The Labour Party has lost our trust so what can we do? | Mike Sivier | Vox Political | 18 Mar 2025
The Labour Party has lost our trust so what can we do?
Can another party of the Left arise in time to make a difference?
For many people, the end came with Liz Kendall’s betrayal of Labour’s contract with people who don’t have a job and cannot work.
Despite what its ministers have been saying lately, Labour is not the Party of Working People – it should be the Party of Working-Class People, in whatever capacity they currently exist.
I went back and looked up the party’s founding principles, when it was originally formed in 1900 by trade unions, socialist groups, and cooperative societies to represent the working class in Parliament.
Its core founding principles were:
Representation of Labour Interests – Giving political voice to the working class, particularly through trade unions;
Social Justice – Advocating for fair wages, workers’ rights, and better living conditions;
Public Ownership – Supporting nationalization of key industries and services;
Democratic Socialism – Balancing socialist ideals with democratic governance; and
Equality and Welfare – Promoting policies for social security, healthcare, and education.
As you can see (because I have italicised them), the party exists partly due to a will to create better living conditions for working class people with policies for social security, among its other purposes.
Liz Kendall’s announcement about sickness and disability benefits betrays that purpose because it deliberately undermines the living conditions of working class people by removing the social security safety net.
She might say she is preventing abuse of the system by malingerers, but the bald truth is that there aren’t any malingerers who are abusing the system – or at least, not enough to justify changing the benefit system to push them out.
So it’s another big lie.
And in any case, we know that the top one per cent of wealth owners have profited massively from the last 14 years of Tory rule – and the last 46 years of neoliberal ideological ascendance. They are the prime group for plunder, if Labour politicians need to extract money from a particular group.
Not only does it help relieve the huge disparity between the wealth of the billionaires and the poverty of the poorest, but it inflicts far less harm; benefit claimants have to spend all their money, simply to survive, while the super-rich would not feel any decline at all in their living standards, if one per cent of their enormous wealth was taxed off them.
And that’s a third big lie.
I don’t want to support a party of liars. Do you?
Maybe you hope the party could reclaim its original purpose with different leadership?
Not without difficulty. The party stepped back from centrism/neoliberalism under Jeremy Corbyn, focusing on wealth redistribution, public ownership, and protecting the most vulnerable – but there was a huge pushback from the Establishment, using the mass media, with a concerted effort to portray him as an anti-Semite in the face of facts that clearly showed he was the opposite. Remember?
The way Corbyn was vilified illustrates how deeply entrenched neoliberalism has become in UK politics, with the Establishment—including the mainstream media, corporate interests, and even many within Labour itself—fiercely resisting any challenge to their dominance.
And Keir Starmer spent years purging the party of anybody with left-wing leanings, replacing them with more neoliberals like him. Any left-wing resurgence would be met by similar resistance and if he were to step down for any reason, he would certainly be replaced by a clone.
But Labour’s day is done.
Sure, the party won a landslide at the 2024 election but with a dramatically reduced number of supporters, it was arguably a victory by default rather than genuine enthusiasm—more a rejection of the Tories than an endorsement of Starmer’s vision.
Labour had lost the confidence of left-wing voters. They are now looking for a new political home.
Mr Corbyn is now the nominal leader of a left-wing Independent group in Parliament, and more politicians are going Independent all the time. This suggests that the left in the UK isn’t disappearing—it’s just looking for a new vehicle.
The challenge, of course, is that the electoral system makes it incredibly difficult for independents and smaller left-wing parties to gain power at scale. But if enough MPs break away and grassroots movements continue to grow, there’s a real possibility of a more substantial left-wing alternative emerging outside of Labour.
I have a few ideas about the form such an alternative might take – but that’s a story for another article.
ALSO SEE:
A Very Short History of the Labour Party | Ed Selkirk Ford | The Constitution Society | 4 Dec 2024
“Given the many groups who are part of Labour’s coalition, attempts at structural reform are likely to continue. However, given the bitterness of factional infighting, and the huge reputational costs that such navel-gazing imposes, particularly on a party in power, Labour’s leadership and activists alike would be well advised to let these matters rest for the moment. The status quo won’t hold forever, though. As society and politics continue to evolve, so too does the broad and frequently unwieldy political coalition of the Labour Party. The history of the Labour Party is a modern history of British politics, and one which remains unfinished.”
History of the Labour Party (UK) | Wiki
The Labour Party’s origins lie in the growth of the urban proletariat in the late 19th century and the extension of the franchise to working-class males, when it became apparent that there was a need for a political party to represent the interests and needs of those groups.[4]
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