https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/is-jeremy-corbyn-involved-in-starting
Here is what we know...
Sep 17, 2024

The media is reporting that Jeremy Corbyn has attended a meeting to discuss the establishment of a new political party. Crucially, Corbyn has said he attended the meeting in an advisory role, but has not confirmed he is directly involved. He is yet to even endorse the group, however, the director of Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, Pamela Fitzpatrick said the following:

“We have seen the rise of the far right and already people are feeling politically homeless because they were so desperate for change, but support for Labour is dropping so quickly. We need a real movement that can fill that gap.”

Such words give me hope that Corbyn is considering taking an official role, or at the very least, helping the party get off the ground before retirement.

The new party would be called Collective. Collective began earlier this year as a movement, rather than a party, and you might have seen social media users with the #WeAreCollective hashtag. Well, now you know why.

There is talk from Labour insiders of Collective becoming a “new mass movement”, suggesting the plan is to abandon the Labour Party and start afresh. If true, this could cause a political earthquake. I could easily foresee a situation where a large number of Labour members jump ship, joining those who’ve already left Labour in disgust at what the party has become.

However, the last thing we need is more “movements”, we need to organise and gain the finances to become a political force. Our weakness has always been lack of organisation, and if we can address that, we can succeed where we have previously failed. I get the impression the people involved with Collective understand this. They are certainly making all the right noises and have the relevant experience.

They are talking of their concern that Starmer is paving the way for Prime Minister Farage by leaving the public dejected by austerity 2.0. Some would argue austerity is economic illiteracy on Labour’s part. I’m probably guilty of using this phrasing myself, but the reality is worse: they are economically literate and fully understand the damage they’re doing. The aim is to lower your expectations forever.

Nigel Farage’s Reform Party has successfully shifted UK politics to the right and it’s hoped a new party would address the balance. Given Starmer’s popularity has plummeted, Collective could potentially become an electoral force, but in order to accomplish this, it probably needs Corbyn on board, preferably as leader. I don’t like making politics about one man, and Corbyn is not exactly a spring chicken, so he might not need the stress of another leadership role, but no one else has the clout to pull this off like he could.

As many have pointed out, if Corbyn leads this thing, even for just the first couple of years, it could grow into the UK’s largest political party by membership. I would join on day one.

Remember the adoring crowds at Corbyn’s rallies? Remember that sense of togetherness when the nicest people came together? Remember that collective energy we felt? Imagine what we can do if that energy is finally harnessed.

A new party would give millions the sense of hope and excitement we felt in 2015 that change really is possible. The lessons we’ve learnt since mean we could potentially get this right second time around. Many of us developed useful skills during this period and made mistakes that helped us grow. Second time around, we could be ready to win.

The new party could attract independent MPs as well as MPs who’ve had the Labour whip withdrawn, or are just unhappy with Starmer’s leadership. However, the Guardian is saying the new party might not involve any of the current independent MPs. It’s difficult to see how this thing gets off the ground without them, but I suspect they could be waiting to officially announce their involvement. Perhaps they need reassurances that Collective will be the right party for them, but given the figures at the meeting are good guys like Ken Loach, Luftur Rahman, and Andrew Feinstein, I feel optimistic this will not be a problematic venture.

Among the attendees at the Collective meeting were my former mayor Jamie Driscoll who did an incredible job in our area. He is questionably one of the good guys in politics. The cynics among you can be forgiven for thinking there are no good guys in politics, but there are still a few. Another big attendee was former Unite general secretary Len McCluskey. This is a big deal because it’s plausible the new party could win the backing of trade unions.

One pleasing aspect is they’re talking of the new party being an “incubator” for future leaders of our movement, recognising we cannot just be about Jeremy Corbyn. If we can involve the Laura Pidcocks and Zarah Sultanas of this world, and help some unfamiliar faces rise to prominence, we can soon reach a point where we will not need a Corbyn. At some point, the man deserves to retire!

My biggest concerns for the new party are how will they prevent establishment infiltration and how will they counter the inevitable smears? I’ve been involved in a small new party that didn’t work out. It did not take long for troublemakers to appear within the membership, trying to manufacture a scandal.

The newspapers are now coming clean on how a group called Labour Together manufactured the Labour anti-Semitism scandal to sabotage their own party’s electoral chances. This will come as no surprise to those of you who were involved in Labour from 2015 to 2019 and saw those bastards destroy our dreams. In politics, the bad guys normally win.

This new party will not last long unless it has a robust plan - and central to that plan will be solidarity. The problem Corbyn had in Labour is that his neoliberal MPs weren’t with him. Everyone in the new party will have to stand together when the smears come and they will need a clear strategy for identifying and expelling infiltrators. Any support for neoliberalism will need to be an automatic expulsion offence.

Neoliberals cannot be welcome because that ideology is incompatible with working class politics. It’s basically a fancy word for corruption.

If Collective is not diametrically opposed to neoliberalism then I simply won’t be interested. My politics is focused on dismantling neoliberalism because it’s not something that can be compromised with. We tried compromise for a long time and look how far it got us.

You might argue that you can’t do politics without compromise, but my counter-argument is everyone hates neoliberalism, even centrist voters! When you pin down what neoliberalism is and describe it to people, they hate everything it stands for, but the political conversation in this country is so bad, people are duped into voting for it.

No one voted Labour so that Starmer could cut the Winter Fuel Allowance, U-turn on every promise, and enforce more brutal austerity. The public was tricked, just like they were tricked during the Blair years.

If we point out neoliberalism is the austerity policies you hate, the corporate handouts you hate, the privatisation you hate, the long NHS waiting lists, the huge energy bills, and the sewage on our beaches, people will tell you they hate neoliberalism.

It’s our job to remind the public neoliberalism is what the Labour Party stands for. There is no way to make a system with built-in corruption work for ordinary people. Neoliberalism is built on exploitation, and the establishment is finding it much harder to exploit the developing world so they’re turning their attention to our workers.

You might say you are done with electoral politics, but we can’t escape neoliberalism without a political party. You might even say we don’t need a new party when we have the Greens who have four MPs and hundreds of councillors.

I voted Green at the last election because the alternatives were awful, but there is a reason trade unions have not backed the Greens: their track record of fighting for the working class is weak. Far better to start a new party composed of people who are serious about structural change and the abolition of neoliberalism. It’s time for us to get serious about politics. It’s time for us to get organised.