You don’t get expelled from Labour for nothing. You get expelled because you pose a threat. To the image, to the order, to the story being told about what Labour is and is not. Jeremy Corbyn, suspended in 2020 and expelled in 2024 for saying, correctly, that the scale of Labour’s antisemitism crisis had been weaponised for political purposes, posed such a threat. So too did Zarah Sultana, suspended for voting against the two-child benefit cap. Which it has to be said, was one of Labour’s most quietly vicious policies. Now Sultana has gone further, quitting the party entirely to announce the founding of a new one. “Westminster is broken,” she said. “The two-party system offers nothing but managed decline and broken promises.”
“Corbyn’s crime? Saying what millions believed: that antisemitism had been wildly exaggerated for factional purposes.”
Corbyn welcomed her “principled decision,” and said that “the democratic foundations of a new kind of political party will soon take shape.” But he stopped short of confirming leadership. He never liked the title much anyway, too top-down. But leadership matters. And while Corbyn remains an important moral and symbolic figure, if this new party is to have a future, it needs someone else at the helm: someone with clarity, fluency, and strategic nous. It needs John McDonnell.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that McDonnell doesn’t want this. Not at this stage of his life, not after decades of principled struggle inside a party that has treated him, like so many others, with contempt. His continued suspension from Labour is political pettiness, pure and simple: a warning shot from the party’s right wing that no dissent, however dignified, will be tolerated. And McDonnell has already given more than most. He stood beside Corbyn through the smear campaigns, the media firestorms, the betrayals — and delivered some of the sharpest, clearest economic arguments the left has seen in a generation.
But the left still needs him.
“McDonnell has already given more than most. But if this party is to be more than a protest, he needs to step forward.”
If this new formation is to become more than a symbol (if it is to offer not just resistance but power) it needs a voice that can cut through. Corbyn carries the weight of the movement but struggles to articulate its direction. Sultana brings courage and clarity, but she cannot carry the project alone. McDonnell has the rare combination of authority, lucidity, and political intelligence. He would not need to front the posters or dominate the stage. But his leadership, even if quiet or shared, would anchor the movement in a seriousness the public would recognise. The left does not need another messiah. It needs a grown-up.
The Labour Party under Starmer has become a machine for silencing dissent. Abbott, Shaheen, Driscoll, and others have been smeared, blocked, or expelled. The party has moved well to the right on immigration, welfare, protest, and Palestine — and done so proudly. The proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was cheered through Parliament. Sultana, defiant in response, shouted “We are all Palestine Action” across the benches. It was one of the few moments of moral clarity in an otherwise grey chamber.
Outside Westminster, there is a growing hunger for something different. Polling suggests a left bloc focused on Gaza, inequality, and the cost of living could win over 10% of Labour’s 2019 vote, particularly in cities. The Greens are already positioning themselves to capture that mood. Their leadership has reached out to disillusioned Labour members, and Zak Polanski has hinted at a broader alliance. If a new party were to coalesce around Sultana and Corbyn’s initiative, with McDonnell at its head and the Greens as electoral allies, it could shake the foundations of the centre-left.
Labour will cry betrayal. But who betrayed whom? What has it delivered? Austerity dressed in red. Arms deals and silence on Gaza. A politics of managed decline, sold as competence. You can’t purge socialists, criminalise protest, back genocide and then lecture the left on unity. The rupture didn’t come from those who left. It came from the top.
“You don’t get to expel socialists, criminalise protest, and sell out Palestine — and then accuse others of disunity.”
This is not about vanity or nostalgia. It’s about voice. The left needs one again. Not a memory of 2017. Not a retreat into single-issue campaigns. A political formation that can speak plainly about wealth and power. That can connect Gaza to the arms trade, the benefit cap to landlords, and climate breakdown to capitalism. A party that refuses to play by the rules of a media-political class that has declared solidarity itself a crime.
Corbyn may not want the crown, and perhaps never did. Sultana has courage, fire, and generational appeal. But if this party is to be more than a protest, McDonnell needs to step forward. He may not be looking for power. But that is exactly what makes him the right person to hold it.
