With left-independents deposing Labour and Greens making breakthroughs is it time to ask how the Left can build a serious anti-capitalist alternative for voters? Lewis Nielsen analyses the recent elections and highlights space for the left to grow.
Rising to the challenge after the election
Fourteen years of Tory rule have come to an end. To see the oldest ruling class party in Europe in total disarray should give us all cause for celebration. And it is made even sweeter to see the likes of Liz Truss, Penny Mordaunt and Jacob Rees-Mogg – who looks and acts like he is from 1832, the last time the Tories suffered such a defeat – all sent packing from the House of Commons.
What was widely agreed as the most boring election campaign in recent history has produced a new, interesting political terrain where the story isn’t just Tory collapse. It is one of dangers from the right, but also one where the left can shape things and grow.
Starmer’s castles in the sand
The first thing to note is how underwhelming Labour’s vote is. This may sound strange given they have won such a landslide in seats. But the peculiarities of Britain’s first past the post system mask a very bad vote for Keir Starmer. Labour’s total vote count was well below what they got when Jeremy Corbyn ran a radical, insurgent campaign in 2017 that ended in a hung parliament. But astonishingly, Starmer took even less votes than Corbyn in the 2019 election, when Labour returned its worst ever performance in terms of seats won since 1935.
So despite the big majority in the Commons, Starmer takes power as one of the most unpopular incoming governments in British history, with the lowest vote share one by any single party majority government. As one pollster put it, Labour has a “sandcastle majority” that “might look impressive, but it could easily be swept away.” One survey found that while 48% of voters ticked Labour on the ballot to get rid of the Tories, just 1% did it for enthusiasm for Starmer’s leadership. Given he is much more interested in delivering for big businesses than addressing the cost-of-living crisis, he could see that fragile base wither away very quickly.
The conclusion of this is his administration is not one of strength, and can be fought from day one. It was important that 100,000 people joined a demonstration for Palestine in London just two days after he was elected. The battles to resist Starmer’s attempts to hold down pay, Labour’s lack of action on housing, the fight to repeal the anti-union laws and over many other issues can be won.
Reshaping of the right
One of the reasons Starmer was able to win is that Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, took so many votes off the Tories. This is the second big shift of the election, one which has delivered a hard right block of MPs in Westminster to the right of the Tories for the first time. Alarmingly Reform came second in 98 other seats. Farage ran a hard racist campaign that focused on immigration, fake anti-establishment rhetoric and the culture wars. In the process he dragged the election to the right. Reform is a new and urgent danger in Britain which gives cover and confidence to the far right on the ground. Just look how fascist Tommy Robinson is tweeting daily adoration of Farage, and is expected to mobilise thousands on the streets 27 July in his latest campaign to reinvent himself.
Farage himself has shifted further to the right in recent years. He has shed the “little England” focus on the EU and Europe and now is fully embracing the language of Trump and the European far right. Starmer’s response to Reform and the Tories has been to make concessions to racism, promising a new border force and to tackle the small boats crossing the channel.
The Reform vote means British politics falls more into line with the pattern in Europe, where far right or fascist parties have played a central role in reshaping the right away from traditional conservative parties. It flows from this that an urgent task is to channel the energy of the insurgent movements we’ve seen in the last few years, particularly around Palestine and BLM, into an anti-racist movement that can beat back Farage, Reform and the fascist thugs like Robinson that take confidence from them. It was good, for example, that Stand Up to Racism activists disrupted Farage’s victory press conference by calling him out as the racist he is.
Opportunities for the left
What about the left? On election day something significant happened. A surge of votes for independent candidates delivered five MPs to the left of Labour, and very respectable votes elsewhere. It is an extremely welcome development and one which is an antidote to the rise of Reform. It also gives us a possibility to build a bigger, fighting left.
To have such a substantial electoral challenge to Labour before it has even got to office is unprecedented. To put that into context it took 8 years of New Labour under Blair until the left was able to seriously challenge for seats, and even then we only managed one in Bethnal Green in East London. And that was on the back of the massive movement against the Iraq war.
Gaza is the central reason for this. In Britain, unprecedented numbers have taken to the streets in solidarity with Palestine. There have been 16 massive national demonstrations in London, with an estimated 3-4 million taking part – around 5% of the total population of Britain. Student camps have spread to campuses around the country, and organising has taken place in every local area. This movement has rocked British politics and become the defining issue. Starmer’s loyal support for Israeli genocide has quite simply made Labour untouchable for hundreds of thousands of people. Coupled with his embrace of economic orthodoxy that favours big business and promises little for working people, it is no surprise that left candidates did well.
The elected independents range from Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North – a sweet, sweet bloody nose for Starmer – to the other four newly elected MPs who stood on a platform for Palestine but it is relatively unclear what else.
There were also significant challenges, that although unsuccessful, illustrate the size of the shift. These range from radical left candidates Michael Lavalette and SWP member Maxine Bowler (21% and 8% respectively), to Andew Feinstein who halved Starmer’s personal constituency vote – picking up 20% of the vote – to Leann Mohamad, a young Palestinian who came within an agonising 500 votes of unseating arch Blairite and Starmer ally Wes Streeting in East London’s Ilford.
We should also consider some of the 4 million Green votes as a protest vote to the left of Labour, whilst also recognising that the Green Party’s contradictory nature means they would have picked up many softer, centre ground voters as well. And while it is a good thing that there were no seats won by George Galloway’s Workers Party – which has embraced racist rhetoric towards migrants, talks of “making Britain great again” and rails against trans+ and LGBT+ rights – there is no doubt that many of the 210,000 who voted for it were motivated by Gaza and wanted to challenge Labour.
Is this the birth of a new left outside of Labour? The starting point has to be that something big has happened, and this is a time of opportunities. One challenge to creating a new force is how heterogenous the independent candidates are. Calls to launch a new party to the left of Labour are welcome, but getting a common platform beyond Palestine that can bring in all of the above would be tricky.
There is of course a debate about what kind of party it would be. Is it Labour Party mark two, a British Syriza or a party that uses elections to build struggle? Even before we get to the political ins and outs of each vision, Corbyn’s Labour roots mean he is unlikely to head up such a project.
These debates matter and the terrain is a good one to build a new fighting left due to the fact that the biggest earthquake in British politics isn’t the election of Corbyn or the independents. The biggest earthquake has been the movement for Palestine which has meant week in, week out, huge numbers of people have taken to the streets, protested on campus and organised in their local areas. Without this movement the votes listed above are inconceivable.
The election result illustrates a bigger audience than before to work with and put this argument to. We need audacity and boldness about how. That means initiatives that bring together the candidates alongside people who want to fight the new government on Palestine, pay, housing and the NHS. There can be no honeymoon for Starmer. And it means the left looking to stand more candidates in coming elections and by-elections – although most council seats are at least a year or two away – who put this case. British politics has been shaken in the last eight months, and the election result is illustrative of the shift. The radical left needs to rise to the challenge.
