New 'Corbynesque' hard-left party plays into hands of Nigel Farage and John Swinney

It is always reassuring to check in with the radical left and learn it continues to take its strategy from Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”.

Put two Trots in a room together and they’ll soon start arguing over whether the People’s Front of Judea or the Judean People’s Front truly had the interests of the workers at heart.

The narcissism of small differences is a disease that infects extremists, for whom ideological purity matters more than intellect or motivation.

Former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn, centre, and Zarah Sultana together on a picket line outside London Euston railway station in 2022. Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

We most recently witnessed this phenomenon on Thursday when the MP for Coventry South, Zarah Sultana, announced she had quit Labour and would now proceed to form a new political party alongside former opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Sultana, who has been sitting as an independent since having the Labour whip withdrawn last year, said she and Corbyn would “co-lead the founding of a new party, with other MPs, campaigners and activists”.

Shortly after Sultana issued her statement, Corbyn was said to be “furious and bewildered”.

By Friday, he had softened a little. Discussions with Sultana were ongoing and she would “help us build a new alternative”.

But the member for Islington North – expelled last year from the party he once led – stopped short of endorsing Sultana as co-leader of anything. This was hardly surprising: Corbyn is a man of considerable ego who has never previously shown much interest in sharing the spotlight with anyone (unless, of course, it’s with one of his “friends” from Hamas or Hezbollah).

The same activists who previously declared that Corbyn only failed to become Prime Minister because Labour hadn’t been left-wing enough to defeat the Conservatives in 2017 and ’19, have been out and about over recent days declaring Sultana’s decision to quit the party a disaster for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

At last! Here’s a real alternative to the neoliberal/warmongering/genocidal (take your pick) policies of the political establishment.

There may well be some Labour voters who follow Sultana’s lead but a number of leading MPs on the party’s far left have already said thanks but no.

If a new party of the left actually emerges, it will not include such Corbyn allies as John McDonnell, Clive Lewis, and Diane Abbott.

Shortly after sharing Sultana’s statement, one high-profile activist declared that Labour was “dead”.

There’s no question that the Prime Minister has had a rough first year in office – with many of the problems he’s faced being entirely of his own creation – but the idea that a Sultana-Corbyn dream-ticket stands ready to bury his party is laughable. These are people who could not co-ordinate a simple announcement.

If Sultana and Corbyn held a party at Tennent’s Wellpark brewery, everyone would go home sober. Don’t try to tell me they can steward a winning election campaign.

That’s not to say there is no appetite out there for an alternative to Labour.

A recent poll for the More in Common group found that a new party of the left could end up taking as much as 10 per cent of the vote in a future General Election.

But only a third of that support would come from Labour supporters with most of the rest coming from those who currently turn to the Green Party for their regular hit of unearned righteousness.

Sultana’s decision to cancel her Labour membership came days after she claimed “we are all Palestine Action” in response to plans to proscribe the organisation as a terror group. According to Labour insiders, Sultana’s statement had already sealed her fate and she was heading for expulsion.

Was the politician’s resignation really an act of principle or was it a face-saving jump before a humiliating push?

The political right continues to go through a period of turmoil. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party has been gutting the Tory vote recently and some pollsters suggest it could win the next General Election.

This, one must assume, is a prospect that fills the likes of Corbyn and Sultana with horror (they can’t be wrong about everything, after all) yet I can’t see a new party of the left doing anything but making it more likely.

If Farage continues to gorge himself on the Tory vote then Labour will be the only party that can credibly stop him.

And, if a new Sultana-Corbyn vehicle nibbles away at Sir Keir Starmer’s support – even by the meagre three points suggested by that More in Common polling – then Farage’s chances of entering 10 Downing Street will, of course, increase.

Like Farage, First Minister John Swinney would be happy to see a new Corbynesque party in the running.

The matter of independence remains so potent that the chances of the nationalists losing support to the hard-left seems vanishingly unlikely. On top of that, the Scottish Greens are well established as the home for those who dream of the destruction of Israel and the free distribution of puberty blockers to confused children.

Attacks on Scottish Labour from the left will only strengthen the SNP’s narrative that Sir Keir Starmer is the weak leader of a divided party.

Sultana’s departure from Labour was, I think, a significant step on her journey towards irrelevance.

She might help take some votes away from her former colleagues – if she and Corbyn can get a new party up and running and then, crucially maintain some semblance of unity until the next General Election. But, surely, only the most committed ideologue believes that the British electorate currently thirsts for a Government of the hard left?

Those left wingers cheering the news that Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn plan a new party are about to improve the chances of Nigel Farage being the next Prime Minister. They are, as is so often the case with those from their political tradition, the very definition of “useful idiots”.

Splitters!