Just for information, 22nd July, or at least before the end of July was definitely the plan until recently. I am afraid this seems to be off now, and no other dates or timescales are being mentioned.
Last Thursday's eye-catching events have put the kibosh on progress for a time. As comrades must have noticed, we are now in a situation where ZC told the world she was voted in as "co-leader" of the forthcoming party, but JC doesn't accept there was any valid vote. These very different views will need to be reconciled in some way before the project can move forward much. I am sure that point will be reached, but for now frustration predominates.
John: Thanks for that update re: 22 July. ZC called herself the co-leader of the effort to create a new left party, not the co-leader of the actual party ( or that is how I read it.)
So Corbyn doesn't really want to become a "Leader" again, and have to go through the nightmare of what happened to him personally last time - understandable.
The Yoof, from Gen X down really really want him as the leader, because he has shown that he is morally decent over decades, rather than some wishy-washy young potential sell-out like Polanski or the other Greens, perhaps even Zarah (I haven't kept up with her tbh).
Zarah decided on her own initiative to try to kick start a new national Party anyway (No doubt with the idea of her own place within that - Corbyn isn't so young, after all, and another run will likely age him dramatically).
Corbyn and team want a more grassroots movement - but sadly are not copying the new successful Dutch model.
Zarah wants to stride out onto the air of national media publicity and pray the activists (And necessary monies) follow. Which didn't work so well for those neolib treacherous scum who left Labour to run against Corbyn's Labour. Although they certainly got all the publicity and money behind them.
Perhaps it's time for Alan to stand up, and forcefully start a UK chapter of that Dutch model, and let Corbyn and "Team Zarah" join that.
The GPEW can get fucked. A new poll says that 56% - yes OVER HALF!! - of all Green voters will immediately ditch that party for a new Corbyn/genuinely left party if it launches.
Maybe Alan should get in touch with Mick Lynch (Yeah, I know he's not perfect either, none of us are IRL), and discuss setting up the dutch model - or other well respected "Hard" lefties, and then see what direction the new membership would take it in.
Clearly, to some extent "Reformism" works - the right have been reforming the country rightwards for decades. To the point where a very significant % of the country would now very much like a sharp reversal.
Before the anti-immigrant Nazis engineer a situation where more voters would prefer to see the NHS and other remaining social assets sold off, rather than see their own living standards improve.
Hatred is very close to completely controlling the country.
The anglocentric politics of those pushing a new left party is profoundly depressing. Has the English left not learned nothing after 26 years of devolved parliaments/governments in Scotland or Cymru that makes them question whether you can just plant the flag of an English-based Party and voters will flock? Half the population of Scotland and more than a third of the population of Cymru support outright Independence - a big majority among young voters and among those who consider them left wing. In Scotland this week we have also had numerous public appeals to support the formation of this new party. First the so-called "Collective Scotland" apparently a self-selected secretive group of three people (the dug has gone for walkies) announces they will set up a Corbyn/Sultana party in Scotland that has a clear policy on self-determination. Then the same self-styled group issue a "clarification" 24 hours later that they don't have a policy at all. Then the miniscule "Socialist Party Scotland" issue a press release from their 'sister party' the "Socialist Party in England & Wales" supporting the new party, proving that in the "branch office" model they cannot even be bothered to write their own press releases and rely on London to do it for them. Then the local SWP issue a statement about how great the new party in England is going to be and how they are looking forward to joining it in Scotland, conveniently forgetting to mention they are the SWP and taking their orders from London HQ. Having dabbled with fronts set up with some of the most reactionary elements of the independence movement (such as the Alba Party), the SWP are abandoning all that to put their faith in the English left delivering independence - fat chance! This is Branch Office politics at its worst - sham doesnt begin to describe it. At least SSP luminaries Richie Venton and Colin Fox have been public voice of reason (in the pages of The National and Scottish Left Review), making clear that while they welcome united left action, they don't agree it is possible to parachute a party from the top without building from the base in communities, and especially if it doesn't have a clear policy on Scottish independence. The attitude of the English left needs to be, yes set something up in England only, but let people in Scotland and Cymru decide whether they want their own parties rather than forever be Branch Offices.
