05.06.2025
Have the ‘localists’ won?
Jeremy Corbyn’s project puts on display an embarrassing apolitical hotchpotch of moralistic waffle, but not everyone has given up on the fight for a ‘proper party’. Carla Roberts reports
There was a fair bit of excitement among leftist trainspotters when, on May 27, the website of Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project published the mission statement, ‘Independent socialist councillors: what we stand for’. It is not the statement itself that makes it interesting - it is, to put it mildly, an embarrassingly apolitical hotchpotch of moralistic waffle rather than a commitment to any kind of firm policies.
“We stand for public service, equality and justice, grounded in socialist values and an unwavering commitment to anti-racism,” reads the first sentence - the only one that mentions the ‘s-word’. The platitudes keep on piling up thereafter: “We are committed to giving power to people at the grassroots”, “breaking down the barriers that divide us” and “we need voices that stand up to injustice”, so that - and this is the grand finale - “together, we build the power of our communities - and, together, we can win!”1 Not quite sure what the authors think they might win, but it is not going to be appreciation for political clarity or a commitment to principled policies.
There is a hint that the signatories might - maybe, perhaps - support net zero, but want to have their cake and eat it: “We work together on the basis that the demands of the climate crisis are inseparably linked to people’s everyday lives, community wellbeing and economic justice.” Without definite demands, though, it amounts to more empty waffle.
Measly
It is signed by a rather measly 26 councillors, among them Liverpool Community Independents - Sam Gorst (former supporter of Labour Against the Witchhunt) and Alan Gibbons (former member of Momentum’s National Coordinating Group and its de facto leader after Jon Lansman was ousted). But there are, oddly, also 13 non-councillors who have signed the councillors’ statement, most of them total no-names - apart from a certain Karie Murphy. Now this is what makes this an interesting statement: Murphy was, after all, Corbyn’s right-hand woman when he was leader of the Labour Party, working as his chief-of-staff. The partner of former Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, she has been at the centre of Corbyn’s inner circle from the start. She is also one of two directors of Justice Collective Ltd - the private company that was set up to launch Collective (aka the new Corbyn party).
So comrades could be forgiven for speculating that this statement might be (part of) the beginning of the new Corbyn party. Perhaps this is the (very, very) “soft launch” that Salma Yaqoob was promising at the Sheffield ‘summit’ of We Demand Change on May 18? Perhaps more signatories, including Yaqoob’s, are supposed to follow? To show that the Corbyn party - whatever it might be called - is a sort of ‘organic’ development?
Alas, it seems the reality is rather more mundane and less ‘exciting’. We hear that this statement is actually a reflection of the fact that the faction fight within Collective has now been resolved, that Murphy is on the losing side and that this statement is her attempt to ‘stay relevant’.
We quite freely admit that we are forced to somewhat guess here, because unfortunately nobody in the inner circle of the putative Corbyn party - which we are told will be launched “within the next couple of months” (Salma Yaqoob) - seems to believe that the rest of the left (or, in indeed, the working class) should be kept informed about anything to do with the new party, its proposed programme, structures or constitution. And, naturally, we are told nothing about the disagreements taking place behind the scenes.
But disagreements have a habit of seeping out. We know that there are two main groupings - though, of course, these are not sharply defined factions of any description. Broadly speaking, there are the ‘partyists’ (again, all relative), who have been campaigning for a ‘centralised’, national party, with a comprehensive programme, a constitution and a membership structure. The main proponents of this outlook are Karie Murphy, Len McCluskey and Pamela Fitzpatrick, Murphy’s co-director of Justice Collective Ltd (and one of two directors of the Peace and Justice Project, with Corbyn being the other one).
On the other side, there are the ‘localists’, who see Collective as a mere umbrella that would bring together different ‘community groups’, independent campaigns, etc, on the basis of a short ‘political platform’ rather than a programme. Presumably, any membership structures would be for the local affiliates to sort out. The most prominent members of this faction are Andrew Feinstein and Jeremy Corbyn himself - the clincher, of course.
On paper at least, the partyist perspective sounds better. But of course, without a clear socialist programme, the right to form platforms (factions) and a thorough-going culture of democracy and debate, what you get is a repetition of Momentum, with its Bonapartist referendums, mushy politics and opaque bureaucratic manoeuvrings. True, instead of Jon Lansman, there would be Karie Murphy … the result, though, is easy to predict.
