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The British left is at a turning point. It is less than two years since Starmer’s Labour Party won the 2024 General Election in a ‘loveless landslide’: Evidently, people voted against the Conservatives, rather than for Labour. Even at the time, the party was widely criticized for having no vision and not standing for anything. Still, Labour emerged from the election commanding a huge Parliamentary majority and therefore the ability to deliver radical change.
Jamie Driscoll was the mayor of the North of Tyne Area around Newcastle from 2019 to 2024. In 2023, he left the Labour Party and continued serving as mayor as an independent.
But what was to come was not change, but controversy. Within two months of taking office in July 2024, Starmer’s government was already rocked by accusations of corruption over Starmer accepting gifts worth thousands of pounds. Next came the highly unpopular decision to cut Winter Fuel payments to 9.3 million pensioners. Since then Labour have failed to deliver material improvements to people’s lives. Instead, the party has been mired in scandals, and look grossly incompetent after a dozen U-turns on a variety of policies. Most recently, Labour has been losing by-elections in ultra-safe seats, such as Gorton and Denton in the Manchester area. Labour is badly losing either to Reform, or whoever seems most likely to defeat Reform.
Labour are stuck in the Third Way mindset of the Blair-Clinton era. They still assume that private capital flows will generate economic growth that can in turn be taxed and redistributed to take the edge off inequality.
The left needs to understand why support for this Labour government has fallen off a cliff so suddenly, and why it is incapable of delivering anything of note. This is not simply a moral failing. Labour are stuck in the Third Way mindset of the Blair-Clinton era. They still assume that private capital flows will generate economic growth that can in turn be taxed and redistributed to take the edge off inequality.
Every government for forty years has outsourced both their thinking and government contracts to well-heeled private sector organizations, whose sole loyalty is to their bank accounts. Using the same mechanisms to implement public policy will garner the same results. This form of wealth extraction is so deeply entrenched that any effort to direct public investment by using current systems will simply feed the beast.
Most thinkers on the left understand this. But the left has a habit of drafting inconsequential policy shopping lists, compiling a longer and longer list of outcomes it would like to see without any detail about how to implement it. It is clear that the left gain power in local and regional elections before entering government on a national level. If the left fails to deliver locally, the public will not be patient. Moving away from neoliberalism will be like diffusing a bomb. We need to defuse the neoliberal economy without cutting the wrong wire and causing economic shocks that we don’t have the political capital or media support to withstand.
In my five years in office I had to work around 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 have experience running an arm of government in Britain.
The task of the British left is develop a credible programme that will improve the lives of the British people. This programme needs to be clearly formulated and grounded in reality with specific goals, so we can be deliver measurable results. It needs to be inclusive, and not fall into traps set by divisions around identity. The left must also build the organizations and train the people needed to bring about political change. These organizations must be embedded amongst the people they purport to represent, using language and ideas that the majority relate to.
My Record as Mayor of Newcastle
I have a highly unusual vantage point. I was elected Mayor of the Newcastle city region in May 2019, a position I served in until 2024, turning Newcastle into what the Guardian called “the capital of a new radical British politics”. 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 have experience running an arm of government in Britain.
Even my political opponents acknowledge I was effective. We smashed our job creation target by over 300 percent; 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 funneled off into tax havens by private investors.
I was involved in building up the left within the Labour Party, and a victim of the purges that followed Jeremy Corbyn’s departure. Starmer blocked me from running for mayor as a Labour politician in 2024. My crime was talking to legendary filmmaker Ken Loach, who had been ejected from the party in 2021, about his films. That’s how authoritarian Labour under Starmer had become.
After negotiating a £6.1 billion devolution deal from the Johnson, Truss, and Sunak governments, I ran as an independent. I came second after the official Labour candidate, but we polled the second highest independent vote in British political history, and built an organizational infrastructure that has become the progressive movement called Majority. We’ve mobilized thousands against the far right, promoted progressive alliances, and run innovative political education and mentoring programmes.
The Labour Party in Decline
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 opposition, and expels dissenters with impunity. Nevertheless, some socialists still hope the party can move back to social democracy, as it did when Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership in 2015. But when asked how this will happen, they privately concede that a Labour leftward turn 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 would be suspended in Starmer’s first year as leader.
After the 2024 General Election 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. In January 2026, the popular Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham was blocked by the party leadership from standing for Parliament. Burnham is a popular figure, charismatic, and an effective administrator. As regional mayors in the North of England Andy and I worked closely together on many issues. He ran for the leadership twice, and many set their hopes for a Labour revival in popularity in him. After he was refused the right to stand for Labour in a Manchester region by-election in Gorton and Denton, Labour lost the seat to the Green Party, coming third.
It is likely that Starmer will be jettisoned by his own praetorian guard shortly after this May’s local elections, which look to be a disaster for Labour. But whoever is leader, nothing of substance will change in Labour. In the unlikely event that Burnham can fight his way back in, 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.
The 2024 Election and Reform UK
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.
But the 2024 General Election threw up some surprise results. Four independents won, three in seats with a large Muslim population, who are appalled by Labour’s support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Four Greens won too, as well as five Reform MPs.