Mike: I wish I had time today to write at more length re: your comment on Scotland and this proposed left party. I will only say one thing: we need to remember that those directing this party are almost all ex-Labour. Most have fully embraced the ideology and world-view of Labour after years and decades of LP membership. The LP does NOT support Scotland's absolute right to self-determination. I am not at all sure this new party will either.
Mike, I think it's a given among the more 'enlightened' part of the English political scene that Scotland is going to leave the union, and Wales will likely follow soon after too. If Ulster doesn't beat you both first.
Which is why the central focus of the new party is going to be on ending 'austerity'; doing something about Gaza (Or at least ending the current support for the Zionazi occupying entity); a more equitable taxation system; protecting the few remaining essential state-owned assets such as the NHS; and probably starting to invest in the future for the first time in decades, perhaps by building a UK-owned social media platform/national Amazon equivalent, fx.
While Scotland/Wales will also benefit from such measures too, while they are still in the union, it is hardly to be expected that such measures alone will end the drive to indie.
And after indie, such measures will be in YOUR hands.
By the by, I hadn't heard that Alba was considered a 'reactionary' force before; rather that they had continued with Salmond's laser like focus on building Scottish-owned future industries - which the SNP had rather disappointing sold off under his replacement leader after London worked with them to shaft him with false accusations.
But that is just the impression I had got - getting hard facts south of the border is harder than getting hard facts about the Ukr conflict/Palestine situation. And that is all but impossible, as I'm sure you're aware.
And would such a new party take votes from the SNP? I would have thought their major victims would have been Scottish Labour and Reform; and perhaps the Scottish Greens. Which may even help the SNP.
Alba's second priority has always been to support transphobic legislation, if anything they gave opposing gender recognition legal reform a higher priority in the 'culture wars' than the Scottish Tories. I'm not aware of any major 'sell off' of Scottish industries by the SNP, they didn't own much but have nationalised Prestwick Airport, Ferguson Marine and brought the ScotRail franchise into ScotGov control early in recent years, but that's because it didn't cost anything - the Scottish government doesn't have the borrowing powers to nationalise eg Grangemouth and many aspects of industrial policy are reserved for Westminster anyway, eg R&D. The much criticised withdrawal of setting up a publicly owned retail energy company was actually sensible given the collapse of similar Warrington Council and People's Energy non-profit companies, and was always confused with electricity generation anyway which is totally different and ScotGov has neither borrowing nor legal powers to do, nor was it a manifesto commitment. The SNP have failed to use purchasing power of central or local government to influence industrial policy though, but direction of public sector pension funds is similarly reserved for Westminster. The Labour vote is actually quite different in Scotland to England, as most of the rise in 2024 from 20% to 35% actually came from hardcore Unionist Tory voters, voting tactically to keep the SNP out (as Unionist voters do) - that Unionist 'fair weather' vote for Labour in 2024 is collapsing in to Reform today. The electoral systems (and electorates) for Holyrood and Councils are so different to Westminster FPTP that you cannot really talk about simplistic notions of one party 'taking votes' from another - it would take a lengthy essay to examine the complex interrelationships and options and I've gone on too long. But voting systems are also another reason, like Brexit and Independence, why English parties just don't understand that Scotland is not only a different set of voters but also a totally different polity.
I'm aware that Hollyrood operates under a quite complex PR system, that was specifically designed to prevent one party having a landslide - which under Alex the SNP managed anyway.
Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully, but what I meant was that surely the new party would be more aligned with the SNP than Scottish Tories or S Labour are - perhaps even nudge the SNP towards the left more itself.
As a progressive, I'm well aware that there are plenty more genders than just the two, and I wonder why this manufactured kulchah war has come about. In India, where the existence of more than two genders as been recognised for millennia, they give special rights to 'intersexuals' - seems to me that would be the the least problematic way forward. Rather than attempting to shoe-horn the entire debate into only two genders, with the inevitable backlash only giving airtime to fascist elements. And frankly, the behaviour of many online M2F transfolk is pure male privileged; we don't see at all the same level of tantrums from the F2M transfolk. I have M2F friends, I dated one. Lovely woman. She's absolutely disgusted by the 'special needs' variety, who deplatform and scream blue murder at anyone who disagrees with any of their demands. The only people more privileged in my experience are the Hasbara. Whose perfectionist and absolutist demands have also turned people away from them. Even before the new Holocaust.
