What is a political party for the Left?
Sacha Ismail
Platypus Review 188 | July–August 2026
On March 25, 2026, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted the panel “What is a political party for the Left?” at University College London. Platypus member William Tuckley Byrne moderated the panel. The speakers were Hau-Yu Tam (co-chair of Greens Organize, a caucus in the UK Green Party), Baris Graham (Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee)), and Lorenzo Marconi (student at Kings College London). The prepared opening remarks of the fourth panelist, Sacha Ismail (Green Party Trade Union Group), were read aloud in absentia, and they are presented here.[1]
Panel description
The question of a specifically Leftist political party seems once again to be on the table — most recently spurred by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s launch of “Your Party,” and the recent by-election success of the Greens under the leadership of “Left populist” Zack Polanski. The “party” question has been raised several times already in the 21st century: the neo-anarchism of Occupy, Left populist movements in Greece and Spain, as well as the Sanders and Corbyn electoral campaigns for social democracy. These too point to a deeper history of the question of politics for the Left: Chartism and the emergence of the “proletarian party,” the conflict between anarchists and Marxists in the First International on the question of social vs. political action, the mass social democratic parties centralized in the Second International, Lenin’s vanguard “party of a new type,” up to the counterculture and social movements of the New Left. It may seem like it has never not been “party time” — and when it hasn’t, “the struggle continues” elsewhere, indefinitely. What does it mean to have a political party for the Left? Toward what ends? Who or what should we look back to for inspiration? What is there to learn from recent political defeats? How would a new party differ from the Labour Party? Does the Left need politics?
Opening remarks
I’VE BEEN A REVOLUTIONARY socialist activist for about 25 years. My main party political activity right now is in the Green Party of England and Wales; I’m active in the Party in Wandsworth, in southwest London, and in the Green Party Trade Union Group, for which I’m Policy and Education Officer. I was previously a member of the socialist organization Workers’ Liberty, with whom I share many political ideas and reference points. I’m active in the Green Party Trade Union Group because I see class as central to any meaningfully Leftist, let alone socialist, politics; and trade unionism as central to class struggle. I’m a member of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU)[3] because until recently I worked for London Fire Brigade, as a workplace fire-safety inspector. In a few weeks I’ll be starting a new job and joining a new union. Perhaps you could have me speak again in future and I’ll tell you more about that.
Why is class central to Left politics? And why, if I believe it is, am I in the Green Party, whose relationship to class politics is not at all clear?
We live in a capitalist society, divided into and driven by its division into classes. Under capitalism, any elements we have won of democracy — the idea and approach that defined the Left when the concepts of the political Left and Right first emerged in the French Revolution — are hemmed in, limited, stunted, and undermined by the power of capital, the power of the employing class, power over society and specifically over the majority who survive by selling their ability to work. A meaningfully Left-wing politics, committed to majorly expanding democracy, has to center questions of class power and socio-economic inequality, which in today’s world even social democracy largely does not do.
And a truly radical democratic Left politics, combining a consistent struggle for democratization with a consistent struggle to organize and assert the interests of the working class, needs to go further. It needs to develop a radical criticism of capitalism as a system, and advocacy of an alternative system resulting from working-class self-liberation. That is where Marxism begins.
I must admit to not having kept up with Platypus in recent years, but I seem to recall some of you at least are skeptical about the importance of workers’ organizations such as trade unions, or skeptical about their capacity to revive and radicalize — let alone become a driving force for socialism. That is partly understandable against the background of a movement that has weakened so comprehensively in the aftermath of so many defeats. But Marxism is to a great extent meaningless unless involved in attempts to help workers strengthen and develop their organizations and struggles. Trade unions, in turn, are not the whole of the workers’ movement but they remain central to it, and therefore central to any meaningfully Leftist political project.
I want a socialist political party heavily connected to the workers’ movement and workers’ struggles, seeking to organize a coherent drive — including in workplace and industrial class struggle, politically and ideologically — for the interests of workers and oppressed people, for radical democracy, against capitalism and for a new society in which workers’ interests, democracy, and human freedom can flourish. Clearly, the Green Party of England and Wales is not that. So why am I active in it?
There is no such party in the UK, or anything close to it. Although I am no longer a member of a revolutionary socialist organization, I think such groups are worthwhile, to a greater or lesser extent depending on their specific ideas, politics, and ways of organizing and educating. I very much see myself as part of the same movement as such organizations, and in dialogue with them. But they are not a party.
There are three real political parties of the Left in the UK: the Labour Party, the Green Party and, at a push, Your Party. I would argue that socialists, even Marxists, can usefully work in all of them.
The Labour Party, with its horrendous bureaucracy, deeply pro-capitalist and neoliberal leadership, and much degraded membership and social base, is on a number of levels not really a party of the Left at all. However it remains on other levels relatable to as a Left party: not only because of its still significant Left-wing membership, its Left-wing MPs and so on, but also because of its unparalleled connections to the trade-union movement. That is true not just in the sense of the direct affiliation of many of the most important unions, including Left-wing unions, to the Party; but also the political intertwining of the Labour and union worlds. The unions, or some of them, are the one place you will meet very significant numbers of activists who are at least broadly speaking Labour Left-wingers.
