In a week when Andy Burnham was promising us “change” (if memory serves, isn’t that what Keir Starmer and Labour also promised us back in the summer of 2024?), it is heartening to learn that a new socialist organisation is in the process of being formed in the UK.
Let’s hope that the Socialist Federation is not talking the same type of bafflegab as Labour. It faces this key question though: Will the federation be able to fulfil another promise – also broken – that was made by Jeremy Corbyn a year later in the summer of 2025 to supporters of Your Party, namely that YP would be “member-led”?
We will find out more on Sunday 28 June when the Socialist Federation makes it next stop, an online conference, on the way to an in-person founding congress in the early autumn of 2026, likely to take place in Coventry, The Left Lane has learned. (Memo to the mainstream press – the fact that Zarah Sultana is a Coventry-area MP is purely coincidental).
The aim of the federation says its website is “bringing together socialist organisations and activists across Britain to form a federation, towards a party of the working class”. Its message continues: “Following the broken promise of Your Party”, we “need and want to build a genuinely democratic party” and if “you’re a socialist of any kind, then we want the Socialist Federation to be your home.” More details of Sunday’s online session and how you can attend can be found here. You can read The Left Lane’s report on the Socialist Federation’s previous session here. It has been our most-viewed piece since our May Day 2026 relaunch.
While our story by Darren Galpin obviously did not have the readership figures of later published articles in the Guardian and New Statesman, at least it was accurate. The previous session did not launch a new party as they both claimed. But then hey, the accuracy of reportage on left-wing activities is seldom the strong suite of the liberal media. (Readers who have not already done so would do well to take out a free sub to the refreshingly different The Left Lane here.)
To prepare The Left Lane’s discerning readers for Sunday’s session, we forwarded five questions (below) to the Socialist Federation and gave them 800 words in total to reply. Here are the answers we were given by Graham Jones from the federation’s admin team.
Many supporters of the Socialist Federation project originally signed up as members of Your Party. What is your critique of YP?
“The core problems in Your Party were the lack of internal democracy or of support for grassroots organising and a leadership unwilling to delegate any responsibility to the thousands of people wanting to volunteer to build a powerful party. Instead, they embedded a culture of bureaucratic paranoia and top-down control learned from years in the Labour Party and union bureaucracies. The result has been a consistent failure to act on the energy of the membership – and the recent drip-drip of branch openings has not sparked any resurgence in enthusiasm.
“In reality there was always a split within the party, but those early conflicts could have been weathered if there was any attempt to heal the divide. The evidence since the CEC elections is of a leadership faction intent on locking out anyone beyond their clique. The membership voted for a collective leadership, but we’ve received one in name only, with the officers group holding all the functional power. Beyond that group the wider party bureaucracy remains opaque, with the number and salaries of staff unknown even to the CEC itself.
“For many of us, the breaking point came around the local elections, where the party banned dual membership, took decisions which undermined the autonomy of the Scottish organisation and supported a number of independent groups with politics that flew in the face of the party’s constitution – landlords, recently-former-Tories, homophobes and transphobes – while sidelining many principled socialist independent candidates from their own membership.”
Some YP supporters say leaving YP shows you are quitters and splitters and are doing exactly what those who now control YP want you to do. What is your response?
“We wanted Your Party to work more than anyone, otherwise we wouldn’t have stuck it out this long. Many of us worked ourselves to the bone holding together local groups, running campaigns and promoting the party, while receiving torrents of abuse for any criticism of the leadership. We tried using the democratic mechanisms available to us and have seen successes ignored and subverted and elected representatives sidelined. When an organisation proves itself impervious to democratic control and all efforts to change it have failed, the point comes when you have to try something different.
“That effort wasn’t wasted. We have built real relationships and a network of thriving groups, many of whom have already quietly dropped “Your Party” from their names. We may not have the 800,000 members originally squandered, but we have a core who want to build something that embodies truly democratic and socialist principles. We don’t call on people to leave YP and many of us are still members. What we are determined to do is to offset the dispersal that disappointment in Jeremy Corbyn has resulted in.”
At the first Socialist Federation online session on 31 May, those attending had to choose between three options. Were they trying to create at this moment: a) a network of activists, b) a new socialist party or c) a socialist federation? Why did you choose option c and what do you mean by a “socialist federation”?
“There are plenty of small parties on the left, and rushing into another one after the experience of Your Party would be foolish. We need time to develop a shared political basis and to agree a programme, which takes more than announcing a party into being. On the other hand, an informal network of activists would struggle to hold together the existing members and proto branches disenchanted with Your Party or build anything bigger. Informal connections for information-sharing aren’t enough. We need infrastructure to provide the concrete material support Your Party failed to deliver – funding, training, data.
“A federation can balance those needs, at least for now. It can be a space to debate and make decisions together, to mediate the inevitable tensions in a multi-tendency organisation and to take collective action, while leaving real autonomy for local groups. The goal remains a future party, but only when members feel ready.”
What are the main issues to be debated and decided upon at your next Socialist Federation meeting on 28 June as you prepare for a founding conference in the autumn of 2026?
“The main items are motions on the initial structure and platform for the organisation. These are the results of compositing (merging) of a multitude of proposals voted on at our last event. And they’re exciting, drawing lessons from what went wrong in Your Party and what’s missing on the left – embedding accountability and democratic participation throughout, with safeguards against capture by a clique. We’ll also be considering amendments to these motions and electing the founding congress organising committee to carry forward preparations for the autumn congress.”
Looking ahead 12 months to the summer of 2027, what do you hope Socialist Federation might have developed into by that time? What are the main activities and priorities that you think will assist you in reaching these objectives?
“We’re building from the base, not rushing, but moving as quickly as we responsibly can. We’ve already seen an uptick in far-right activity in recent weeks and months, so we can’t waste any more time. We need to support movements to defend communities and present a real alternative. We want branches and affiliates to be campaigning organisations involved in class struggle in their area, not just talking shops.
“Groups will be able to affiliate (we’ve started receiving enquiries before the system is even set up) and the federation will support people to start new ones. So, in a year we would hope to have a healthy, growing organisation with a presence across autonomous Welsh, Scottish and English federal structures – and Ireland too, if desired.
“We know we won’t have tens of thousands of members from the off. We have to prove ourselves first. We have to show that we’re doing something genuinely different and necessary. We have to show that a socialist organisation can be transparent, democratic and valuable to people organising in their communities.”
Bon chance to! Lots of us are already tiring of the hype about the ‘King of the North’ and a mass socialist organisation is certainly needed badly. However, creating a good one is no mean feat.
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