I'm sure you've seen the backlash in Scottish society as well as Britain as a whole.
I am livid that my friend may get physically hurt because of the behaviour of these arseholes.
Perhaps that is also what is motivating Alba, I have no idea.
Let the women be women, we men don't give a shit as far as I can tell (About F2M, the consensus seems to be that they are cute, and why TF would anyone in their right mind want to be male and use the men's loos?), and create intersex facilities for the remainder. End of problem.
I'd *heard* that Scotland had invested heavily in Scottish-owned renewables, and renewables producers, to rapidly become one of the regional leaders. But once Alex got the backstab - helped considerably by the English Establishment, as documented by Craig Murray - all that was sold off to 'international investors'. Or much of it. With some nifty corruption thrown in.
But maybe that wasn't the case. I've heard from a grizzled weegie mate who is a top bloke that he considered the case against Alex to be sound; that the sell-off is London-based propaganda; and claims of corruption are unfounded.
I dunno. I liked Alex personally, thought his defence of Al Mahgrahi was incredibly brave and ethically sound; and the simple fact that the English Establishment LOATHED him so much greatly endeared him to me. As a fellow traveller on that path.
And I trust Craig's also brave testimony from watching the trial in person.
But who knows the truth these days? Propaganda everywhere.
The fullest report yet on what has been happening in the secret corridors of the new party
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1546/still-waiting-for-jeremy
This is an article that has just come out and is worth a read. https://medium.com/@maxshanly/towards-a-new-model-left-party-5947dc71b727#NewLeftParty
Ron: I consider how "left" this party will be still an open question. Reformism is the main danger. Alan
If only Nova Scotia had your left troubles. There is no attempt to build a truly left party in Nova Scotia or, as far as I know, Canada.
Same in Australia, NZ, or any of the other 5 Eyes vassals.
It seems being a genuinely organic country rather than settler colonies does make a difference.
To be honest he has been dragging his heels for so long now he needs to shit or get off the pot.
Just for information, 22nd July, or at least before the end of July was definitely the plan until recently. I am afraid this seems to be off now, and no other dates or timescales are being mentioned.
Last Thursday's eye-catching events have put the kibosh on progress for a time. As comrades must have noticed, we are now in a situation where ZC told the world she was voted in as "co-leader" of the forthcoming party, but JC doesn't accept there was any valid vote. These very different views will need to be reconciled in some way before the project can move forward much. I am sure that point will be reached, but for now frustration predominates.
John: Thanks for that update re: 22 July. ZC called herself the co-leader of the effort to create a new left party, not the co-leader of the actual party ( or that is how I read it.)
What a fucking shitshow.
So Corbyn doesn't really want to become a "Leader" again, and have to go through the nightmare of what happened to him personally last time - understandable.
The Yoof, from Gen X down really really want him as the leader, because he has shown that he is morally decent over decades, rather than some wishy-washy young potential sell-out like Polanski or the other Greens, perhaps even Zarah (I haven't kept up with her tbh).
Zarah decided on her own initiative to try to kick start a new national Party anyway (No doubt with the idea of her own place within that - Corbyn isn't so young, after all, and another run will likely age him dramatically).
Corbyn and team want a more grassroots movement - but sadly are not copying the new successful Dutch model.
Zarah wants to stride out onto the air of national media publicity and pray the activists (And necessary monies) follow. Which didn't work so well for those neolib treacherous scum who left Labour to run against Corbyn's Labour. Although they certainly got all the publicity and money behind them.
Perhaps it's time for Alan to stand up, and forcefully start a UK chapter of that Dutch model, and let Corbyn and "Team Zarah" join that.
The GPEW can get fucked. A new poll says that 56% - yes OVER HALF!! - of all Green voters will immediately ditch that party for a new Corbyn/genuinely left party if it launches.
Maybe Alan should get in touch with Mick Lynch (Yeah, I know he's not perfect either, none of us are IRL), and discuss setting up the dutch model - or other well respected "Hard" lefties, and then see what direction the new membership would take it in.
Clearly, to some extent "Reformism" works - the right have been reforming the country rightwards for decades. To the point where a very significant % of the country would now very much like a sharp reversal.
