Keir Starmer’s cabinet (Picture: Number 10)
The two party political system is tearing itself apart. This week prime minister Keir Starmer is facing yet another crisis. After the departure of deputy Angela Rayner and United States ambassador Peter Mandelson last week, a third key ally is now gone.
Sleazebag Starmer aide Paul Ovenden has quit. A forthcoming book on Starmer—titled The Fraud—revealed Ovenden had shared misogynistic comments about the then-shadow home secretary Diane Abbott in 2017.
But the rot goes deeper than even these scandals.
After fascist thugs rampaged in London last weekend, Labour’s business secretary Peter Kyle said that the hate march had been an expression of “free speech”.
Even within the Labour Party, many are unsettled and wish Starmer would speak out against fascism, rather than stirring it up with anti-migrant policies.
The Conservative Party too faces collapse.
Former health minister Maria Caulfield on Tuesday defected to Reform UK. She joined shadow minister Danny Kruger who left the day before. Kruger said that the Conservatives are “toxic” and “over”. He is jumping ship to prepare for government with Nigel Farage as prime minister.
Once described as the “natural party of government”, the Tories have lost two thirds of the county councillors they had in 2021.
Now it is hard to tell who will be forced to quit first—Starmer or Tory leader Kemi Badenoch?
Amid the fracturing of the two party consensus, it has been Farage’s Reform UK that has seemed like the insurgent force. Election forecasters give a terrifying projection of the far right party winning over 300 seats if there was a general election today.
But there is also a thirst for a real alternative from the left. The mailing list for Your Party has over 800,000 sign-ups, far more than the membership of Reform UK.
Your Party must seize the time to get organised and become a concrete force. There is a real opportunity for a left wing party to exploit the divisions at the top of society if it acts quickly and decisively.
That’s why it is welcome news that Your Party has announced that membership will be open this month. It also said that there will be huge regional assemblies and a founding conference in November.
This could give hope to the hundreds of thousands of people who are angry about genocide, racism, austerity and oppression and are breaking with the Labour Party.
We urgently need a party that can provide a left wing challenge in elections and a boost to social movements on the streets and in the workplaces.
United States president Donald Trump is coming to visit Britain this week—on prime minister Keir Starmer’s invitation. But when you look at the US, it seems like darkness is descending without opposition.
Trump is ramping up attacks and authoritarianism. But where is the resistance? This year we saw Los Angeles rise against racist
round-ups and millions of people take to the streets against Trump.
And in New York, Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor.
Recent years have seen movements in the US that show massive potential—Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the campus movement for Palestine.
But the Democratic Party has acted as a shock absorber of movements and held them back. The result is that little permanent organisation has emerged from these campaigns.
The left in the US needs to take advantage of strikes and grassroots movements. It can take inspiration from the recent refuse workers strike that shut down Philadelphia for weeks or the thousands out defending their neighbourhoods against racist Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
A sustained, grassroots organisation needs to be built.
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