MANY ISSUES need to be overcome if the new party of the left launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana is to realise its potential.

That potential can scarcely be doubted; 800,000 sign-ups in a few weeks underlines that the perceived gap in British politics for a socialist alternative to centrism and nationalism is no mere invention of overheated political imaginations.

One issue seems particularly germane. It is assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the period of Corbyn’s leadership of Labour from 2015 to 2020.

Sultana has done a service in starting that discussion, via an interview with New Left Review. That is irrespective of the merits of the particular points she raised. A willingness to learn lessons from a recent dramatic period in the history of the British left, more or less heroic but definitely ending in defeat, is essential.

She has ruffled a few feathers, however. Criticism, however well-intentioned, can wound. Nevertheless, disturbing the most elegant plumage is a requirement for a healthy socialist movement.

It is argued that the defeat of “Corbynism” was over-determined by objective circumstances — the virulent opposition of most Labour MPs to their elected leader; the manoeuvring of a poisoned party apparatus, the media smears, the intrigues of the security services, the hostility of the City of London and so on.

And that is so. It is hard to conjure up an alternative universe in which, all those things being as they were, Corbyn could have prevailed.

Of course, we nearly won an election in June 2017. But thereafter, the project lost the advantage of surprise, of not being taken fully seriously by our enemies. Once their full weight was brought to bear, we were outgunned. My own reflections on this were published in 2022 in Is Socialism Possible in Britain? (Verso).

To take a somewhat grandiose historical parallel — the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871 was all but inevitable, determined by the mismatch between the Commune’s military resources and those of bourgeois Versailles.

Yet that did not inhibit generations of socialists, with Karl Marx in the van, from dissecting the errors made by the Communards. He believed it erred in not seizing the gold from the vaults of the Bank of France, by not marching on Versailles when the bourgeoisie was on the back foot, by not extirpating the old state machine sufficiently and generally failing to generate a unified political leadership and strategy.

That process of criticism did not detract from solidarity with the Commune at the time, nor from honouring its glorious historical example afterwards.

So, in that spirit, here is Sultana: “We have to build on the strengths of Corbynism — its energy, mass appeal and bold policy platform — and we also have to recognise its limitations. It capitulated to the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, which famously equates it with anti-zionism, and which even its lead author, Kenneth Stern, has now publicly criticised.

“It triangulated on Brexit, which alienated huge numbers of voters. It abandoned mandatory reselection of MPs for the trigger ballot compromise, keeping many of the party’s undemocratic structures in place.

“It didn’t make a real effort to channel its mass membership into the labour movement or tenants’ unions, which would have enriched the party’s social base.

“When it came under attack from the state and the media, it should have fought back, recognising that these are our class enemies. But instead, it was frightened and far too conciliatory. This was a serious mistake. If we’re contesting state power, we’re going to face a major backlash, and we need to have the institutional resilience to withstand it. You cannot give these people an inch.”

Are these criticisms — which, note, are aimed at the whole Corbyn movement and not at Jeremy personally — fair?

On Brexit, undoubtedly. Sultana speaks of “triangulation” and, indeed, for much of 2019 Labour was left without any coherent policy on the main issue of the day. When it eventually landed on one, it was a defence of the status quo rejected in the 2016 referendum — either “remain” or an exit deal which would have aligned Britain very closely with Brussels.

This blew apart the 2017 electoral alliance and lost Labour seats exactly where many predicted at the time. That was the stance of most of the shadow cabinet, including Corbyn’s closest comrades.

More than any other single factor, Brexit sank “Corbynism.” The divisions which the issue aroused within the coalition of progressive voters remain both latent and potent, albeit largely transferred to other questions.

It is also true that Corbyn-era reforms of Labour’s own democracy and machinery were relatively small and, of course, swiftly reversed. Corbyn did not have a majority on Labour’s national executive until spring 2018, and thereafter divisions within his support hamstrung efforts at wider change.

The main factor here was the fear of a mass breakaway by Labour MPs, which could have immediately sunk Labour’s electoral prospects and even, in extremis, deprived Corbyn of his role as Leader of the Opposition in the Commons.

Mandatory reselection, probably more than anything else, could have pushed wavering MPs over the edge. Nor did most unions support the change.

Perhaps those anxieties were exaggerated. In the event, no right-wing Labour MPs were even removed by the milder trigger ballots. But it is certainly plausible to argue that the PLP nettle should have been grasped.

However, Corbyn himself was reluctant to take decisive action until and unless there was a consensus among his team, a happy event which naturally seldom occurred.

There are always those who can mount cogent arguments in favour of postponing any battle, and that usually prevailed — see, for example, the interminable vacillations in trying to deal with Tom Watson, Corbyn’s disloyal deputy.

Sultana’s point about the unions and tenants’ organisations speaks to real issues around class formation and the unity of socialists with the masses. It was not decisive in Corbynism’s defeat, but it is an issue the new party will have to grapple with.

Then there is anti-semitism. Probably the most controversial element of Corbyn’s leadership, although how many votes it cost Labour in 2019 is speculative — many fewer than Brexit for sure. The issue has only been inflamed and radicalised since by the Gaza genocide.

Corbyn is absolutely right to say he resisted agreeing to the examples appended to the IHRA definition of anti-semitism down to the wire, largely on the grounds that they were designed to stifle criticism of Israel and zionism.

He is also right to say that almost all his supporters — at least at Labour NEC level — ultimately did not endorse his stance, and this at a time when he could rely on backing from the left in other respects.

The problem was that by the time the IHRA issue became red-hot, the argument over anti-semitism in Labour had already been lost by default. Corbyn himself was rightly angry and hurt by the personal charges against himself, but he did not champion any position his supporters could rally around.

One could have denounced the whole thing as a smear concocted by malicious forces and come out swinging, or one could have tried to address real evidence of anti-semitism in Labour, however small-scale — conspiracy theories, Holocaust minimisation — while rejecting any attempt to curb criticism of Israel.

The latter would have been better, but neither was consistently articulated. These failures certainly contributed to an overall impression of drifting leadership, even though there was no “winning” on an issue in which state interests were so heavily invested.

Today, demands that Corbyn, who has done more for the Palestinians than anyone else in the Commons, and suffered more as a consequence, now jump through linguistic hoops to prove his purity on the issue are insulting, divisive and absurd.

So was Corbynism “frightened and too conciliatory” as Sultana argues? It is a summary judgement which perhaps gives insufficient weight to the balance of forces in sundry respects.

At the same time, there was certainly a deficiency in terms of the Bolshevik spirit alongside surfeits of stoic endurance and tactical masterstrokes that never quite delivered. Fighting spirit is something Sultana brings to the party today, and it is a precious thing.

Nevertheless, Corbynism went down fighting. The issue this time is not to be defeated at all. For that, a mature reckoning with the recent past is important and while people can and will disagree with Sultana’s specific points, she should be commended for getting the ball rolling.