Is this the summer the British left comes back?

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, is this the summer the British left makes a comeback?

0:22Question number one, Mr Jeremy Corbyn. Will the Prime Minister accept that 10 years ago, in 1979... When Zahra Sultana was born, Jeremy Corbyn had already been a Member of Parliament for over a decade. There were 2 ,750 households in temporary accommodation in London. The current figure is over 25 ,000. She's the MP for Coventry South. Maiden speech, Zahra Sultana. Yes! When she was 26, she became the youngest Muslim to ever be elected into Parliament. Part of that hopeful, fresh-faced Labour intake of 2019. I would like to start by giving a heartfelt thanks to the people of Country South for putting their faith in me.

1:08Corbyn is the MP for Islington North. At 76, he is the battle-weary backbencher turned Labour leader with decades of grassroots activism behind him. For different reasons, both of them are out of Labour now. Let me be very clear about that. Jeremy Corbyn will not stand for Labour at the next general election as a Labour Party candidate. Zahra Sultana, the Coventry South MP who's been suspended from the Labour web since last September, has just announced that she's resigned from the Labour Party after 14 years as a member.

1:48And together, they formed a new left-wing political party. Your party. It's not a permanent name, and they're not definitely going to be co-leaders. But with hundreds of thousands of people signing up to become supporters, they've struck a nerve. And Keir Starmer, for so long obsessed about the threat on his right, now has something to fear from the left. From The Guardian, I'm Nosheen Iqbal. Today in Focus, how could your party influence the future of British politics?

2:27Owen Jones, you're a columnist for The Guardian and you were a lifelong Labour supporter, but you didn't vote for Keir Starmer in the last election. Can you tell me why and what you've made of his first year in office? my expectations were extremely low and he still managed to be even worse far worse actually than i thought he would be i mean i really did think he would be disastrous the problem here's that he doesn't have a clear vision for the country and he's outsourced his politics to the most fanatically reactionary elements of the labor party and they think they're extremely clever which is why they end up doing things like scrapping the universal winter fuel payment and then think that the public will credit them for taking tough decisions, rather than think, why are you trying to freeze my granny to death?

3:11Or attacking disabled people. Again, they thought, well, everyone thinks they're all scroungers. This will go down very, very well. And it didn't. So I think what we've seen from Keir Starmer, and more importantly, the people running the country, he's not running the country, the people who are, don't have a vision. They don't have answers to the country's problems. And as you can see, they've ended up exceptionally unpopular because they're directionless. and the only cut-through policies they've had are policies which people actually hate. Now, once you look at this, this is Labour voters and what they think of this government.

3:42And here there has been a change. They started off approving of the government, but the approval ratings dropped downwards. And now more people who voted Labour last year disapprove of this government than approve. What is it about this particular moment that you think makes people hungry for a new party or a new left party? To be honest, I think the country's in such a terrible mess. This government has no answer to that except making things worse, basically embedding decline. You know, the idea that you can't have nice things anymore, we're going to have to keep cutting back. The other is, it's really important to just keep emphasizing this.

4:16It is Israel's genocide, which has really transformed, I think, a lot of people's understanding of politics. So I think you've got this general fusing of, at home, rampant economic insecurity, plus a core of the electorate of this potential for a new party being very politicized by what they've seen and heard and what our government facilitated, both political parties. I think that's the brew from which this is from.

4:51Elita Adu, you're a political correspondent for The Guardian and you were last with us to talk about the purge of the left wing from the Labour Party. Fast forward a year, can you bring us up to speed about what's happened to the left both inside and outside Labour under Starmer's government? Inside Labour, it appears to be that the left is being completely managed. We've seen MPs being suspended or some even edged out. Outside Labour, they're definitely regrouping. But I mean, just to go back to inside, I mean, we've seen serial rebels like Rachel Maskell. He lost the whip last month. She rebelled on the Pipcats.

5:30Brian Leishman, who'd been a serial vocal critic of Keir Starmer and his government since the general election last year. Chris Hinchcliffe last month also gone. So these are serial rebels, not just on welfare, but on issues like Gaza, on issues like the environment where they feel as though they are raising the case for long term loyal Labour voters and they feel as though they are being punished. I would say the welfare reforms were possibly a huge turning point, not because it was necessarily the biggest rebellion of Starmus leadership so far. But I think there seemed to be some sort of realisation that Labour was sort of defending benefit cuts that many had came into politics to fight.

