Jeremy Corbyn and the four ‘Independents for Gaza’ MPs have established an ‘Independent Alliance’ as a formal parliamentary group, in an important step forward. As the editorial of Socialism Today (issue 280, September 2024) argues, the general election “led to the establishment of at least a putative group of ‘workers’ MPs’ in parliament. In addition to Jeremy Corbyn, elected as an independent in Islington North, the four ‘Independents for Gaza’ MPs have been joined by seven Labour lefts who have been excluded from the Parliamentary Labour Party for having the temerity to vote for the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap. Potentially this outline ‘workers’ bloc’ of MPs is more than twice the size of Reform’s little Englander bloc.”
The Independent Alliance is not a political party, but its existence will put pressure on the parliamentary authorities for more allotted time speaking in debates, asking questions and representation on parliamentary committees than would be so for five separate individual MPs.
The ‘suspended seven’ aren’t part of the formal group. But expectations will now grow that they and others will act under working-class pressure and vote with the Independent Alliance to oppose scrapping pensioners’ winter fuel payments, for example. Corbyn’s group said: “Our door is always open to other MPs who believe in a more equal and peaceful world.”
“By fighting on the central issues facing the working class”, the Socialism Today editorial goes on, “and by the left-led unions proactively ‘adopting’ them into their parliamentary groups to champion workers’ politics inside and outside the Commons chamber, such a bloc could be an important lever to speeding up the creation of a party. But not, though, a fully sufficient one to get a new mass workers’ party off the ground.”
The Socialism Today editorial analyses the ‘first lightning flashes’ in the storms that are following the election of Keir Starmer’s Labour government, including the summer riots and racist far-right attacks. It also addresses thoughts that Jeremy Corbyn himself has published about what kind of political alternative to Starmer’s government is needed and how it can be built.
“Corbyn and his supporters could seriously advance the debate by openly linking up with those in the unions fighting for a new party; and, in parliament, with the other left independent MPs, by being the best fighters for trade unionists’ interests…”
“The summer riots have brought a new immediacy to the task facing the workers’ movement of building a new, mass vehicle for its political representation, and the debate on the way to achieve this must be urgently stepped up. But to put things in proportion, just weeks into the new situation of a Starmer premiership, they are but the first lightning flashes of the wild and stormy weather to come which will further enormously develop the conditions needed to realise the goal”.
Read the article in full: ‘The first lightning flashes – and what to do’
