I joined the Labour Party at the age of 18 to support Jeremy Corbyn. I remember the video that made me do it. Jeremy was sitting in a garden, doing an interview in a knitted jumper and shorts, talking about politics. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was about. But it struck a chord and I joined.
I was not the only one. More than 300,000 people joined the Labour Party under Jeremy’s leadership, hoping to bring about genuine socialist change.
As well as Labour, at that time, I joined what is now the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP).
Today, I am the national campaigns coordinator for the RCP, helping to educate, organise, mobilise activists up and down the country – including many who first became political in the Corbyn years.
Lessons of the past
It has been almost 10 years since that first leadership election. Since then, the world has been transformed by imperialist wars, Tory and Labour austerity, and the oppression of minorities – and, in turn, through mass movements like the climate strikes, Black Lives Matter, and the movement for Palestine.
These events and struggles – the result of a capitalist system in deep crisis – have politicised and radicalised an entire generation.
The Labour leaders, however, are loyally committed to the interests of capitalism and big business. They are the enemy of the working class – in Britain and internationally. And the Labour Party has ceased to be a vehicle for real change.
How we got to the current position is an important question. We must learn from the past; from the mistakes that threw the Corbyn movement back.
Those mistakes can be summed up by the following: the left leaders tried to accommodate our movement to the representatives of the capitalist system – the Blairites and the establishment.
Political programme
Now is not just a time to look backwards, however. We must also look forwards.
Over the last year, since the 2024 general election, there have been many discussions across our movement about whether and how to set up a new left party. I have participated in some of these.
Yesterday, this discussion was thrown open to the public. Many thousands of ordinary people are now eagerly anticipating something they’ve been desperate for since even before the last general election: a viable left-wing political alternative.
My argument throughout all of our discussions, and my argument now, has remained the same: we must urgently clarify our political programme.
Today, after 14 years, I’m resigning from the Labour Party.
Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other Independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.
Join us. The time is now.
Sign up here to stay updated: https://t.co/MAwVBrHOzH pic.twitter.com/z91p0CkXW0
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) July 3, 2025
Anger against capitalism
Capitalism is in its deepest ever crisis.
This is emblazoned onto the sky, with British planes flying over Gaza, collecting intelligence for the genocidal Israeli regime. And it is felt at home every single day – in our hospitals, roads, and housing; in every one of our crumbling public services.
Over the last 20 months, hundreds of thousands – even millions – have mobilised for Palestine.
This issue has been a lightning rod for all the accumulated anger in British society. It’s an anger directed against the entire establishment, and against the injustices produced by the capitalist system that this establishment defends.
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Revolutionary alternative
All of my political experience – from campaigning for Jeremy, to running as a candidate in the general election last year – has confirmed for me that people are desperate for a genuine revolutionary alternative to capitalism.
Whether it be on the question of war, racism, or austerity: we need a movement that has as its aim the end of the capitalist system.
But capitalism will not fall by itself. It will fall through the mass mobilisation of the working class, armed with a clear revolutionary programme.
Our party must be unequivocally anti-Zionist, and against the genocide in Palestine. It must be unequivocally opposed to austerity and all the anti-trade union laws. It must be unequivocally opposed to imperialist war.
It therefore follows that it must be, at its core, unequivocally opposed to capitalism.
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Time for audacity
The beating heart of any party is its political programme. This is what will determine whether any new left party succeeds or fails; lives or dies.
Only if we build a party based on class politics, offering a genuinely revolutionary alternative, can we cut the ground from under demagogues like Farage.
Only on this basis can we build a real political force for socialism.
Organised around a clear anti-capitalist programme, we will finally be in a position to do what we all set out to do in the first place: change the world.
My appeal to Jeremy and Zarah is this: now is the time to be bold – both in form and in content.
Echoing in my mind are the words of Georges Danton, one of the leaders of the French Revolution: “Audacity, more audacity, always audacity.”
This is what we need now.
This Saturday (5th July) will be ONE YEAR EXACTLY since the General Election and my run as a candidate!
Join us at Genesis cinema, Mile End at 2pm to see the documentary 🚩We’re also having a political discussion and Q&A with the director afterwards ☺️pic.twitter.com/elWKS3RxMU
— Fiona Lali (@fiona_lali) July 3, 2025
