The turbulence faced by the UK’s left has come to a head this year, with disillusionment with the Labour Government leaving the country without a mainstream left party. The emergence of Your Party and new leadership of the Green Party have seen the left reinvigorated; while Labour panders to the right and falls to its lowest ever support, Corbyn, Sultana and Polanski are steadfast in confronting Reform and its figureheads and taking socialist values seriously again.
To understand the state of UK left politics amid Labour’s slow demise, Your Party’s awkward start and the Green Party’s surging popularity, I’ve drawn on the opportunities I’ve had to speak with Warwickshire Green councillor Sam Jones, and Hillhead Councillor Seonad Hoy, who recently defected from the Scottish Greens to Your Party.
While Labour saw a landslide victory in the 2024 general election, the party lost seats to three of the record six newly elected independent MPs. These three, alongside Iqbal Mohamed and the now independent Jeremy Corbyn, formed the independent alliance in September 2024 in a bid for more speaking time in parliament and in protest against austerity, the two-child benefit cap, and arms sales by the UK government to Israel. Rumours of the alliance’s intention to launch a new political party were confirmed in July 2025 when Zarah Sultana left Labour and joined the alliance, leading to the official announcement of Your Party – as an interim name – later that month.
Unfortunately, the party’s brief existence has seen confusion around the launch of a membership portal, public disagreement, threats of legal action between members, and a lack of concrete policies. This has been exacerbated by inconsistent positions on, among other things, trans rights among party members, although plans exist for a November inaugural conference and reported leadership contest in March 2026, with Corbyn announcing the party had reached 50,000 members as of November 3rd.
The Green Party has had two remarkably successful months, climbing ahead of every party except Reform in voting intention polls.
The other significant rising force in UK left politics is the Green Party, emerging to the forefront in approximately two months of Zack Polanski’s leadership. A former theatre actor, hypnotherapist, Lib Dem, one-time Corbyn heckler, arrested Extinction Rebellion protestor and deputy leader of the Green Party, Polanski won the leadership election with a landslide – 85% of votes. He has been a relentless communicator ever since, launching a political broadcast explaining the party’s proposed wealth tax and explicitly targeting the ultra-rich as the drivers of both the climate and cost of living crises.
Notably, not only has policy not shifted dramatically from the previous leadership, it also only varies slightly from views orated by Your Party representatives, which are the best current indication of its future policies. The Green Party has had two remarkably successful months, climbing ahead of every party except Reform in voting intention polls and creating a bizarre situation with a wildly unpopular Labour Government, a slightly more unpopular Conservative opposition, and more dramatically opposing populist parties leading voting intention polls with surging membership.
Both Your Party and The Greens have substantial membership, with over 50,000 and over 150,000 respectively; this places the Greens ahead of Conservatives. Polling suggests significant support for the leftist parties, primarily the Greens, particularly concentrated among younger demographics.
There exists commonality between these left parties and Reform in their acknowledgment of the establishment parties’ continued failure and persistent promise to primarily address basic issues of wellbeing and affordability among the population. Where Reform takes an exclusionary approach citing mass immigration as a detrimental factor, both emerging parties call this scapegoating and target establishment parties’ failure to address dramatically growing wealth inequality as the factor necessitating their replacement.
There exists commonality between these left parties and Reform.
Referring to the numbers, while Reform lead in membership, the addition of over 100,000 members to the Greens and Your Party suggest a persistent appetite for Left representation in government. At a glance, the right vote seems more unified than the left with Reform outnumbering either emergent Left party, but current opinion doesn’t guarantee electoral results; with a Holyrood election due in May of next year, and a Westminster election potentially not taking place until August of 2029, it’s very presumptive to assume we’ll see current opinion polls reflected exactly.
We’ve seen suggestions of collaboration from representatives of both the Greens and Your Party, and as Councillor Jones pointed out, Reform doesn’t have guaranteed longevity, with at least the Warwickshire Conservative strategy being to hope the incumbent 19-year-old Reform council leader George Finch drops the ball and allows the Conservative party to re-insert itself as an option.
The emergence and reinvigoration of Your Party and The Greens respectively show a willingness to represent real Left values regardless of who leads the polls or forms the government, and the skyrocketing membership indicates the prevailing demand for this representation, with the capacity to cancel out or even outweigh Reform’s steering of the Overton Window in the post-Conservative era.
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