Disillusionment with Keir Starmer’s Labour government prevails. The period of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership gave socialists hope. The disappointment in the return to the class-collaborationist politics of previous Labour administrations is exacerbated by the preceding four years of optimism. The irony is that after less than two years in government, Starmer is now unelectable. Social media is littered with comments like, ‘I’m never voting Labour again’. Anger is fully justified. But if you are a socialist, or a democrat, ‘anything but Labour’ is a dangerous sentiment. A Tory Party moving to the far-right? Reform UK? These are ‘anything but Labour’.

Starmer and his leadership team do not pretend to be socialists, or even reformists. They are advocates of the status quo, establishment managerialists of a socio-economy in enduring crisis, and a foreign policy in service to British imperial interests. Like previous administrations, they want to off-load the crisis onto the working classes, at home and abroad.

But it is not enough to bemoan the current Labour leadership and to equate that leadership with the Labour Party as a whole, dismissing the latter by reference to the former. That critique, by itself, gets us no nearer to identifying and building an achievable alternative, and a potential future vehicle for socialist transformation. A damning critique of the Labour government and Labour Party leadership has to be in tandem with the articulation of a constructive, achievable way forward - in the context of the rising threat of fascism.

Over the past 40 plus years there have been several shortcut attempts to launch a new ‘Labour’ party without first securing the support of the wider labour and trade union movement. They all began with great urgency and optimism. They have all failed, withering on the vine of unresolved political differences, the absence of significant trade union backing, and a dearth of resources.

The Tories are backed by monopoly and finance capital. Reform UK is backed by ex-Tory multi-millionaire donors.https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/reform-uk-funders-nigel-farage-5-million-donations-fossil-fuels-tax-havens/ The Labour Party is backed by the unions. Without union backing, a new ‘Labour’ party will be stillborn.

The Green Party is experiencing a recent rise in popularity because the more socially conscious middle-strata are alienated by Starmer’s rightward drive. Yet some will remember when, in 2010, a swathe of Labour voters switched to the Lib-Dems because they’d had enough of Blair-Brown and war. The result was Labour lost a 66-seat majority and the return of a Tory government - in coalition with the Lib-Dems!

Although Zack Polanski has been meeting with union leaders there is no serious prospect of the Greens securing large scale support and funding from the trade unions. Maybe they could adapt their policies to attract big business investment, which is feasible - for example, they support rejoining the EU. However, they will almost certainly remain a fluctuating middle-strata party buoyed by protest votes.

Though the Green Party is not capable of rising to government, it has an electoral presence sufficient to seriously weaken the Labour vote share. As such it has its uses for the Establishment.

Enthusiastic supporters of a new party often argue that if “you build it they will come”, but that is wishful thinking. All attempts to create new parties must grapple with the problems of organisation and funding, a socialist consciousness to sustain the party and for it to be achievable quickly enough to take on the immediate struggles against the rise of the far-right.

It took the Labour Party, formed in 1900, over 20 years to replace the Liberals as the main opposition to the Conservative Party - and that was with the affiliation of fully established founding organisations like the Independent Labour Party which already had 28 MPs, and the financial and organisational backing of the trade union movement. It was 1924 before they had more seats in parliament than any other Party (but without an overall majority) and 1945 - 45 years after its founding - before it finally won an overall parliamentary majority.

An embryonic new Party, struggling to be born, will have to overcome its own divisions: the EU - in or out? NATO - in or out? Arms to Zelensky or not? Scotland - independence or not? Trans and women’s rights - to name a few. It will need to achieve some basis of unity on all the major domestic and international policies, but on a host of important issues the ideological unity is simply not there. Would-be members are likely to organise and re-divide on key issues and ‘points of principle’, with a fractious, ever-shrinking membership as the most likely outcome. This has been demonstrated in the continuing conflicts in Your Party where the splits and collapse of enthusiasm are the inevitable outcome of a misconceived project where the ideological unity, class consciousness, and organised working class foundations were absent from its inception. The damaging result is that an initial burst of optimism has been replaced by disillusionment, scepticism, and at least temporary disengagement from political activity by another generation of young people.

Splitting the Labour Party now could hardly be more ill-timed. Opposition to the Starmer clique is growing - within parliament, the Labour Party, the trade union & labour movement and the public at large. Labour MPs are in revolt. Starmer’s days in office are numbered.

The level of socialist consciousness amongst the working class that is required to create and sustain a new mass socialist party is simply not there. Steve Howell, Jeremy Corbyn’s former Deputy Director of Communications, wrote two years ago on Facebook (24/3/24):

“We should reflect on why the Corbyn project was defeated. Obviously, the media smears, PLP sabotage etc., played a big part but we have to build a movement that is strong enough to overcome such destabilisation - and worse. The main problem was that the diverse coalition supporting Corbyn lacked political clarity and unity when confronted and put to the test over the EU. A large proportion were Remainers and saw the EU as an embodiment of social democratic values. When the 2019 general election was lost, that portion of the Corbyn coalition were easily taken in by Starmer's pledges because they had not seen his manoeuvring to get a second referendum for the deceitful sabotage it was.

