Peter Franklin: The effects of Corbyn’s new party will be felt far beyond Labour | Conservative Home

Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.

How big a deal is Jeremy Corbyn’s new party? The first thing to say is that it doesn’t exist yet, and consequently has no leader, no MPs, no councillors and no members. It doesn’t even have a name, so let’s just call it the Corbyn party (or Jezbollah, if you’re feeling mischievous).

I doubt that many ConHome readers will be tempted to join, but if you do take leave of your senses there’s a website where you can register your interest. We’re assured that more than 600,000 people have done just that – an objectively impressive number.

Here’s another number that matters: 15 per cent. That, according to the pollster Find Out Now, is the vote share that a new party lead by Corbyn and Zarah Sultana would get. More in Common have also polled this scenario, putting the new party’s vote share at 10 per cent.

Given the combination of multi-party politics and first-past-the-post, this range of support is bound to have a major impact. But upon whom exactly?

To imagine that a new leftwing party is a Labour problem, not a Tory problem is to succumb to first order thinking. Unless it explodes on the launchpad, the Corbyn party would obviously take votes from Labour, but to that we must add the knock-on effects for the whole political system. Kemi Badenoch (and, for that matter, Robert Jenrick) need to update their strategies accordingly.

The party with the most to lose – but, possibly, also to gain – is the Green Party of England and Wales. Currently, they’re riven by a rather tetchy leadership contest between Zack Polanski, an eco-socialist and former hypnotherapist, and Adrian Ramsay, the incumbent co-leader and Suffolk MP.

It’s a clash of personalities, but also strategies. Polanski has already welcomed the prospective Corbyn party, and if he wins the GPEW leadership contest he’d push for a red/green alliance. That would bolster the radical challenge to Labour in, for instance, the London seats where Green Party candidates came second last year.

However, it would also make it harder for the Greens to maintain their cuddly, community-spirited image in the old Tory heartlands where they’ve made worrying gains, especially the constituencies of Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire. A Polanski win would be just the opportunity the Conservatives need to reclaim this lost ground.

OK, enough about the Greens, what about the Liberal Democrats? What sort of impact might the Corbyn party have on them?

The Lib Dems are the double dippers of British politics: targeting Tory seats while also angling for defectors from the Labour Party. Back in the 2000s they prospered by tacking to the left of Labour on issues like the Iraq War. Twenty years later, a Labour government is once again alienating its leftwing base.

Another chance, then, for the Lib Dems? No, because this time the lefties have got somewhere else to go, or will do once Corbyn and Sultana get their ducks in a row. It doesn’t therefore matter what poses the Lib Dems strike on issues like transgenderism and the Middle East, they can’t out-loony the loony left.

Any growth opportunities for the Lib Dems are in the centre and on the centre-right. The defence of the sixty seats they won from the Conservatives last year also orientates them in that direction. It’s a dynamic that makes any talk of a “progressive alliance” increasingly awkward.

There’s an obvious contradiction between holding on to moderate voters and possibly sharing power with a Labour Party pulled to the left by the Corbynites (good luck selling a wealth tax in places like Maidenhead or Tunbridge Wells). The difficulties will only multiply if the progressive alliance (whether real or imagined) also includes the Corbyn party or the Polanski-led Greens.

Ed Davey is a master of distraction and will do anything to keep these possibilities off the news agenda. The Conservatives must strain every sinew to pin him down. In this respect, the existence of a new left-wing party would be useful because it allows questions about a Reform-Conservative coalition to be turned back against the Lib Dems (and Labour too). If they want the Tory leader to rule out a deal with Nigel Farage, then they must rule out a deal with Corbyn.

While we’re on the subject, what would a radical left party mean for Reform UK? At the margin, there may be some competition for voters who just want to vote anti-system and don’t much mind how. We might also witness a new phenomenon in British politics: the Reform/Corbynite marginal. In peri-urban seats with substantial numbers of Muslim and white working class voters, the mainstream parties could find themselves on the sidelines while rival populists of left and right fight for first place.

Overall, I’d expect Reform to greatly benefit from the revenge of the Corbynites. Even if the latter shave a point or two off Reform’s vote share, that wouldn’t matter as long as Labour loses more — as seems overwhelmingly likely. Indeed, if Labour’s vote share falls into the low twenties or the upper teens while Reform stays around the 30 per cent mark, then Farage will become prime minister without the need for coalition partners.

(It’s worth noting that the Nowcast model is, for the first time, projecting a slim Reform majority – and that’s based on recent polling which doesn’t yet include the gestating Corbyn party.)

As always, we need to remember that the next general election isn’t due till 2029. However, that doesn’t stop anyone from anticipating a Reform victory. The more this looks nailed-on, the more immediate the influence on politics. For example, there’s the diminishing prospect of a Reform/Tory electoral pact. From Farage’s perspective, the idea of negotiations, no matter how discreet, must seem increasingly unpalatable. Why run the risk when a straightforward majority is within reach?

Of course, if a deal is off the table then that leaves the Conservatives with nothing to lose by confronting Reform. The only question is whether to run against Farage’s populist agenda or to compete with it. But either way, the formation of a new party on the left is likely to shake-up politics on the right too.

One final possibility. If the Corbyn party does push government support below 20 per cent, then like the Conservatives, Labour faces catastrophe. It would become the London and Merseyside party; its other strongholds, from the Welsh Valleys to the North East, would be overrun. Faced with extinction as a national political force, it’s time to start asking what they might do to survive. Or rather what they wouldn’t do.

While changing leaders is always an option, what we should really look out for are changes to the constitution. For instance, they’ve got the time and the Commons majority to change the electoral system. Or how about changing the electorate? It’s already Green Party policy to extend the franchise to all adult residents of the UK; perhaps that might appeal to an increasingly desperate Labour Party.

Right now, it feels like we’re living through a time of extraordinary political disruption, at least by British standards. But never forget the first rule of conservatism: things can always get worse.