Join ‘Your Party’ Build a mass workers party on a socialist programme

International Socialist League members have joined ‘your party’ and will participate fully to build a mass democratic socialist workers party on the streets and be ready to stand in the elections

In early July former Labour MP Zarah Sultana announced her resignation from the party and the creation of a new party with Jeremy Corbyn. Labour had removed the Labour whip from Sultana in 2024 for opposing the retention of the two-child benefit cap. Many activists, political groups, 200 exLabour councillors and independent left MPs are onboard constructing the new party.

The interim ‘Your Party’ was announced 24 July with Corbyn and Sultana launching a website for people to register interest, by 22 August 800,000 people registered interest, demonstrating the desire for a new party in opposition to the traditional two-party system of Conservative and Labour and to the rapid rise of Reform UK. Since the general election Reform support has surged.

The Labour government’s victory last year expressed a very deep hatred of Tory party policies and its anti-working class and repressive policies, corruption and support for Israel. The Tories took the NHS close to financial collapse and put social care funding in crisis. Under Labour cuts and privatisation of health and care services continue.

Labour’s huge gain in the general election did not mean any trust in Starmer. What was voted for and what has happened since could not have been more disparate. Starmer has launched new attacks on workers and immigrants and he continues to arm the IDF’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians, so Labour is complicit in the massacre of many tens of thousands of Palestinians and pushes to criminalise the continuous mass movement for Palestine.

In one year, the Labour government:

• Fail to tackle child poverty (2024 – 4.45 million children live in a household of relative low income, a record high)
• Removed the winter fuel allowance for pensioners
• continued the 2-child ceiling on family benefits
• Cut Universal Credit/PIP benefits to disabled and vulnerable people
• Failed to stop the deepening housing crisis
• Continue to criminalise the right of protest
• Maintain anti-trade union laws
• Continue the exploitation of immigrant workers in the gig economy (2024 – 5.75 million, 19% of the total work force were migrants); this includes 45,000 workers, under the abusive seasonal worker scheme.

The government appeases Reform and the far right, matching their denigrating language to scapegoat immigrants and legitimise increasingly draconian and cruel attacks against asylum seekers, people who are forced to undertake dangerous journeys, as they flee war and torture to seek asylum in the UK. Reform leader Nigel Farage brags that he will deport all ‘illegal immigrants’ without pointing out that there are no legal ways to claim asylum in the UK. The far-right target asylum seekers and the hotels in which they are forced to stay and blame the ills of the capitalist system on the most vulnerable.

The need for a mass workers party is propelled by discontent and anger. The working class are hurting as declining living standards continue. The interests of the working class are being overlooked in favour of capitalism and imperialism and its drive to exploitation and barbaric destruction across the planet.

Throughout, former Labour deputy prime minister Angela Rayner (who resigned 5 September over underpaying tax for one of her properties) backed the Labour-run Birmingham City Council, in a bitter “fire and rehire” tactic used against council bin workers. Labour abandoned these workers who are supported on the picket line by trade unionists from across the country. It has become a national issue.

Like Tony Blair, Starmer wants a class party – of the capitalist class. He has created sharp collisions with large sections of the population. Reform UK led by Nigel Farage is gaining rapidly.

A new party can galvanise the organised and unorganised working class into a wide struggle such as with a combination of strike wave, the Palestinian struggle, the fight against the far right and fascists alongside workers and social struggles – this combination can begin to build a real workers alternative as a rank and file movement.

 

A new party

Your Party, the interim name of the party, to succeed must be an instrument for the enfranchisement of the working class, who have had such a long and bitter history in fighting for its political and industrial rights from the Chartist movement and before.

The movement for Your Party is not so deeply linked with the working class as when the Labour Representation Committee was formed in 1990. But at the centre today, as Ken Loach said recently, is the struggle against capitalism and for a socialist economy without the rich and powerful, and so the new party must aim to unite all parts of the working class.

The attacks of capitalism and imperialism must be answered in a programme and in action, parliament is important but the class struggle on the streets and all the mobilisations are paramount – what we gain we gain in the streets.

The Palestinian demonstrations in London are huge, and large marches continue in many cities. Witnessing what Israel and imperialism does to the Palestinian people is deeply shocking to millions in Britain and across the world.

On what programme can this initiative turn to the mass movements already underway and fight for the deepest alliance between them and the rest of the class? The answer to this main question begins by assessing the principal movements that are taking place among the working class in Britain.

It will have to respond to the national struggles in Scotland, Wales and Ireland and so create a principal answer on the question of the right for self-determination.

 

Corbyn and Sultana’s steering committee

‘Your party’ and its national committee is supported by the Independent Alliance, a group of six independent MPs in the House of Commons, which Sultana joined in July 2025.

Many meetings have taken place in cities, towns and even villages and are questioning how internal democracy and accountability will be established. That must be up to the 850,000 to democratically decide.

Various members of the steering committee have made statements in their own name in New Left Review and elsewhere. Amongst the ‘leading figures’ there are important differences – one faction take a ‘party first’ approach, to establish a ‘cohesive, unified party’ and work out the grassroots details later.

This latter camp involves figures connected to Collective, an organisation which has played a large part in establishing the party supported by Zara Sultana (New Left Review).

Some figures, including Corbyn’s former communications director James Schneider (leader of Momentum) and Corbyn’s senior advisor Andrew Murray, have argued for different models in the New Left Review.

Another faction includes former mayor Jamie Driscoll and rival candidate to Keir Starmer Andrew Feinstein, both oppose building a party immediately, instead they argue for an alliance with various independent groups; towards a ‘federal approach’ made up of a range of grassroots movements. Corbyn is thought to align with this group.

The ISL is in support of a new party, where members have democratic rights, can belong to other parties and have the right to form tendencies.