The implications of this are twofold. Firstly, the base for an alternative to Starmer's Labour is not as big as the support for Corbyn suggested. Issue by issue, the Corbyn manifesto policies were hugely popular but, for most, that doesn't translate into ideological clarity or even any real conception of capitalism as the root problem. Most did not see the change needed as going further than redistributive taxation and a limited expansion of public ownership - important demands but not socialism.

This ties to the second point, which is that this generally low level of class consciousness is reflected in the unions, even the better ones, where there is absolutely no appetite for building an alternative party. Even Mick Lynch [then leader of the RMT] has rejected the idea.

Staying in the Labour Party does not mean investing vast amounts of time in factional in-fighting - though sometimes those battles have to be fought. The priority for everyone - whether retaining Labour membership or not - should be building the mass movements and deeper political understanding through which change will come. The lesson of the Corbyn period is that these were not as strong as it appeared or as was needed to win through.”

Realistically a new mass socialist party would need to be driven by the organised working class, including, not only left-wing unions like the RMT, FBU and CWU, but also the big unions - UNITE, the GMB and UNISON, three unions which account for over 50% of all UK trade unionists. This is clearly not on the cards. If there is not the basis for a new party then that leaves the alternative - to develop a strategy for transforming the existing Labour Party, with its affiliated unions and UK-wide network, into a mass socialist party.

The forces for democracy will need to mobilise en masse to defend against the rise of far-right authoritarianism and militarism. The only beneficiaries from the demise of the Labour Party - as opposed to a qualitative change in its leadership and direction - would be draconian monopoly capitalism and the military-industrial complex.

There are dedicated socialists who are active and channelling their political commitment through broad movement organisations. They are making a serious contribution to developing the political consciousness which is required to educate and build the forces for socialism, while organically transforming the trade union and Labour movement. Their energies are not wasted or sidetracked. And their work can impact on the task of galvanising the Labour Party as an instrument of the working classes. Sometimes the fight looks bleak. But socialists have to look beyond the frustration and demoralisation of the here and now. With collective working class intervention, change can come, sometimes quickly. And with those developments comes the potential for a rapid, radical change in mass consciousness.

Over the past four years there has been a resurgence of trade union militancy and a number of successes. Workers engaged in those industrial struggles are learning from their experiences, not only that the narrative of the Establishment and its media does not correspond to their lived experiences, but also how to fight and win.

There has also been an unparalleled level of protest against the genocidal war on Palestine with over 30 successive massive demonstrations in London since October 2023 - half a million people marched through the capital on the 28th March. Beyond London, hundreds of thousands have been marching on the streets of Britain every month, and multi-millions worldwide. Participation in the global campaign for a ceasefire in Gaza and a Free Palestine is opening minds to a very different world view. That rise in consciousness is being augmented experientially when the repressive machinery of the state is mobilised to suppress democratic protest.

At the time of writing, Starmer’s position as Labour leader and Prime Minister is precarious. There is organised opposition to him from within the Parliamentary Labour Party and the wider labour movement, and not just from known left-wing MPs. Labour centrists are looking at the opinion polls and realise they will almost certainly be out of a job after the next general election if Starmer remains leader.

Why leave when a change of leader and of political direction is an achievable prospect? Why form another divisive splinter group when left-Labour MPs, trade union leaders and the wider movement can determine Labour’s future orientation, including who replaces Starmer’s Establishment coterie? In that context it is concerning that major unions, in particular Unite, have thrown their affiliation to the Labour Party into question, without posing any alternative that would represent working class people politically.

Capitalism, at home and abroad, is in an enduring crisis. Starmer’s dogged adherence to neo-liberal and imperialist policies is manifestly failing. The socio-economic policies of the near two decades since the 2008 economic crash - moderated but essentially repeated - are reproducing similar outcomes. The threat of transcontinental war is escalating. The need for an alternative socio-economic strategy and foreign policy is becoming clearer and ever more urgent.

The burning question remains: is there any real alternative to Labour? This question should not be sidestepped. Our class enemies will welcome adventurism, dissonance and division as they ramp up the drive towards authoritarianism.

The Labour Party today is not a champion of the people. But is an arena of struggle, at all levels, from local branches, to constituency parties, to annual conference, to affiliate organisations, to the parliamentary party. At a local level many branches and CLPs are doing good work in their communities. If all the socialists leave the Labour Party then those battles are concluded in favour of capital. If some of those socialists join the Greens, or try to salvage Your Party, or set up yet another new Party, then the Tories, right-wing Labour and the ruling establishment will celebrate having a free run, untroubled by embryonic, under-funded, essentially impotent middle-strata sects, destined to disintegrate. It is lose-lose for the working class and for socialists at a critical moment in national and global political developments.

Labour Party socialists may find other channels for their activism. Since Starmer became Labour leader - on a left manifesto programme he had zero intention of implementing - sometimes there has seemed little point in sitting in dire meetings with a declining attendance, where the agenda and debates are manipulated to the point of eliminating any serious political discussion. But socialists can pour their political energies into campaigning against the genocide in Gaza and for a Free Palestine; against the US and Israeli wars on Iran and Lebanon; against Britain’s membership of NATO or any EU military alternative; against multi-billion pound increases in military expenditure - and the concomitant cuts in welfare, education, the NHS, and social services. These campaign activities help raise the class and political consciousness of British workers, and the trade union movement in particular, which is fundamental to future social transformation.