Thursday 24 July saw, after much speculation, Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana co-sign a post on X (formerly Twitter) saying “the system is rigged” and urging people to sign up to their new left-wing political party at www.yourparty.uk. Jeremy Corbyn has said the name “Your Party” was being used on an interim basis and that a formal name was still to be chosen.
Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020 before his suspension from the Parliamentary Party and expulsion from Labour in 2024 for standing as an independent candidate. Zara Sultana had the Labour whip withdrawn for voting against the government on the two-child benefit cap and has since resigned from the Labour Party. Both left-wing MPs are now committed to co-leading a “new kind of political party”.
But could this new party split the left-wing vote and allow right-wing parties like Reform UK and the Conservatives in through the back door?
Paving the way for the right wing
Currently under our voting system, First Past The Post, elections almost always end up in a majority for one party with the election itself usually a contest between the two biggest parties – Labour and the Conservatives – with smaller parties hardly getting a look in.
However, with the unprecedented rise of Reform UK, their local election and mayoral victories and their dominance in the opinion polls, many pollsters are predicting a Reform UK majority government or official opposition at the next general election.
This means that the election would become a contest between the incumbent Labour Party and Reform UK with Labour being the only party standing in the way of a far right government.
A Labour source said: “Only Labour has a serious plan to deliver for change for the North East. A vote for anyone else risks chaos and division with Nigel Farage and Reform.”
On the other hand, could Your Party win?
But will the right wing really benefit from a Corbyn-Sultana led party?
Politics right now is very volatile, as shown in the last general election. Whereas the Green Party never made it past one seat since the election of their first MP in 2010, suddenly they had four; two of which they took from the Conservatives in rural England. Reform UK came from nowhere to winning five MPs and the Liberal Democrats went from a mere 11 sears to 72, their best ever result. Three smaller parties all making inroads into the territory of what was once Britain’s most successful political party.
Independent candidates were successful too, breaking the two-party mould of the First Past The Post voting system and taking five seats from Labour in the last election. These independents are now those who will likely form the backbone of Your Party, including Jeremy Corbyn who is co-leading it.
All this happened with nowhere near as much movement as Your Party has generated. At the time of writing, it was reported that 600,000 people had signed up to it. If this translates into a mass-movement and campaign machine, it could potentially see Your Party rise like Reform UK and become a serious force to be reckoned with in British politics, potentially defeating Reform itself, rather than Labour.
A voter who is following Your Party with great interest said “They may well lose, they may well split the vote but they may well unite the left and they may well win and do something different to Keir Starmer. If you stick by your principles and you lose that’s one thing but if you betray your principles and win power, what is point of it?”
In a democracy, a new political party should always be celebrated as it provides a voice to people who may not have had one before. A risk comes with this, however, as vote splitting is inevitable. Reform UK split the right-wing vote in 2024 in many Conservative seats allowing Labour to get in and now Your Party threatens to split the left-wing vote, allowing Reform UK and the Conservatives to win in Labour seats. But the former vote-splitting Reform UK suddenly grew to win whole councils, mayors and a parliamentary by-election as well as consistently top the opinion polls, replacing the Conservatives on the right. Who’s to say Your Party won’t do the same to Labour and replace Keir Starmer’s party on the left?
