since Starmer’s Labour Party won the 2024 General Election in a ‘loveless landslide’. People voted against the Conservatives, rather than for Labour, who were even then widely criticised for having no vision and not standing for anything. Still, Labour commanded a huge Parliamentary majority and the ability to deliver radical change.
They started badly, with scandals about giving favour for political donations. They then cut the Winter Fuel payments to 9.3 million pensioners. That was in their first month. Since then they’ve failed to deliver anything that has made a material difference, have been mired in scandals, and with over a dozen U-turns, look grossly incompetent. They are losing by-elections in ultra-safe seats, either to Reform, or whoever seems most likely to defeat Reform.
The left needs to understand why this Labour government is losing support so incredibly quickly, and why they are seemingly incapable of delivering anything of note. It is not simply a moral failing. They are stuck in the mindset of the Blair-Clinton era. They still assume that private capital flows will generate growth that can be taxed and redistributed to take the edge off inequality.
Every government for forty years has outsourced both their thinking and the contracts to well heeled private sector organisations, whose sole loyalty is to their bank accounts. If you intend to use the same mechanisms to implement public policy, you’ll get the same results. wealth extraction is so deeply entrenched that any and all effort to invest by using current systems simply feed the beast.
Most thinkers on the left understand this. But the left has a habit of falling into shopping-listism.
Developing a longer and longer list of outcomes it would like to see without any detail about how to implement it. The left will be in power in local and regional government before it gains power nationally. If it fails to deliver, the public will not be patient. If and when we get into power nationally, moving away from neoliberalism can be thought of as diffusing a bomb. We need to rewire the economy without causing economic shocks that we don’t have the political capital or media support to withstand.
The task of the British left is to develop a credible programme that will improve the lives of the British people. It needs to be grounded in reality so it can be delivered, with specific, measurable goals. It needs to be clear and strong enough that people will vote for it. It needs to be inclusive, and not fall into traps of division around identity. It must also build the organisations and train the people to make this happen. Organisations embedded amongst the people they purport to represent, using language and ideas that are relatable
I have a highly unusual vantage point. I was elected Mayor of the Newcastle city region in May 2019. In my five years in office I had to work around four different Prime Ministers, six different Chancellors, a global pandemic, Britain leaving the EU, energy price shocks, a cost of living crisis and the start of a ground war in Europe. I’m one of a tiny handful of democratic socialists (as opposed to social democrats) who has run an arm of government in Britain.
Jamie Driscoll is a British politician who served as the metro mayor of the North of Tyne Combined Authority from 2019 to 2024.
Even political opponents acknowledge I was effective. We smashed our job creation target by over 300%. Built affordable homes to high-eco standards. Ran child poverty prevention programmes. Delivered skills training to thousands of people to enable them to increase earnings. For every £1 I invested, we returned over £3 to Treasury in increased payroll taxes from job creation. I even had a successful venture capital programme that generated profits for us to spend on other programmes, rather than them being funnelled off by private investors into tax havens.
I was involved in building the left within the Labour Party, and one of the victims of purges. My crime was talking to legendary film maker Ken Loach about his films. Really. That’s how totalitarian the Labour Party had become. After negotiating a £6.1 billion devolution deal from the Johnson, Truss, and Sunak governments, I ran as an independent. We polled second highest independent vote in British political history, and built an organisational infrastructure that has become the progressive movement called Majority. We’ve mobilised thousands against the far right, promote progressive alliances, and run innovative political education and mentoring programmes.
Parties on the British, new and old
Despite being associated with the left, the Labour Party is currently a neoliberal party. Its apparatus is tightly controlled by the right-wing Labour Together faction. It tolerates no dissent, and expels dissenters with impunity. Nevertheless, some socialists still hope it can move back to social democracy, as it did when Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership in 2015. Although when asked how this will happen, they privately concede it is wishful thinking.
Corbyn won the labour leadership by accident. It was a bold and inspirational campaign, driven very much in an ad hoc way by those involved. But it is fair to say that even those involved were taken by surprise. From day 1 they were under siege, and never had control of the party apparatus. There was no meaningful progress on internal democracy. Corbyn himself was suspended by Starmer in his first year as leader.
After the 2024 General Election 2024 some of the few remaining Labour left MPs voted against the Labour government’s policy of restricting welfare support to only two children per family. They were suspended. Last month, the popular Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham was blocked by party HQ from standing for Parliament. Andy is a popular figure, charismatic, and an effective administrator. As regional mayors in the North of England he and I worked closely together on many issues. He ran for the leadership twice, and seen by many as the hope for a Labour revival in popularity. Instead he was refused the right to stand for Labour in the by-election, and Labour lost the seat to the Green Party, coming third.
Starmer will be jettisoned by his own Praetorian Guard, likely shortly after this May’s local elections, which will be a disaster for Labour. But nothing of substance will change in Labour, whoever is leader. In the unlikely event that Burnham can fight a way back, he will still have to deal with a hostile Parliamentary party and well funded internal opponents. He’d make fewer unforced errors than Starmer, but I can’t see him diffusing the bomb of neoliberalism. Governments get judged on their record, and Labour’s is poor. If the left is looking to Labour for hope, it will see a Reform government.
European readers should be reminded that Britain still operates a first past the post electoral system. No explicitly democratic socialist party has won any seats in a General Election since 1945. Attempts to create one have always floundered, not least because the voting public never believed they could win.
The 2024 General Election threw up some surprise results. Four independents won, three in seats with a large Muslim population, appalled by Labour’s support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Four Greens won too, and five Reform MPs.
Reform have since experienced splits, resignations, legal threats against each other, and a wave of defections from former Conservative government ministers. They rely entirely on an anti-immigration narrative, scapegoating all the country’s ills on refugees. Not all their voters buy into this, many just want an anti-establishment party to “shake things up”. They have been building this narrative for twenty years, and Labour’s collapse in support has given them their break. Extremely well funded and backed by what is in effect their own TV station, they have made sweeping gains in post-industrial areas of deprivation. But their support seems to be topping out, and scandals and incompetence where they have won power is seeing their support plateau, and in some cases recede.
It’s into this scenario that a wide coalition of the former Labour left sought to create a new party through late 2024 and 2025. Jeremy Corbyn was seen as a figure around whom to coalesce, but he was not keen on the role.
Two separate groups were working from different approaches.
Collective was led by Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s former chief of staff, and still employed by him for his Peace and Justice Project. Murphy advocated for a Corbyn led party, with a central staff team and a traditional electoral focus.
Another coalition, under the working title MOU, comprised climate activists, housing campaigners, and former Labour left politicians wanted a coalition of social movements and local independent progressives to build to a national party over time. Without a broad social base, they argued, a purely electoral focus would achieve nothing against more established, organised and better funded opponents. They cited failed attempts at previous left parties, such as the Socialist Labour Part, Respect, TUSC and Left Unity, none of which the typical Briton has even heard of.
There were tensions from the start, not least because Corbyn himself supported both groups and their differing approaches. Into this mix came Zarah Sultana, one of the rebel MPs suspended by Labour.
There was clearly a demand for a new political movement. In July 2025 an unplanned, ad hoc launch, without any media plan or even a membership system in place, saw almost 800,000 people register an interest. Almost by accident it gained the name Your Party, suggested by someone in Corbyn’s office just before sending out an email.
Sultana and Corbyn quickly fell out, quite publicly, to the extent of launching rival membership systems and threatening each other with legal action. By the time of their conference in November, they were holding different rallies, attendees were being suspended, and Sultana publicly boycotted the conference.
One journalist made a telling remark to me. “What was notable was who wasn’t at the Your Party conference.” He reeled off a list of names of prominent socialists, including my own. “All the experienced people who’ve built something and could actually win have walked away.”
I’d been involved in some of the early groundwork, but stepped back when the internal dynamics became clear. They have an income stream now, enough to run a core operation, but are still riven with conflict. Unless they can muster the self-discipline to run some effective, mass participatory campaigns, they will continue to focus on internal grievances. To date, they have received no support from any trade unions, not even those who affiliated to smaller left parties in the past.
