Pauline Bryan considers what lessons Your Party and the Labour left both need to take from Corbyn’s five-year Labour leadership
The Campaign for Socialism (CfS) was formed in Scotland in 1994 in resistance to Tony Blair and his desire to make fundamental changes to the Labour Party’s position on public ownership of the economy. CfS brought together Labour Party members and trade union activists. Through many ups and downs, it continues to be a place for members to meet and discuss and, where they can, make interventions both within the Labour Party and in wider campaigns.
Unlike in England, the left in Scotland and Wales has had other serious electoral options to the Labour Party. Between 2003 and 2007 the Scottish Socialist Party had 6 MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Green Party currently has 7 MSPs. During and after the 2014 referendum, the Radical Independence Campaign and other groups offered alternatives to both Labour and the SNP but realistically, even with the partial PR system in Scottish Parliamentary elections, there was little space for new parties.
During the Blair years it seemed unlikely that the left could reassert itself in the Labour Party. Blair and his cronies probably assumed that they had forged New Labour in a way that couldn’t be overturned. But when Brown resigned, it was Ed Miliband who won the leadership rather than the chosen brother, David. Then in 2015 Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership. When offered a choice, Labour Party members didn’t respond in the way they were supposed to. In 2020 Starmer had to lie to get the votes of previous Corbyn supporters to win the leadership election. Many Labour loyalists lack any ideological underpinning to their membership and just want the Labour Party to be successful.
The Labour Party is not an easy place for socialists to work, but neither is its membership irredeemably right wing. Unfortunately, there is no short cut to reaching working class voters. Low pay, poor local facilities, and lack of opportunities for their children all leave them ready for radicalisation. Currently that radicalisation is coming from the right. The new party believes it can radicalise from the left.
In a July 2025 interview in the New Left Review blog Sidecar, James Schneider, who is closely associated with the group around Corbyn, described the potential constituency of the new party as including asset-poor workers, downwardly mobile graduates and racialised people. He points out that other countries have a wider base for creating popular power than in the UK, with tenants’ groups, agricultural collectives, debtors’ unions and land occupations.
He admits that Labour, under Corbyn’s leadership, didn’t mobilise within other movements, such as tenants’ groups. My experience of that time was that it was difficult to reach the new members who joined to vote for Corbyn. In a Constituency Labour Party with many hundreds of members it was hard to engage with people who largely didn’t join meetings online or attend in person. It was as if they had made their political contribution by joining and voting and had no appetite for further activity. The explosion in membership did not come from people already active in other campaigns. Becoming a member was more likely to be a one-off political action.
The worry must be that the same will happen with the new party. If the constituent groups described by Schneider haven’t been able to mobilise people around their immediate concerns it is unlikely that a more distant, largely ‘virtual’ party will succeed in mobilising them.
The Labour Party was originally formed by people who were active in other organisations: most obviously trade unions, but importantly also the ILP which itself was made up of members recruited through their on the ground campaigns on rents, school meals, land reform, votes for women, etc. Its main strength was in local government where its victories built the base for national interventions.
Shneider says “Unfortunately, the party has already been launched even though it does not exist”. This may well come back to haunt the party later. For example, will it adopt support for Scottish independence? Many in England assume that this is a prerequisite of being on the left. Perhaps it will adopt a federal model with a separate Scottish party, but here it currently lacks the national figures to mobilise around, and anyone taking on that role could quickly cause splits and divisions. As the poet Jim Monaghan says, “There is nothing more divisive than a call for left wing unity”.
We are already in the election campaign for the Scottish Parliament and are witnessing the SNP trying to hammer out its position on independence. Scottish Labour appears to have given up its role as a distinctive Scottish party. Reform is gaining support in the polls without any recognisable leader or clear policies. It is possible that a new party without a Scottish figurehead and few clear policies could make a dent in next year’s election. If it does, the dent will probably come at the expense of the Green Party, Labour and possibly the SNP. But even under the convoluted Scottish PR system it may be a damp squib and hence damage its future in Scottish politics.
If Labour is to recover from the Starmer period, it will need to consider how it can rebuild links to activists outside the Labour Party. CfS has for decades seen its role as being active in the Labour Party but also being active outside. We used to call it the twin track approach. The Labour Party’s links with trade unions should not be left to the whims of trade union leaders but should be at the rank-and-file level. We need to rebuild our links there and with activists campaigning on the environment, housing, disability rights, international issues, etc, and bring their ideas into the Labour Party to promote those campaigns. While we still have MPs, MSPs, local councillors and members prepared to stand up to the leadership, there is hope.
Pauline Bryan is one of the founding members of CfS and editor of Keep Left: The Red Paper on Scotland 2025. She is writing in a personal capacity.