The Missing Left Hook

The populist left have a gap - but not the will to fill it

For a while, it has been apparent that there is a gap in the market of British politics that a left-populist might fill. An opening for something akin to a "Farage of the left". Someone with the instincts of a firebrand and a demagogue who can harness public anger and direct it to a left-wing programme. Now, the opportunity seems even more apparent. The Labour government is struggling for popularity and has particularly alienated many on its Left. The fights over welfare and the inaction over Gaza have used up whatever goodwill or hope there was.

There is an opportunity here. Not for conquest, but pressure. The fantasy isn't Number 10, but Starmer's spine bending just enough under the weight of lost seats, challenging them from the same side, peeling votes away and providing a concentrated electoral threat. Not enough to form a government on its own, but enough to seriously undermine the major party in seats it needs, and in doing so to extract concessions and policy moves from Starmer or whoever succeeds him. At a push, with an increasingly volatile electorate, they might have a chance of pushing a handful of MPs into a multi-party government.

The opportunity is not going unnoticed, and various factions on the Left are moving to fill it. At the last election, a hurried assembly of independents profited most. Now there are moves to solidify the block. In the Green leadership election, former boob-hypnotist Zack Polanski is running on an obviously eco-populist platform. This week, Sultana and Corbyn sort of launched their party, Your Party (name subject to change pursuant to internal democracy). They hope to draw in some of the other independents in parliament. Each of these is jockeying to add something to the Left of politics.

Yet the question remains whether they can pull it off. The world has never been short of left-wing parties, but few have managed to break through with any success. They are limited by electoral geography and their ability to build a platform that pulls together all their potential voters. Like many right-wing organisations, they have also found themselves limited by the personalities and views they draw in early on – and the existence of a major party with the flexibility and power to stamp them out. If any popular leftist movements are to seize the moment, they are going to have to navigate these deftly. It took Farage decades to get Brexit, and another ten years to be a real parliamentary player.

To start, the electoral market is there. One of the major shocks of the 2024 election was the rise, in multiple places, of the Gaza independents. These were on the surface single-issue campaigns, which saw Britain (and Labour) as insufficiently tough on Israel. But they brought together other issues too – particularly around living standards in urban areas. They were tapping into a broader disaffection with ordinary politics. It worked, snatching away some of Labour's strongest seats, and coming close in others. Elsewhere, the Greens picked up multiple seats too.

There is no sense that this has diminished. The Labour government's approach to Gaza has done little to diminish its critics. Cuts to welfare and other public spending have also drawn criticism from the Left. Much of their drop in polling is broadly left voters drifting away, to the don't know column, or to Greens and other challengers. A recent poll suggested that up to 18% of the country would consider voting for a new Corbyn party – a woolly question, but evidence of support that could be pulled in. Clearly, there is an electoral appetite there.

The harder question is filling it, and making it count. Beneath the headline figures, there is a realm of complexity about who these voters are and whether they can be brought together as a block – and which other elements are competing for them. There is often an assumption in these analyses that there is a progressive bloc waiting to be united and turned into a force on Labour's Left, but this is often the same political stickle-bricking we have seen mislead the right.

The Gaza Independent's record in parliament points towards this. While they tend towards the economic Left, on other issues, they are (predictably) conservative. They voted against the recent amendment to decriminalise abortion and opposed assisted dying. Several also opposed the imposition of VAT on private schools, likely driven by concern about small, local faith-based independents. This will make it harder to reconcile these voters into a broadly progressive bloc. As several commentators noticed, the Corbyn/Sultana launch made no mention of trans rights, which is another potential sticking point for any alliance that extends beyond Gaza to wider progressive causes.

The Greens have similar issues. Their success so far has come from establishing themselves as the local opposition in a few places, and it lacks coherence. Indeed, their practice of not whipping votes only increases this. The wins in Bristol and Brighton were typically progressive places, but Waveney and North Herefordshire were Tory seats, largely snatched by NIMBYism and an absence of other opposition. Building those into any sort of left-populist alliance will be a challenge.