6:20and in that same sense it was as though Labour was shifting to the right not just internally but visibly. What do we know about how much this anger is reflected in among the general public? I mean what do people who voted for Starmer think about how he's doing? Starmer is currently sitting at a minus 44 net approval in YouGov's polling as of July last month. Labour itself is around minus 39 So that's disconnection. That's not even dissent. And to flip it, how many people would say they consider a new Corbyn-led party? We've got up to 18 % of people saying they would. Among under-21s, that's jumping to about 36 % and it's 29 % in urban areas.

7:09Anita, can you give me a sense of how big this disillusionment is? Because the government seems to be aiming to win over a particular group of voters and they've formed this interesting strategy. Can you tell me about that? It seems as though Keir Sturmer and his team are focused on playing for the voters who they see as holding the cards to their future in the next general election. But the risk is that Labour is, of course, leaning now more to the right to neutralise reform. Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers.

7:51Not a nation that walks forward together. So the more they continue to alienate these younger, more progressive voters in the next few years, the less people will want to actually turn out for them. And now we are seeing that they have so many alternatives. We saw at the last general election a number of key Labour senior figures were punished at the polls. and it's now clear that was just a signal and people are really ready to show just how fed up they are with the current system and they are ready to back parties like the Green Party and potentially something like your party, which is being led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zahra Satana.

8:37We are not sure what this name will be just yet.

8:49Does British politics need a radical left-wing party? Jeremy Corbyn has gone on social media to say it's time for a new kind of political party, one that belongs to you. So, as you say, Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour leader, now sits as an independent. He's joined forces with Zahra Sultana, who recently quit Labour to, well, for both of them to announce that they're forming this new party. What do we know so far about what it's going to look like? So there's no formal name just yet for this party, but it's clear a soft launch is underway and it will include the independent MPs that have already been working with Jeremy Corbyn since the general election.

9:33By the end of July, 600 ,000 people had signed up to support this group. And it's fair to say that it wasn't the smoothest launch, right? No, it wasn't the Smithers launch. After months of being frustrated about her suspension as a Labour MP and seeing that she was not going to be let back into the party anytime soon, Zahra Sartana dropped this post on X at like seven in the evening on a Thursday, which is not exactly normal for people trying to launch a new party and get lots of attention. She basically said that the establishment wasn't fixing things for people who need help. She heavily criticised the Labour Party and Keir Starmer's leadership.

10:24And she said it's time for change. And she announced herself as a co-leader of a new party alongside Jeremy Corbyn. Now, that was very interesting because Jeremy Corbyn was silent for at least 20 hours or 16 hours or something. It was very awkward. Long time in politics. It's happening. And certainly a long time in politics, Mishin, yeah. And even when he did finally speak the next day, all he said was, yes, essentially, Zara is right. There will be some sort of a party and we are still talking about it. What have they revealed about what they do stand for? So they've launched this group because they're trying to say that establishment politics has left you behind.

11:09We're not going to do that. So they are anti-austerity, anti-imperialism, for wealth redistribution, for climate justice and for Gaza. Those are the pillars of what they stand for. And there's a lot of talk about democratic control, public ownership and universal basic services. Proven and Sartana have said they want their membership to guide them on specific policies, which will probably come further down the line. People have had enough out there. They're fed up with seeing cuts to their services, threats to personal independence payments, continuing trial poverty, WASPing women shortchanged by the government.

11:54So the only thing they can find money for is more weapons of war.

12:05Owen, you sat down with Corbyn and got his first interview since he announced that he was going to form this new party. What do you think he's learned from his decades of being a backbench MP to being the outsider candidate for the Labour leader race in 2015, eventually obviously going on to win it, running the party for four years, and then being ejected quite slowly from it and sitting as an independent to where he is now. He was often criticised for being too idealistic, not compromising enough. What do you think he takes from that experience? I mean, how different might he be in this new role?

12:44You say that, I think actually that kind of mystery is what happened though. Because in the 2017 election, when Labour started 24 points behind, Jamie Corbyn, no one would say he's this big, tum-thumping natural orator. But what cut through was that he's a man who says what he thinks and means what he says. And people thought in that election, the fact that he was so principled and he clearly believed what he said, he wasn't saying anything because he thought he'd focus grouped it, is what cut through. And those policies were critically, were very actually popular. Is it right that so many people in our country have no home to live in and only a street to sleep on?