Before the anti-immigrant Nazis engineer a situation where more voters would prefer to see the NHS and other remaining social assets sold off, rather than see their own living standards improve.
Hatred is very close to completely controlling the country.
Could you post a link to "Dutch model "?
Ah, godamnit, I always get those two countries mixed up. Mainly because I really only known people from the Dutch half of Belgium probably.
I meant Belgium: https://theleftlane2024.substack.com/p/today-is-a-good-day-for-a-good-news?publication_id=2250250&post_id=151832615&isFreemail=true&r=szqta&triedRedirect=true
Gnuneo: A few pieces on the Workers Party of Belgium:
1)https://theleftlane2024.substack.com/p/today-is-a-good-day-for-a-good-news
2) https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/51955/the-inexorable-rise-of-the-belgian-workers-party
Cheers
Alan
Very interesting detail on the second article, thanks Alan.
Should be some lessons drawn from there for the new UK party.
The anglocentric politics of those pushing a new left party is profoundly depressing. Has the English left not learned nothing after 26 years of devolved parliaments/governments in Scotland or Cymru that makes them question whether you can just plant the flag of an English-based Party and voters will flock? Half the population of Scotland and more than a third of the population of Cymru support outright Independence - a big majority among young voters and among those who consider them left wing. In Scotland this week we have also had numerous public appeals to support the formation of this new party. First the so-called "Collective Scotland" apparently a self-selected secretive group of three people (the dug has gone for walkies) announces they will set up a Corbyn/Sultana party in Scotland that has a clear policy on self-determination. Then the same self-styled group issue a "clarification" 24 hours later that they don't have a policy at all. Then the miniscule "Socialist Party Scotland" issue a press release from their 'sister party' the "Socialist Party in England & Wales" supporting the new party, proving that in the "branch office" model they cannot even be bothered to write their own press releases and rely on London to do it for them. Then the local SWP issue a statement about how great the new party in England is going to be and how they are looking forward to joining it in Scotland, conveniently forgetting to mention they are the SWP and taking their orders from London HQ. Having dabbled with fronts set up with some of the most reactionary elements of the independence movement (such as the Alba Party), the SWP are abandoning all that to put their faith in the English left delivering independence - fat chance! This is Branch Office politics at its worst - sham doesnt begin to describe it. At least SSP luminaries Richie Venton and Colin Fox have been public voice of reason (in the pages of The National and Scottish Left Review), making clear that while they welcome united left action, they don't agree it is possible to parachute a party from the top without building from the base in communities, and especially if it doesn't have a clear policy on Scottish independence. The attitude of the English left needs to be, yes set something up in England only, but let people in Scotland and Cymru decide whether they want their own parties rather than forever be Branch Offices.
Mike: I wish I had time today to write at more length re: your comment on Scotland and this proposed left party. I will only say one thing: we need to remember that those directing this party are almost all ex-Labour. Most have fully embraced the ideology and world-view of Labour after years and decades of LP membership. The LP does NOT support Scotland's absolute right to self-determination. I am not at all sure this new party will either.
Mike, I think it's a given among the more 'enlightened' part of the English political scene that Scotland is going to leave the union, and Wales will likely follow soon after too. If Ulster doesn't beat you both first.
Which is why the central focus of the new party is going to be on ending 'austerity'; doing something about Gaza (Or at least ending the current support for the Zionazi occupying entity); a more equitable taxation system; protecting the few remaining essential state-owned assets such as the NHS; and probably starting to invest in the future for the first time in decades, perhaps by building a UK-owned social media platform/national Amazon equivalent, fx.
While Scotland/Wales will also benefit from such measures too, while they are still in the union, it is hardly to be expected that such measures alone will end the drive to indie.
And after indie, such measures will be in YOUR hands.
By the by, I hadn't heard that Alba was considered a 'reactionary' force before; rather that they had continued with Salmond's laser like focus on building Scottish-owned future industries - which the SNP had rather disappointing sold off under his replacement leader after London worked with them to shaft him with false accusations.
But that is just the impression I had got - getting hard facts south of the border is harder than getting hard facts about the Ukr conflict/Palestine situation. And that is all but impossible, as I'm sure you're aware.
