Jeremy Corbyn looking to start new party with MP who has quit Labour
by Muiris O'Cearbhaill, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/muiris-o'cearbhaill/ · TheJournal.ieFORMER BRITISH LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he is looking to form a new UK political party.
The party will be co-led by Corbyn and fellow MP Zarah Sultana, who quit Labour today after she was suspended from the party last year for voting against budget measures to cut social welfare payments.
Posting to social media today, Corbyn and Sultana confirmed their plan to build an “alternative” left-wing party to Labour.
“Discussions are ongoing,” Corbyn said today. “And I am excited to work alongside all communities to fight for the future [that] people deserve.
“Together, we can create something that is desperately missing from our broken political system: hope,” he added.
It comes amid a revolt within Labour’s government benches in the UK over welfare cuts and disagreements over fiscal policies. The party is now rating lower than right Nigel Farage’s Reform.
Sultana said the project would also involve “other independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country”.
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She said the current “two-party system offers nothing but managed decline and broken promises”.
Speaking to ITV News on Tuesday night, Corbyn explained the group will be made up of like-minded left-wing independents to contest the next general election.
After the general election last year, he formed the ‘Independent Alliance’ with other non-party MPs.
Corbyn led Labour from 2015 to April 2020, stepping down after the party’s loss at the 2019 general election.
He was later suspended after he refused to fully accept findings by the UK human rights watchdog that the party broke equality law under his leadership.
It also claimed that antisemitism had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.
Corbyn was then blocked from standing for Labour at last year’s general election and expelled after announcing he would stand as an independent candidate.
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