The New Party Must Do More Than Win Elections
Any new party will fail if it doesn't build a base
I wrote this for Novara after Zarah Sultana’s announcement and the flurry of excitement that followed. Lots of people have talked about the importance of base building, but these conversations often lapse into moralism, making people feel guilty for their lack of action and adopting an “I’m a better organiser than you” kinda tone. I wanted to make the strategic case in a short and punchy way, laying out why a new party needs to code base building into its DNA, and telling the story of what will happen if we don’t.
Let’s dream for a second. It’s 2034, and there’s an upcoming general election in the UK. After nine years of soaring prices, racist riots and a financial crisis caused by climate shocks, an unpopular Labour government has just about clung on, kept in power by a fragmented party system more than anything else. Reform has lost its shine after running austerity councils and scandal-ridden mayoralties, and is still splitting the conservative vote with a Tory party on life support.
But in the background, the new left party led by Zarah Sultana has been quietly rising. In an electoral alliance, Sultana’s party and the Greens won 40 seats in 2029, and their cost-of-living focused, anti-establishment agendas are popular with the electorate.
It’s 10pm on polling day. A shock ripples through the country. The exit poll predicts a small majority for the left alliance. Thousands take to the streets in celebration. Within a week, Sultana is prime minister, and we enjoy a huge moment of euphoria. What next?
This is where most people wake up, at the high point of the dream. We tend not to think about the nightmarish second act: actually governing from the left.
Essential for any left party in government would be an enabling act - removing the (capital) pressure input to the leadership and allowing for the rapid (shock doctrine reversal) implementation of policies.
Hi Joe, this is the piece I've put in the Network for Independent Socialists ( Alan Story and I are members) internal Facebook page. Why don't you register and come along to the NOIS webinar on why we need to democratise the new Left Party tomorrow at 7 pm?
I read this article yesterday & it confirms my fear about an electoralist Party. The Left has not done anything but embarrass itself in elections since the breakup of the Communist Party after the Hungarian uprising in 1956, because it keeps 'jumping the gun', to raise it's profile in the volatile, unpolitical, atmosphere of a General Election, a time when well-funded voices with unlimited media access are working at a level of dark arts, manipulation of opinion around simplistic narratives, accusatory forays against rivals, all in a shouty, pantomime atmosphere. Participating in these kinds of elections, especially under the FPTP system, does not challenge the Capitalist system effectively, does not get socialist ideas about an alternative society significantly better understood, does not hold the bourgeois parties to account or force them to answer pertinent questions, nor does it help build the participating organisations' capacity to become a political force that working class and oppressed people feel they recognise themselves in, and believe they can contribute to and use to improve their lives. The 95% of the time, when this society is not being subjected to this discredited process of electioneering, is when opinion polls show us what people believe in and want to see changed, and this is when a serious Party with a long-term strategy can build trust, confidence, awareness, and hope. When this huge machine of manipulating consent for oligarchic rule is running at full speed, that same Party will inevitably be outgunned, outspent, outshouted, denounced, and mocked with much fanfare. My view of this will only change when FPTP is abolished and a Socialist Party has a membership approaching 6 figures and a consistent polling support above 20%.