Reform have since experienced splits, resignations, and a volley of legal threats. 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. Reform 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 – GB News – they have made sweeping gains in deprived post-industrial areas. But their support seems to be topping out, and scandals and their evident incompetence where they have won power is seeing their support plateau, and in some cases even recede.
Will It Be Your Party?
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. In this coalition, two separate groups were working from different approaches. Collective was led by Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s former chief of staff, still employed by him for his Peace and Justice Project. Murphy advocated for a Corbyn-led party, with a central staff team, emphasizing a traditional electoral focus.
Another group, under the working title MOU, comprised of 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 more slowly. Without a broad social base, they argued, a purely electoral focus would achieve nothing against more established, well-organized and better-funded opponents. They cited failed attempts of previous left parties, such as the Socialist Labour Party, Respect, TUSC, and Left Unity, none of which the typical Briton has even heard of.
These tensions were exacerbated because Corbyn himself seemed to support both groups and didn’t come down firmly on the side of either of the differing approaches. Into this mix came Zarah Sultana, one of the rebel MPs suspended by Labour, and driving force behind the new party.
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 was named Your Party, suggested by someone in Corbyn’s office just before sending out an email.
“All the experienced people who’ve built something and could actually win have walked away from Your Party.”
Sultana and Corbyn quickly fell out, quite publicly, to the extent of launching rival membership systems and threatening each other with legal action. By Your Party’s conference in November, they were holding separate rallies, which led to Sultana publicly boycotting 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. “All the experienced people who’ve built something and could actually win have walked away.”
I had not attended the November conference myself. I’d been involved in some of the early groundwork, setting up MOU Operations along with Andrew Feinstein and Beth Winter to help organize party finance among other operational tasks. But I stepped back and resigned from MOU when the internal dynamics became clear. Your Party has an income stream now, enough to run core operations, but the party is still riven with conflict. Unless they can muster the self-discipline to run some effective, mass participatory campaigns, internal grievances will remain in focus. To date, they have received no support from any trade unions, not even those who affiliated with smaller left parties in the past.
The Rise of the Green Party
The final actor, and a surprise to many, is the Green Party. The Greens have been around for a long time, but are often not thought of as a party of the left. Their image was more about nature-loving middle-class types, rather than 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.
In August 2025, Zack Polanski, at the time the Green’s deputy leader, ran for party leadership on an openly eco-socialist programme, winning 85 percent 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. The Green’s poll ratings jumped from around 6 to 18 percent, sometimes even beating Labour in some surveys. In a first-past-the-post system, support this strong approaches a tipping point. In the last year, people had held their noses and rallied behind Labour in by-elections to keep out Reform UK. Now, these votes seem to be going to the Green party, as the Gordon and Denton by-election showed, where a Green beat out both Reform and Labour.
“If we get hung up looking inwards, neglecting political education, and retreating into slogans, we’ll lose to the far right. We’ve been here before.“
So are the Greens Britain’s biggest hope? Perhaps. But they’re not ready yet. The Greens 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 of the base is more of a vibe than an actual plan. Fortunately, the political and executive leadership are aware of this problem. I joined the Greens in December, and have been preparing and advising on getting ready for government.
The left need to organize around concrete questions of governance. We need a far higher level of political education. For instance, 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 only 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. Today, 82 percent of Britons think water should be in public ownership; 78 percent support a wealth tax – including 66 percent of millionaires; 75 percent of Britons support rent controls, including 44 percent of landlords. But few on the left can articulate the method by which these popular policies could be achieved.
What is To Be Done
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 over public opinion. There is an increasingly strong ecosystem of independent media, often on social media or YouTube.
In May this year most English cities will see local government elections. The Greens are campaigning hard, and will likely win councils. They will need to govern well, but City Councils alone cannot reverse the damage done by national polices. So if the Greens are victorious they will need to seize the narrative instead of falling into managerialism.
What those elections will show, however, is that Labour and the Conservatives have collapsed. Most voters sense this, but when they see it confirmed in election results they will increasingly frame the next General Election as Greens vs Reform in many constituencies.
As we approach the 2029 General Election, the Greens will need dozens of good communicators who can clearly articulate not just what they want, but why their plan will work. Until someone can clearly articulate how we can replace our broken economic model, UK politics will remain volatile.
Many predict 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 gained some traction in Britain, but we do not have the same deep divides that are tearing the US apart over race, abortion, guns, or evolution. Reform’s growth has mainly filled a vacuum. Some Reform voters I talked to could 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 a strategic electoral pact, where parties stand aside and those candidates best placed to stop Reform in that constituency get a clear run. But progressive alliances are like fusion power. Everyone agrees it would be brilliant, but no one has yet made it work.
Still, a hung Parliament with 80 to 100 Green and other progressive MPs out of the 650 seats would change everything. Seeing the chaos a hung Parliament brings, the public will want stability. If the left has gotten its act together by then and can articulate a clear, deliverable plan to run Britain in the interests of the people who do the work, we’ll have a chance. If we get hung up looking inwards, neglecting political education, and retreating 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.