There will also be a need to establish fair and robust procedures to tackle discrimination, harassment and personal disputes at any level.

Grassroot groups

The need for democratic functioning and accountability is repeatedly raised, a bottom-up approach which means that membership must discuss and decide on policies, programme and the method to build the party. Political groups and individual activists have begun organising but sometimes seek to undemocratically control these meetings.

There is a deep mass desire for a new party, and growing anti-capitalist sentiment and action. The groups meeting and organising on a local basis are discussing what the party is for, what are the demands and the programme and how it should function, such as accountability and the right of recall of those elected to local councils or parliament by collective discussion and decision making.

The process is very lively in many localities, Corbyn, Sultana and spoke at official meetings including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol, Newcastle and Blackburn. The meeting in Blackburn was billed as a conference but was a rally with no discussion from the thousand plus in attendance (or the hundreds outside). There were four independent MPs, but no mention of the word socialism nor capitalism was heard.

The conference for the new party will be held in November – what type of party it should and will be remains an open question requiring intense democratic discussion.

Many activists in the new party not only want to fight the tentacles of capitalism but want to end capitalism. It is not sufficient, important as it may be, that we should be able to define the nature of the party that the working-class needs, so it can bring about the end of capitalism and imperialism for Socialism. But how can the development of a new party link with the consciousness of the need for a mass party of the working class and with the necessary revolutionary internationalist perspectives and programme, which can bring that about. It is not going to be created in one leap in the next period.

Programmatic needs of the mass movement include:

We must build a party that supports Palestine and fights all levels of racism and oppression, we welcome immigrants and asylum seekers. Expose the lies of the far right and fascists.

For an independent party of the working class based on a democratic, fighting workers movement! No alliances with capitalist parties!

• Palestine

Build the mass movement for the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea, to end of the racist state of Israel in the heat of the struggle against genocide – the only solution for peace in the Middle East. End British military and arms support to Israel.

Involve the working class in direct action, such as boycotting the shipment of weapons and other goods to Israel.

Defend the student movement and their democratic rights to oppose complicity with Israel.

Sever trade and diplomatic relations with Israel.

For a free democratic secular Palestine!

• Stop attacks on immigrants and refugees – end all oppression

Open borders and the immediate closure of immigrant detention camps and the use of hotels as prison centres.  Support the right to defend ourselves from racist and fascist violence.

Mass mobilization of broad social forces, including the labour movement ranks to defeat the fascists and far right mobilisations.

Stop all deportations now! Equal rights for migrants!

Dismantle the racist police and the criminal “justice” system! Reparations and self-determination! End the legacy of colonialism and imperialism!         

• Defend unions and workers’ right to organize!

The fight against capitalism needs a united struggle of the organised and unorganised, of the documented and undocumented respecting the autonomy of all the progressive groups. Defend all workers to build a mass fight for civil rights and to build the democratic left inside the class struggle of unions and communities.

Support all union strikes and picket lines!

• Public ownership of the NHS and Social Care

For a fully comprehensive, integrated, publicly accountable and publicly provided, free at the point of delivery NHS, based on need without privatised franchises. Re-nationalise the NHS and social care under the control of workers and users.

• Housing has to be a human right for all including the youth.

Removing most council houses meant, over decades, spiraling prices and a deepening housing crisis. Homelessness significantly affects young and poor workers.

We call for the banning of no-fault evictions and the end of the bedroom tax. We demand the strict regulation of the use of bailiffs, and a change in the law to demand all rented homes must be maintained by their owners to a decent standard.

We call for the end of ground rents and a party led review of the freehold/leasehold system.

Rents have to be controlled. National construction firms have to be nationalised under workers control and affordable and decent social housing has to be created.

• End all forms of oppression

Support the struggles of those who are specially oppressed under capitalism, those people who experience sexism, racism, ableism, and or cis-heterosexism.

Build these movements to end all this oppression with a class-struggle perspective so that such movements can articulate their own demands and develop political consciousness as a group.

We must support all their economic, political and social demands. We must also resist any attempts to try and create a false narrative of the need to choose people supporting one group of working-class people over another.

We can and must support all progressive struggles of the working class. Full civil and human rights for all peoples!

• Climate crisis

Climate change is one of the biggest threats that humanity face today. “Green capitalism” and individual consumer choices are entirely insufficient to tackle the catastrophe facing the planet. Capitalism must be abolished and replaced with a planned socialist economy based upon renewable energy, mass transit, and the shared and carefully planned use of resources for the public good. As a major step toward that goal, the energy industry needs to be nationalised.

For climate justice!  Public and workers ownership of the energy industry under workers’ and community control to achieve emergency conversion to 100% renewable energy!

• Right to self -determination

The ‘United Kingdom’ is an imperialist, colonial power, and we defend the right to self-determination for the peoples of British colonies. We call for the right of self-determination of Scotland and Wales; areas like the Malvinas to be handed back to where they were stolen. We call for a united Ireland.

Support all the national liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America and Asia, anywhere there are oppressed peoples.

• No capitalist control but workers’ control

Countless examples exist of super wealth, that has been extracted by means of wage slavery and even slavery today from the working class at home and internationally. We must build a tax system that makes it impossible for anyone to hoard any significant amount of wealth. We must fully fund and fully nationalise all public services.

The UK is in a deep political and economic crisis. The rapid sell-off of public assets has meant that critical infrastructure—including railways, water utilities, and energy networks—are often controlled by foreign investors with profit maximisation, rather than public welfare, as their primary objective.

Public ownership, under worker class control of all public services, big industry, transport, and the banks! For a workers and people’s government and a planned economy! 

In short, the aim of any new party of the working class must ultimately be the building of a socialist world!