What happens if Jeremy Corbyn’s new party becomes the UK government?
Membership of the new Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana left-wing party has sky-rocketed in the weeks since it was announced – but can socialism really fix the UK political system?
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In brief…
- More than 600,000 British people are believed to have joined the new left-wing political party set up by Jeremy Coryn and Zarah Sultana within weeks of it being announced.
- The News Agents say the prospect of a Corbyn-led socialist government would bring radical change to UK politics, and describe it as a potential “interesting experiment” for UK politics.
- However, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall also say that socialist policies would struggle to maintain the support of the volatile bond markets, and would be greatly challenged by the fiscal black hole that faces any future UK government.
What’s the story?
Jeremy Corbyn's new left-wing political party doesn't have an official name, and it doesn't have any defined policies – yet.
While a statement from the socialist Islington North MP and fellow former Labour MP Zarah Sultana suggested wealth redistribution, nationalisation, social housing and climate change would be among its priorities, what is temporarily known as 'Your Party' is offering its members the chance to define its focus – and its name.
Corbyn's name is often used in political circles like some sort of socialist boogeyman, whose failure nearly destroyed one of the UK's biggest parties, but who received more votes in the 2019 to lose the election than Keir Starmer did in 2024 to win.
Sultana said more than 600,000 people signed up to join the party within days of its announcement, dwarfing the estimated 200,000 members of Nigel Farage's right-wing operation, Reform UK.
But can Corbyn and Sultana bring socialism back to British politics – or even become government?
What would Corbyn bring back to mainstream politics?
Jeremy Corbyn was expelled from the Labour Party in 2023 over antisemitism claims, which he claimed had been overstated for political purposes, but retained his seat in Islington North in the 2024 election, where he remains a popular MP, visible and active in the local community.
Having held that seat since 1983, The News Agents say that the causes he champions now remain almost identical to those he's supported throughout his long career of political activism.
"Corbyn would be interested in more aggressive wealth taxation, more aggressive income taxation," says Lewis Goodall.
"He would expand the percentage of the state, he would expand the percentage of the economy that was devoted to state spending. It would be an interesting experiment."
"You would certainly see big changes, at least in terms of foreign policy. You'd see a more radical left foreign policy, things that were cheap to do."
Corbyn and Sultana are expected to prioritise cancelling UK sales of arms to Israel when its politics are formalised.
Corbyn previously told The News Agents that had he won the 2017 General Election, he would have stood on the steps of Downing Street on the day of his victory and announced the immediate end of homelessness in the UK, forcing councils across the country to house people on the streets.
"I think you would see those more micro – but nonetheless important – symbolic actions, " Lewis adds.
"But in terms of the wider macroeconomic picture. A Corbyn government would struggle just as this government is struggling, and any incoming government would struggle."
What is the major problem Corbyn and his party would face
Tax the rich. Build more social housing. Invest in the NHS. End homelessness.
All great, positive policies – but all of which would be likely to hit the same brick wall for Your Party that confronted Starmer's Labour when he entered Downing Street – the £55 billion 'fiscal black hole' left behind by the previous Tory government.
Labour has been unable to introduce many of its pledged changes to the country due to a need to plug this enormous deficit.
Any new government would face the same hurdle.
"If you go in with a whole heap of pledges that the markets think are nonsense or unfunded, then you get the bond markets reacting," says Jon Sopel.
"I don't think that a Jeremy Corbyn Sultana government would be immune from that.
"They exist in a real world, in an interconnected, globalised world, and I just don't think they would be able to do whatever they wanted in that narrow sense, without facing a likely economic crisis in the same way that Liz Truss, with her unfunded tax cuts, did."
Lewis says that servicing the UK's debt is now one of the biggest spending commitments of the UK government.
"Both Brexit and Corbynism were, in their own ways, products of that era, of that cheap money era," Lewis adds.
"You could do things like Brexit, which were clearly a macroeconomic risk, and you could do with reasonable certainty that the bond markets weren't going to come for you for indulging in that risk.
"Likewise, when Corbynism was at its peak in 2017 you could pledge to do many of the things that he wanted to do with increased borrowing and it did not seem like a systemic risk to the economy. We are in a different economic era now."
Jon says the problem in UK politics today is that there are no "easy answers" to some of the country's biggest problems – despite the rise of populist politicians such as Nigel Farage, seemingly offering exactly that.
"In politics at the moment, you have got people wanting more and more radical solutions, and governments less and less able to shape how they can do things," Jon says.
"You just can't pull levers in the way that you thought politicians were able to do to suddenly, dramatically change course."