13:26Is it right that so many people live in such poverty in a society surrounded by such riches? No, it obviously is not. So actually what ended up happening is that I'm the man of principle, I say what I mean and I mean what I say, died a death. Because it all became constant machinations and compromises over Brexit. because Labour kept having to shift its position all the time because it had this unwieldy electoral coalition where most of its voters supported Remain, but in key constituencies that Labour needed to keep and also to win, a lot of those voters supported Brexit. That's the lesson that his team would certainly draw, which is, you know, you just, you take your gloves off, you say what you think.

14:10Lots of people aren't going to like it, but actually you'll get more respect by doing that. And also you'll enthuse people who are otherwise turned off by politics with being very direct and bold about your politics. And what about the lessons from defeat? What do you think Corbyn takes from that bruising experience of 2019? 2019 is basically a different political era. I know this winds people up and people go, well, you know, this is our electoral system. But that is the point. Because in 2024, Labour got fewer votes than Labour got in 2019 when they lost terribly and only a slightly bigger share of the vote and the reason that's the reason that is relevant is it's because reform in particular fragmented the right of centre vote and what that tells us is politics has fragmented very seriously in a permanent way in a way that our electoral system is not designed for first past the place is clearly falling apart.

15:07And the point now is, is this, you know, is it the same as a new political party, you know, where you're in charge of the Labour Party and you're trying to win 40 % of the vote? I think it'd be very unlikely for any political party to win 40 % of the vote in the way both the Tories and Labour did in 2017. That's a different age. And what you need to do instead is for the next election, the best possible outcome is you win enough seats that there's a hung parliament and you can change the electoral system. You need to basically fire up your base because I think at the next election, that's what's going to happen.

15:42You're going to get reform who are going to fire up their base. They're going to fire up voters. Labour's vote won't be fired up. A left-wing political movement would have to do what reform did, which is firing up enough of the electorate to win a significant number of seats.

16:03so far it's just sultana and corbyn are there any other potential mps who could join and you know are you expecting more labour party exits there are a lot of mps on the left in the labour party who are adamant that they are not scared by Kirstama's ability to punish them and discipline them severely. They're not afraid of the threats anymore. They are saying, we won't go before we are pushed. If they want us out of this party, they need to make that clear and they should get rid of us. I think that's a change from a left group that we saw probably around this time last year or even during the election campaign in which they seemed as though they were quite afraid and they wouldn't necessarily say anything that wasn't towing the party line.

16:55And if they were saying anything, it would be in the form of briefings to journalists, for example. Well, last time Jeremy Corbyn was leading a party, it was taking Labour to its biggest defeat since 1935. Elita, do you think there is a sense that he and even Sultana have reflected on that defeat and that this time round him and the new party would do things differently? That's a good question. I think if you ask members of the Labour left, you will probably get two different answers. There will be some that will completely admit, yes, it was a car crash. And then there were others that will be keen to insist that it was a manifesto that was almost martyred by circumstance.

17:44But I think most of them definitely will agree, do agree that this new party shouldn't just copy and paste that moment. It has to build something more durable because it is extremely clear that if this new party were just to relive those emotional highs of 2017 and 2019 without structure. and with more of this chaos that we've seen so far it will fail. How hard is it to get a new party off the ground because for every reform there is a change UK I mean who remembers them? Change UK within our first past the post system it means that it's very difficult for new parties start-up parties to thrive electorally.

18:39Seats are almost out of the question. It just becomes a point of whether they are going to become a permanent annoyance for the bigger parties when it comes to how they shape their policies or not. Can they apply that pressure on the main parties and affect policy that way? And in the next four years, in the run-up to this next election, what do you think we can expect from this party? We can expect them to be organising lots of different conferences up and down the country. Of course, they will eventually solidify a name. And of course, they will be quite quick, I expect, to target seats. They could potentially stand dozens of candidates in a number of seats.

19:29I mean, many of whom have been working with this party were already running against senior Labour figures at the last elections. But what is clear is that from now until 2029, they will probably have the ability to affect Labour policy without winning many of those seats. I mean, in the same way that Reform UK has also been able to sort of do that from the sidelines, what is also clear is that we shouldn't underestimate the pressure that this will put on Labour's local organisers, many of whom will remember the general election campaign last year and were faced with dozens of really unhappy voters on all sorts of issues, particularly on what's happening in Gaza at the moment.

