Keir Starmer has a problem: the left are organising

New Statesman​

25-06-2025

Photo by Kristian Buus/In Pictures
One man has dominated opposition politics since the election: Nigel Farage. Reform UK now enjoys a consistent poll lead and is acknowledged by No 10 as Labour's foremost rival. Policies once considered fringe – such as cutting foreign aid, radically reducing immigration and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights – are increasingly mainstream. But while the radical right is insurgent, the radical left is submerged.
This was not inevitable. A year ago the Green Party won four seats (and finished second in 40 others), Jeremy Corbyn was comfortably re-elected and four pro-Gaza independents entered parliament. Yet in an era of personality politics, no left counterpart to Farage has emerged. There are now tentative signs that could change.
Until recently, Zack Polanski was an obscure name even in the dusty seminar rooms and pubs where the left's future is debated. But his Green Party leadership campaign – based on an 'eco-populist' platform – is changing that. Mindful that few voters can name either of the Greens' two co-leaders (the outgoing Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay), the 42-year-old Polanski has urged his party to emulate Farage's guerrilla tactics and abandon any hint of Lib Dem-style centrism.
His aim, he told me, is to 'make Labour more scared of losing votes and seats to the Green Party than to Reform', vowing to outflank Keir Starmer on issues such as a wealth tax, the war in Gaza and the NHS. 'We're seeing this huge rift between establishment politics and the public,' he said, framing the economic divide as 'the 99 per cent vs the 1 per cent'.
If this sounds Corbyn-esque, it's because it is. Some of Polanski's most visible champions are past stalwarts of that project: James Meadway, a former adviser to John McDonnell, and commentator Grace Blakeley are among those who have joined the Greens in recent weeks. ('It's like football transfer season,' quips one Labour source.) Aided by the Momentum-style group Greens Organise, Polanski supporters say they have recruited thousands of new members – enough, they believe, to give them victory over the parliamentary duo of Ramsay and Ellie Chowns.
But just as Polanski eyes the left crown, Corbyn is speaking ever more openly of a new party. 'This whole cause is coming together so that by next year's local elections – long before that, I hope – we're going to have something in place,' he declared at the recent Conference of Resistance in Huddersfield. The model, one Corbyn ally tells me, would be France's New Popular Front, which unified the country's historically fractured left, and finished first in the 2024 National Assembly election (with 182 seats). 'There's a large hole in politics. You can see it from the very low turnout figures, the high levels of volatility and Labour being in the low twenties,' they remarked.
Some on the British left want a clean break with Corbyn – one sceptic recalls the dismal fate of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party – but a new alliance is not without electoral potential. Polling by More in Common, shared exclusively with the New Statesman, shows a 'new Corbyn-led party' would win 10 per cent of the vote, reducing Labour's share from 23 per cent to 20 per cent (putting it level with Kemi Badenoch's moribund Conservatives). Notably, the Corbynite party would finish first among 18- to 24-year-olds with 32 per cent. The Greens, in this scenario, would fall from 9 per cent to 5 per cent, while Reform remains on 27 per cent. (Corbyn allies say they favour an electoral pact, with one praising Polanski's 'energetic campaign'.)
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Senior Labour critics complain that the party has a 'forgotten flank', fixating on Reform defectors rather than on Green or Lib Dem ones. Strategists reject this charge, pointing to progressive policies such as Ed Miliband's GB Energy, the workers' rights bill and free breakfast clubs. But Labour's soft left – which assembled at the recent Compass conference – is discussing the creation of a new internal organisation to exert pressure on Starmer.
For the Labour leader, electoral headaches abound. The Middle East crisis has drawn new attention to the advance of pro-Gaza independents (who have formed a parliamentary faction with Corbyn). In May's local elections, such candidates won in half of the districts where more than 30 per cent of adults are Muslims. 'Labour has a real and deep-rooted problem with the Muslim community,' said one senior figure. 'This isn't going away – it's bigger than Iraq was and it will still be there at the next general election' (where independents are projected to win as many as 25 seats). Luke Tryl, the executive director of More in Common, likens the sense of betrayal among Muslim voters in focus groups to that of Red Wall voters in 2016: as with Brexit, Gaza has triggered a realignment.
Yet, strange as it may seem, there is still a hopeful story that Labour can tell about the next general election. Insiders are encouraged by polling showing that Starmer holds a 15-point lead over Farage as the public's preferred prime minister. In such circumstances, Labour deserters would vote tactically for the party to thwart Reform's advance on Downing Street. Like Canada's Mark Carney and Australia's Anthony Albanese before him, Starmer would win by building a broad anti-populist coalition.
But should the radical left rise again, the risk is that his fate instead resembles that of Germany's vanquished Olaf Scholz: losing votes to everyone, everywhere, all at once.
[See more: Farage and Badenoch's Iran headache]
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