In any case, it appears that the localists have won, at least for now. And we hear that Murphy was trying to flex her muscles by pulling together the above statement. A rather unimpressive attempt to stay relevant, we have to say.
Co-thinker
It seems that her co-thinker, Pamela Fitzpatrick, has not quite given up the fight for an actual partyist perspective. She appeared on the programme ‘The new party, beyond London’ on Novara Media on May 27, alongside Shockat Adam (independent MP for Leicester South) and Jamie Driscoll (former metro mayor of North Tyne).2 Driscoll was previously involved in Collective, arguing alongside Feinstein and Corbyn against setting up a party - because, as it turned out, he was already in the process of setting up his own ‘party’, Majority UK! You really could not make it up.
Fitzpatrick clearly felt the need to bend the stick ‘left’ (good for her!). She was, after all, speaking alongside, firstly, the egocentric waffler, Driscoll (who explained on the Novara programme that “I had never any problem with the media, because I only talk about facts and raise demands that are fully-costed, so we did really, really well with our messaging”; and “It’s not just Reform we’re up against: it’s also Netflix”). Secondly, there was the liberal, independent MP, Shockat Adam (“If we call ourselves ‘left’, people on the other side of the spectrum might feel alienated”). In clear opposition to those two, Pamela Fitzpatrick argued for “a new party - a solidly class-based party and a solidly left one at that”. True, she also did not mention the s-word, but, when Driscoll argued for “something broader than just working class - that is language from 100 years ago. What about the five million self-employed people and the landlords?”, she replied:
We have absolutely gone past ‘broad church’ - they always fail. Class politics is not about a particular narrow definition of ‘working class’ or messaging. And being pragmatic was the problem before though, wasn’t it? If you are trying to accommodate everybody, you accommodate nobody. We should have learned that lesson from the Labour Party in 2017 and 2019, when we kept the Labour right in the party, when they really should have gone. If we had dismissed all these nonsense claims, we would be in a totally different position than we are in today.
We should nationalise housing, the construction industry and we should also talk about nationalising the banks. It is very easy to say, ‘Tax the rich’, but this is not a very radical demand: the rich have very good accountants and this just does not work. We cannot continue to just tinker around the edges. We need fundamental, radical change and that’s what I will be arguing for.
There is no point saying we are ‘offering solutions’, when you are not actually saying how you are going to do that. And it is very hard to do that unless you own the means of production.
In terms of the new party, Fitzpatrick explained that Collective now “represents about 60 groups who have signed up for a new party”. She admitted that “we had people who were not keen on a party. But I think the rise of Reform has focused the mind. And I am hoping the new party will come very soon.”
Hopefully
When Driscoll explained that in terms of the programme of Majority UK, “we can’t just listen to paid-up party members: that would really narrow our base. We have to listen to people on the doorstep and the assemblies”, she argued:
There is nothing wrong with consulting with people. The problem arises when you base your whole politics on that. You cannot just be reactive to what people bring up in a meeting. If you put a lot of people into a room, they will probably tell you that the problem is asylum-seekers and we know that’s wrong.
We don’t just need coordination, because when you have lots of independents and groups involved, they will be pulling in different directions. There needs to be a clear programme, so that we are all on the same page. It also has to be an international project, because we have seen this before in countries where they tried to nationalise things - it does not work. So you need to reach out to working class communities across the world, but you can start with Europe. Hopefully, when the party will be launched, which will hopefully be very soon, there will be a democratic structure, where people can vote on policies, vote on elected positions, etc.
We could not help but notice the word, ‘hopefully’, being used quite a lot there by comrade Fitzpatrick. Perhaps she is just expressing wishful thinking - she has, after all, been announcing the imminent launch of the new party for almost a year now, including in the pages of The Guardian (which, we understand, really pissed Corbyn off).3 But perhaps things are still in flux and there is a chance that Jeremy Corbyn might actually agree to launch something that is of some use to the working class.
However, to rely on one totally confused, though undoubtedly well-meaning, independent MP, with his heart committed to the utopian dreams of pacifism and his head still lodged in the capitalist realism of Labourism - that, surely, is the politics of desperation. But such are the times.