The final actor, and a surprise to many, is the Green Party.
The Greens have been around for a long time, but often not thought of as a party of the left. Their image was more nature-loving middle-class types, rather about taking state power to tackle inequality.
With Labour’s growing unpopularity after the 2024 election, a group of Green Party members founded Greens Organise to change this perception. The Green Party manifesto has long been more progressive than Labour, even under Jeremy Corbyn. It calls for wealth taxes, public ownership of care homes, and universal basic income to eradicate poverty.
Zack Polanski, their existing deputy leader, ran on an openly eco-socialist programme, winning 85% of the vote. When Your Party imploded into factional warfare, their latent support switched to the Greens. 130,000 people joined in the autumn of 2025, more than tripling their membership. Polanski has been uncompromising in his media performances, openly advocating taxing billionaires, protecting refugees, and opposing genocide. Poll ratings jumped from around 6% to 18%, sometimes beating Labour. In a first past the post system this is close to a tipping point. In by-elections up and down the country people are no longer voting Labour to keep out Reform.
So are the Greens the great hope for Britain? Perhaps. But they’re not ready yet. They have a serious scaling problem. They’ve tripled in size, and their internal communications and procedures are groaning under the load. Like Labour under Corbyn, the enthusiasm is more of a vibe than a plan. The positive news is the political and executive leadership know this. I joined in December, and have been working and advising on getting ready for government.
This is where the left need to organise. We need a far higher level of political education. Most on the left accept that the bond markets do not work in the interests of the British people. But ask them whether the Bank of England should be independent, and a tiny percentage could justify their answer. Britain is the only country on the entire planet with a completely private water system. Almost everyone thinks it should be run for public good not private greed. But few on the left can articulate the method by which that could be done, without paying huge sums to shareholders.
If left activists can’t make clear arguments, we become dependent on the mainstream media. Most of that is either owned by billionaires, or run by establishment centrists. They too, though, are losing their grip. There is an increasingly strong ecosystem of independent media, often on social media and YouTube.
In May this year most English cities have local government elections. The Greens are campaigning hard, and will likely win councils. Not only will they need to govern well, they’ll need to seize the narrative and not fall into managerialism. City Councils alone cannot reverse the damage done by national polices.
What those elections will show is that Labour and the Conservatives have collapsed.
Most voters sense this, but when they see it confirmed in election results they will increasingly see the next General Election as Greens vs Reform in many places.
This is not guaranteed to last. The instability will continue, because the foundations of this complex system have crumbled. As we approach the 2029 General Election, the Greens will need dozens of good communicators who can clearly articulate not just what we want, but why their plan will work. Until someone can show how we can replace the broken economic model we have, the instability will continue.
Most people think it will be a hung Parliament. Reform has a strong base now, though its support has plateaued. By doubling down on scapegoating immigrants they have created a strong coalition against them. Their Trump-MAGA playbook has some traction in Britain, but we do not have the deep divides that occur in the US over race, abortion, guns, and evolution. Their growth has mainly filled a vacuum. Some Reform voters I talk to can be won over in a single conversation. It’s just that no one has had that conversation with them.
Some on the left talk of the need for an electoral pact, where parties stand aside and the best placed to stop Reform gets a clear run. Progressive alliances are like fusion power. Everyone agrees it would be brilliant, but no one has yet made it work.
A hung Parliament with 80 to 100 Greens and other progressives out of the 650 MPs would change everything. Today, 82% of Britons think water should be in public ownership. 78% support a wealth tax. Including 66% of millionaires. 75% of Britons support rent controls. Including 44% of landlords. With the chaos of a hung Parliament the public will want stability.
If the left has got its act together and can articulate a clear, deliverable plan to run Britain in the interests of the people who do the work, we’ll get the chance. If we get hung up looking inwards, neglect political education, and retreat into slogans, we’ll lose to the far right. We’ve been here before. It’s socialism or barbarism. And this time, it won’t just be war, it will be climate catastrophe too.