20:15and this will only amplify over the next few months. And of course, it is because this is something that people feel as though they won't be able to forget, even if they are seeing Starmer make changes in his communication and messaging now. For many of those annoyed voters, it's something they want to punish him and the Labour Party for. Coming up, can this new party take on reform?

20:54I mean, both Sarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn have claimed that this new party is going to be the true party for working people. And obviously there are lots of people who are frustrated with the standard of living, with not having access to decent housing, jobs, wage growth, all of it. But do you genuinely think or generally think that people could swing from Farage with those dissatisfactions to Corbyn? I think a sliver could, definitely. I don't think a huge number will. And I think that's not actually the central question there. I think the issue is actually a lot of people who just didn't vote because you have the lowest turnout of the last election in the history of the British franchise.

21:33I know people, you know, in the same way in America, you get the Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump swing voter. They do exist. You get people who are angry with the system and who will be most persuaded by someone they basically see as against the system, who will take on the system and answer their grievances. And a lot of people voting for reform are people angry at stagnating wages and crumbling public services. They've been convinced it's immigration that's the problem. Some of those can be won over. I don't doubt that. I do think there is a lot who would just stuck to that brand of politics. I mean, there's about a fifth of the population, no matter what, who will be fired up by, you know, anti-migrant politics.

22:11And that's all they'll vote over. I just think that's just obviously true. But I think the issue is more that at the last election showed how so many had disengaged from politics altogether, particularly often people. Yeah, I don't know, I guess millennials or Gen Z in insecure jobs and who are privately renting. And I think that there's a huge number to play for. And also people obviously vote for the Labour Party. I mean, I know they only got 33.7 % of the vote. But if you look at the polling of Labour voters, they are angry with this government. Well, what do you make of the worry? And there is this fair concern that this new party will split the left vote and essentially deliver reform and election win.

22:52When you get a crisis in living standards and public services and infrastructure and a country that people just feel is falling apart at the seams because of that lack of investment, which is the basic problem, then I think you either get lots of people taking that anger in the direction of Nigel Farage or not voting. And if you get a situation where Nigel Farage can fire up his voters, which he will absolutely fire them up, no question, where Labour's vote is depressed in every sense, and they don't want to come out and vote for the Labour Party because they think, well, what am I voting? Literally, what am I supposed to vote for here you know Labour strategy is absolutely obvious which will be you might think we're crap but we're not Nigel Farage so you're going to vote for us you're going to end it with him and they will that's all they'll go on I mean they'll have a message of fear I don't think that will work because you can already see there are lots of people who over the Labour Party over its policies in government both abroad and at home have just crossed the rubric and they're not going to vote for the Labour Party anymore and the question is where do they go oh and finally if at the next election reform are on the brink of gaining power would you vote with your conscience and support a smaller party on the left this new party even if voting Labour was the only way to keep Farage out I guess the reason I wouldn't accept the premise of the question and that's annoying when people do that is in my constituency reform wouldn't win I'm in Islington South not Islington North every Corbyn's constituency and the point I'm making is in constituencies around the country, obviously reform, whatever happens, are not going to be in contention.

24:28I wouldn't be able to vote for the Labour Party myself, again, just because I just wouldn't be able to back a party that I think has facilitated genocide. But I think, you know, there will be people in certain constituencies who I'm sure will come to different conclusions, whatever people say. But obviously, across the country, there will be, I think, dozens of races, a large number of races, where the choice will actually just be the Labour Party or this political party. I think that will end up being the case. And I think people just have to decide, do you want this, more of this, or do you want something different?

25:03But if Farage becomes prime minister, it is squarely the fault of the people who are running the country. They've made clear they don't want the left. And the left has therefore had a choice, which is the left either finds a ditch to go and die in, or the left fights for the policies which it thinks will actually cure the country's problems rather than kicking disabled people, pensioners and arming a genocide. And I think that's just, it's not an unreasonable thing to do. That was Owen Jones, Guardian columnist and Elita Adu, political correspondent at The Guardian. You can follow their reporting and their columns all at theguardian.com.

25:38That's it for today. This episode was presented by me, Nosheen Iqbal. It was produced by Leia Green, Stephanie Ayala and Mohamed Farouk. Sound design was Ross Burns. The executive producer was Sammy Kent. We'll see you again tomorrow.

26:02This is The Guardian.