Building an effective left populist bloc requires having both electoral breadth (so you are a threat in multiple seats) and depth (so you might win some of them). This is the same challenge Farage's outfit has typically faced, pulling in votes but failing to convert them into a decisive edge. It's presently hard to see how any of the existing groups do this. They have too many incompatibilities between their support and are focused on too narrow a niche – how to pull together affluent progressives in the south and poor, second-generation migrants in the midlands and north.

To do so would require a cause with big emotional and political pull. Farage did this with Brexit, drawing in a range of voters to his orbit. But it is hard to see where the populist Left does this. Gaza is perhaps the most unifying cause, but it lacks a sense of effectiveness. Even if the British government were to take a maximally anti-war position on this, it would have a relatively limited impact. More progressive points would alienate parts of the coalition, as would some economic positions, such as taxes on high earners. Brexit offered both a howl of emotion and the promise of agency – it is hard to see the single, unifying thing that can do the same on the populist Left.

These groups have an even bigger problem trying to move into the mainstream. They suffer from the limitations of every new party; they tend to draw in those who are odd people with odd views. This was always a challenge for Corbyn and likely will be again. The links with antisemitism, the softness on Russia and the general disregard for British patriotism put a ceiling on his appeal and motivated other voters against him. The Greens suffer from a reputation issue where people associate them with the affluent and the work. Polansky's campaign is tarnished not just with his hypnotic history, but with a similar anti-NATO position. Of the independents of last summer, defeated Akhmad Yakoob is accused of (and denies) serious criminality.

There's a further limiting factor, too – Reform. While Westminster watchers tend to believe in a strict left-right spectrum, voters often don't follow it, and an insurgent left will be looking for support in some of the same places as Farage. As Reform moulds to being more of a post-ideological party, drawing in voters from left and right, they are tapping into some of the same dissatisfaction that could support a new party of the Left. This is especially true in the seats where Reform finished second to Labour last time, which were often poor, post-industrial areas. This goes towards the Blue Labour argument – is the populist Left progressive? Or is it traditionalist on issues like crime and immigration? The political challenge is that it can't be both, and that may keep it below the mid-teens of vote share.

There is a reason that no populist left party has really broken through yet. It is hard to build a platform that pulls all these strands together. It is perhaps even harder if you are someone of the insurgent left, who feels the pull of principle away from some of the necessary electoral concessions. There's also another problem – popular (rather than populist) leftism already exists. It is called the Labour Party, and it has an offering for those on the Left of economics, with mainstream views on crime or defence. It doesn't satisfy everyone, but it does enough. After all, the alt-right only really surged when the Tories had screwed everything up and abandoned the field to them.

There is perhaps more opportunity than before for the populist Left. Voters are more volatile now, and the errors of the Starmer era have peeled off various blocs. Uniting them, however, looks more like a theoretical chance than an open goal. There remain significant divisions within those to the Left of Labour, and difficulties in integrating these into a single base of power. In absolute numbers, too, the ceiling remains low and too concentrated for FPTP, without breaking into Reform adjacent points, which might push voters out the other side.

Most of all, a populist left would require someone to make it happen. Someone with a demagogue appeal, political nous to weave these tribes together, and organisational skills to pull together a party which pushes its advantage strategically. On the right, Farage managed some of these skills, but it took people with more money and organisational ability to get him further. It is hard to see where this comes from on the populist Left – with attempts so far all victim to negative associations, infighting, and turning off the public. Corbyn failed when he was handed the reins of a functioning party; it is hard to believe he could do it from scratch.

My feeling is this will be a squandered gap for the populist Left. The challenge is too complicated, combining the votes cuts across too many sacred cows. It requires a resolve and a common touch that is unlikely to be found. So for sure, Labour will lose some votes to the left next time around – but the chances of this becoming a major, decisive movement remain long.

What all of this amounts to is a fundamental problem of synthesis. The populist Left might have the fragments – anger, injustice, votes up for grabs, an exhausted ruling party – but it has no centrifuge. No figure, cause or machine to bind it. Too many of its would-be backers are incompatible; too many of its cultural codes are mutually unintelligible. Its enemies are better funded, more cohesive, and more forgiving of contradictions. Without a singular animating idea, the movement risks becoming just another echo chamber, shouting across postcode lines and cultural divides.

And now something else…

My picks from around the web this week: