Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of Britain’s Labour Party, announced on Friday he was in talks to form a new political party because Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government had “refused to deliver the change” voters expected during its first year in office.
“The democratic foundation of a new kind of political party will take shape soon,” Corbyn wrote on X. “Discussions are ongoing—and I am excited to work alongside all communities to fight for the future people deserve.”
Corbyn, who was elected as an independent member of the British Parliament last year, added that the “Labour government has refused to deliver the change people expected and deserved.”
As leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020, Corbyn was widely condemned by U.K. Jewish groups, Jewish members of the Labour Party and others for his long record of extreme anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias and for allowing such views to proliferate within the party.
Corbyn’s plan to create a new political party could further divide Labour’s traditional left-wing support at a time when Starmer is hemorrhaging support and the century-long dominance of Britain’s two big parties—Labour and the Conservative Party—is in jeopardy, Reuters reported.
Corbyn, 76, a socialist who took the reins of the party in 2015, resigned as Labour leader after the 2019 election when it suffered its worst defeat since 1935. Starmer, Labour’s current leader, announced in 2020 that Corbyn would not be permitted to run again as a Labour candidate amid persistent allegations that Corbyn was antisemitic and had allowed Jew-hatred to fester within the party.
British lawmaker Zarah Sultana, a far-left chair of the Socialist Campaign Group who served as a Labour MP until July 2024, when she was suspended for being one of seven party members to vote for scrapping a two-child benefit cap, announced that she was quitting Labour to launch Corbyn’s new party.
Corbyn congratulated Sultana for her “principled decision” to quit Labour, saying she would “help build us a real alternative.”