Certainly there is mass anger and disillusionment with Labour among union activists. But posing it as the unions vs. Labour is not very accurate, or is at best very partial. The Labour Party is shaped to a large extent by the fact that the unions typically substitute grumbling and grandstanding for an actual struggle against the Labour bureaucracy and Labour Right, and for a fight for their own policies, let alone for consistently pursued working-class interests. Both the unions I was, until recently, active in are affiliated to Labour. One, the FBU, is nonetheless, by the standards of the trade-union movement, pretty consistently Left-wing. In the other, UNISON, the members have just overthrown our previous general secretary, a lynchpin of Keir Starmerism, in favor of a rank-and-file Left-winger expelled from Labour — but who is nonetheless advocating for a fight against Starmer inside the Labour Party.[4]
So there are still certainly things to be done for Leftist, class, and even socialist politics in and around the Labour Party. Given the terrible state of the Party and fracturing of the broad Left, however, it is not a given that Labour is the right place for an individual socialist to be active. That’s particularly the case for those who, like me, found themselves bureaucratically excluded from the Labour Party. And now, with its surging Left-wing membership and support, including many young people and many who identify as socialist, the Green Party is also an important place to organize and argue.
The Green Party is not a class-based party even in the limited sense that Labour is or was. It comes from the Left wing of middle-class liberalism. It would be wrong to be overly schematic or doctrinaire about this, however. The Green Party is not, for want of a better term, an anchored bourgeois party, like, for instance, the Lib Dems.[5] With its surge in support its voter base has become significantly more working-class. Moreover with its surge in membership, very significant numbers of trade unionists and other kinds of working-class activists have joined the Party. The Green Party Trade Union Group, of which I am an officer, has experienced a parallel surge in membership, with thousands joining and groups forming in a variety of unions and industries. I don’t want to overplay any of this, but it is significant.
Despite the popularity of the label socialist in the Green Party, the political and ideological debate there is for the most part pretty rudimentary. Nonetheless it is, and is increasingly, a space in which one can debate with — while also organizing — large numbers of people who want to see a radically more democratic society, and in many cases aspire for democracy to go beyond capitalism. I don’t think socialists should sniff at that.
I have least to say about Your Party — both because unlike the Labour Party and the Green Party I have never been involved, and because it seems less important for the British Left by the day. Although my politics differ widely and on many points from those of Zarah Sultana and co., I think the victory of Jeremy Corbyn’s faction is a blow against the possibility of Your Party developing as a serious movement. It is also a blow against those who want to claim that Your Party is significantly more socialist than the Green Party. Nonetheless, I do not dismiss the possibility and usefulness of socialist organizing in Your Party either, given it still has tens of thousands of members across the country and a presence among Left-wing trade unionists.
Why, from a socialist point of view, should one organize in these parties? Firstly, to more effectively organize class struggle in a wide range of areas, which cannot be done effectively without a political dimension. In place of sneering at other sections of the Left and remaining in political silos, as is far too often the case at the moment, we need unity between organizations and activists in the Green Party, the Labour Party, Your Party, the unions, and beyond to help workers and oppressed people organize and fight on a wide variety of issues, from the decline in real wages to the gutting of public services, from mounting restrictions on democratic rights to the dire climate emergency. In the context of a continued, aggressive capitalist drive to undermine living standards and rights, and the continued rise of the far Right, such united organizing and struggle is extremely important defensively; but it goes for offensive struggles too. It is necessary to win defensively and eventually go on a general offensive. It is worth adding that even if we did have a large revolutionary socialist party, in fact even if it had a majority of the working class supporting it, the need for united-front organizing and struggles would not disappear.
And secondly, how will we go beyond such struggles, to even put winning socialism back on the agenda of discussion, let alone move to a point where we can actually win it? Only by intersecting Marxist debate with discussions taking place in living workers’ and other social movements, and among significant numbers of active people. And only by testing our ideas in the fire of struggles, which also means testing them in the relationships — both cooperative and argumentative — of the widest possible sections of the Left.
The fact that there is no clear path to a mass, class-based, socialist party is not a reason to withdraw from either class-struggle organizing or really existing Left political movements. It is an argument to keep taking opportunities to organize wherever we can, and meanwhile develop and test our ideas and arguments in the course of the struggle.
I want to conclude by flagging up a few outline ideas for the kind of party we need; also therefore providing measures for the different existing parties and parts of the Left and guides to what we should do in them:
(1) It should be a party oriented to supporting the rights and struggles of the exploited and oppressed, with parliamentary and electoral politics firmly subordinated to this. Its leaders and representatives in politics should not get material privileges significantly different from those of the rank-and-file members.
(2) Developing this consistently, it should fight for socialism: the overthrow of capitalism by the workers’ movement and its replacement with a new, far more democratic system based on collective ownership, production for need, and a sustainable relationship with nature. That obviously implies opposition to all forms of Stalinism and bureaucratic “socialism.”
(3) It should be an internationalist party, emphasizing and seeking to realize the common interests and struggles of the exploited and oppressed in every country. That implies consistent anti-imperialism rather than “campist” politics opposing only some imperialists.
(4) It should seek a strong relationship with the workers’ movement, including the trade-union movement, whatever exact form that takes.
(5) As a necessary condition for meaningfully anti-capitalist and socialist struggle and politics, it should be a democratic party, controlled by its members, and not by a bureaucracy or by politicians.
(6) It should seek to develop a culture of debate and education among its members, taking theory and history, as well as immediate politics, seriously.
(7) It should approach the world in a rational, free-thinking, scientific spirit, seeking to vigorously criticize established ideas and approaches, both those coming from the capitalist mainstream and, as necessary, those coming from the Left. |P
[1] Video of the panel is available at <https://youtu.be/NhDgp0WNjSs>.
[2] The FBU is a union for firefighters and emergency-services workers; it was founded in 1918.
[3] UNISON is the largest trade union in the UK; it was formed in 1993 via the merger of the National and Local Government Officers Association, the National Union of Public Employees, and the Confederation of Health Service Employees.
[4] In UNISON’s 2025 general-secretary election, Andrea Egan defeated the incumbent Christina McAnea.
[5] The Liberal Democrats is a political party in the UK; it was founded in 1988.
