In July 2024, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana launched the Socialist Party of Britain—a move already being called the most significant ideological rupture on the British left since the rise of New Labour. With Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer pulling Labour firmly toward the political centre, shedding its socialist backbone in the process, Corbyn and Sultana’s new project doesn’t just offer an alternative at the ballot box. It poses a direct, radical challenge to the political consensus that has dominated Britain for decades. In a country increasingly shaped by economic decline, austerity, xenophobia, and a resurgent far-right under Nigel Farage, their new party raises a pointed question: can class solidarity rise from the ruins of liberal centrism?
To understand the creation of this party, we must look at the wreckage Labour left in its internal war on its socialist wing. Since becoming leader in 2020, Starmer has sidelined or expelled dozens of left-leaning figures—including Corbyn himself. Labour’s bold 2019 manifesto, once rooted in public ownership, green investment, and wealth redistribution, has been hollowed out and replaced by vague, market-friendly reforms. Starmer’s vision of “electability” has meant appealing to business interests and distancing the party from the coalition of young people, renters, minorities, and precarious workers who once formed its beating heart. Recent YouGov polling suggests more than a third of 2019 Labour voters still support socialist policies like nationalisation and wealth taxes—just not the current party pushing them aside. Sultana’s departure crystallises this divide: not just between generations, but between two visions of what Labour—and Britain—could be.
The Socialist Party of Britain is grounded in a working-class, diasporic base often left behind by both state policy and Labour’s political drift. Sultana, the daughter of Kashmiri immigrants and a product of Birmingham’s post-industrial landscape, speaks to communities doubly betrayed—first by austerity, then by political abandonment. According to the Runnymede Trust, local councils serving mostly minority populations experienced 23% deeper funding cuts during the 2010s than whiter, wealthier areas. These same communities face targeted immigration policies under the UK’s “hostile environment.” Corbyn and Sultana’s party sees these injustices as connected: the migrant cleaner, the non-unionised warehouse worker, the Uber driver—all are being squeezed, surveilled, and silenced under the same system.
Ideologically, the party offers a clear departure from Labour’s watered-down social democracy. Its manifesto promotes democratic socialism not as nostalgia, but as a necessity: a new welfare state based on dignity, not punishment; renationalisation of energy and transport; a Green New Deal anchored in union jobs. It rejects the false binary between “British workers” and migrant rights, arguing that anti-immigrant narratives only serve the corporations slashing wages and conditions. For them, open borders are not a threat, but a sign of global class solidarity. Crucially, the party doesn’t treat fascism as a fringe issue. It sees far-right mobilisation as a systemic threat that must be confronted through coordinated, antifascist resistance rooted in community defence.
Yet, clarity comes with complications. Internally, the party must reconcile Corbyn’s traditional labourism with Sultana’s younger, eco-socialist base. Strategically, it remains uncertain whether they can win back disillusioned white working-class voters—especially in post-Brexit towns—while the media paints them as “radical” or “urban elites.” Farage’s Reform UK is already exploiting cultural grievances, blaming immigrants for housing shortages and NHS delays, all while ignoring the £1.5 trillion lost to corporate tax evasion (Tax Justice Network). In contrast, Starmer’s centrist Labour offers voters only a more polished version of decline. Corbyn and Sultana now face the daunting task of proving that socialism can be not only morally compelling—but electorally and culturally resonant.
History offers warnings. The Social Democratic Party (SDP), which split from Labour in 1981, inadvertently strengthened Thatcher by dividing the left. But 2025 is not 1981. The neoliberal consensus is fraying. According to BMG Research, 72% of Britons now support renationalising energy; Savanta polling shows 64% support rent controls. The appetite for structural change is real—but politically homeless. Working-class frustration no longer speaks exclusively in conservative tones. And in the age of TikTok, the movement doesn’t need to rely on legacy media: Sultana’s content across social platforms now garners five times the engagement of Starmer’s online presence (Tortoise Media).
This movement is already organising on the ground. In neglected former Red Wall towns, the Socialist Party is building community centres that double as food banks, hubs for political education, and tenant union offices. It partners with labour unions, diasporic coalitions, and climate justice groups to fight for healthcare as a right, dignified housing, and an end to zero-hours contracts. What sets the movement apart is its bridge between grassroots organising and electoral politics—transforming crisis into consciousness, and frustration into action.
This isn’t a romantic effort to resurrect 1945. The Socialist Party knows socialism must be built from below—through coalitions, community power, and collective resistance. Its vision is militantly working-class, multiethnic, multifaith, and intersectional. It prioritises forming anti-fascist alliances between mosques, trade councils, and churches. It elevates diaspora communities not as victims, but as leaders—bringing political traditions of resistance from places like Palestine, Kashmir, and Kurdistan into the heart of Britain’s own struggle.
In the end, Corbyn and Sultana haven’t just created a new party—they’ve reignited a fundamental question: what does justice look like in a Britain hollowed out by empire, neoliberalism, and nationalism? Their success won’t depend on slogans or branding, but on whether they can unite a fractured working class—native and migrant, secular and religious, north and south—into a political force capable of reshaping the country’s foundations. The ground is shifting across abandoned towns and restless cities. And out of that defiance—not nostalgia—a red flag rises.
“When the rich rob the poor, it’s business. When the poor fight back, it’s violence. When they organise, it’s socialism.” — Zarah Sultana, Maiden Speech (2020)