And would such a new party take votes from the SNP? I would have thought their major victims would have been Scottish Labour and Reform; and perhaps the Scottish Greens. Which may even help the SNP.
What are your thoughts on that?
Alba's second priority has always been to support transphobic legislation, if anything they gave opposing gender recognition legal reform a higher priority in the 'culture wars' than the Scottish Tories. I'm not aware of any major 'sell off' of Scottish industries by the SNP, they didn't own much but have nationalised Prestwick Airport, Ferguson Marine and brought the ScotRail franchise into ScotGov control early in recent years, but that's because it didn't cost anything - the Scottish government doesn't have the borrowing powers to nationalise eg Grangemouth and many aspects of industrial policy are reserved for Westminster anyway, eg R&D. The much criticised withdrawal of setting up a publicly owned retail energy company was actually sensible given the collapse of similar Warrington Council and People's Energy non-profit companies, and was always confused with electricity generation anyway which is totally different and ScotGov has neither borrowing nor legal powers to do, nor was it a manifesto commitment. The SNP have failed to use purchasing power of central or local government to influence industrial policy though, but direction of public sector pension funds is similarly reserved for Westminster. The Labour vote is actually quite different in Scotland to England, as most of the rise in 2024 from 20% to 35% actually came from hardcore Unionist Tory voters, voting tactically to keep the SNP out (as Unionist voters do) - that Unionist 'fair weather' vote for Labour in 2024 is collapsing in to Reform today. The electoral systems (and electorates) for Holyrood and Councils are so different to Westminster FPTP that you cannot really talk about simplistic notions of one party 'taking votes' from another - it would take a lengthy essay to examine the complex interrelationships and options and I've gone on too long. But voting systems are also another reason, like Brexit and Independence, why English parties just don't understand that Scotland is not only a different set of voters but also a totally different polity.
I'm aware that Hollyrood operates under a quite complex PR system, that was specifically designed to prevent one party having a landslide - which under Alex the SNP managed anyway.
Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully, but what I meant was that surely the new party would be more aligned with the SNP than Scottish Tories or S Labour are - perhaps even nudge the SNP towards the left more itself.
As a progressive, I'm well aware that there are plenty more genders than just the two, and I wonder why this manufactured kulchah war has come about. In India, where the existence of more than two genders as been recognised for millennia, they give special rights to 'intersexuals' - seems to me that would be the the least problematic way forward. Rather than attempting to shoe-horn the entire debate into only two genders, with the inevitable backlash only giving airtime to fascist elements. And frankly, the behaviour of many online M2F transfolk is pure male privileged; we don't see at all the same level of tantrums from the F2M transfolk. I have M2F friends, I dated one. Lovely woman. She's absolutely disgusted by the 'special needs' variety, who deplatform and scream blue murder at anyone who disagrees with any of their demands. The only people more privileged in my experience are the Hasbara. Whose perfectionist and absolutist demands have also turned people away from them. Even before the new Holocaust.
I'm sure you've seen the backlash in Scottish society as well as Britain as a whole.
I am livid that my friend may get physically hurt because of the behaviour of these arseholes.
Perhaps that is also what is motivating Alba, I have no idea.
Let the women be women, we men don't give a shit as far as I can tell (About F2M, the consensus seems to be that they are cute, and why TF would anyone in their right mind want to be male and use the men's loos?), and create intersex facilities for the remainder. End of problem.
I'd *heard* that Scotland had invested heavily in Scottish-owned renewables, and renewables producers, to rapidly become one of the regional leaders. But once Alex got the backstab - helped considerably by the English Establishment, as documented by Craig Murray - all that was sold off to 'international investors'. Or much of it. With some nifty corruption thrown in.
But maybe that wasn't the case. I've heard from a grizzled weegie mate who is a top bloke that he considered the case against Alex to be sound; that the sell-off is London-based propaganda; and claims of corruption are unfounded.
I dunno. I liked Alex personally, thought his defence of Al Mahgrahi was incredibly brave and ethically sound; and the simple fact that the English Establishment LOATHED him so much greatly endeared him to me. As a fellow traveller on that path.
And I trust Craig's also brave testimony from watching the trial in person.
But who knows the truth these days? Propaganda everywhere.