THE fate of Your Party, the left force in British politics struggling to be born, has preoccupied many in recent days. 

In capitalist societies, political parties represent definite class interests. 

A mass party of the left could represent grassroots movements for housing, health and welfare rights and give political voice to the millions marching for peace and Palestine. It could catalyse a mass movement against the far right and racism on Britain’s streets.

As Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s founding statement has made clear, to do so it must be rooted in communities, trade unions and social movements.

In Britain, with six million workers organised in trade unions, it can be argued that a political relationship with organised labour is a prerequisite for a mass party of the left and that the examples of so many previous failures is the proof of that. 

Yet, surprisingly perhaps, there appears to be comparatively little engagement between Your Party and elected representatives of trade unions.

Unmoored from organised labour, any party seeking to represent working-class concerns risks being torn apart by centrifugal forces. Hopium is no substitute for working-class organisation. 

Fortuitously, the recent TUC Congress in Brighton provides a more positive counterpoint to the general reactionary tide of politics in Britain. 

Earlier this month, Britain’s trade unions voted by a decisive majority to reverse previous TUC policy to support increased defence spending and instead prioritised campaigns for public investment in Britain’s public services, decimated by austerity. 

The TUC voted to deepen links between the trade union movement and anti-racist organisations and unanimously called on the British government to immediately end all arms trade and military collaboration with Israel. 

Of course, TUC resolutions have a history of failing to make it from words into action. But there has rarely been a time when the policies of so many trade unions are at odds with the party they founded to represent them 125 years ago. 

If there ever was a moment for a new party of the left to take up the challenge of politically representing demands of trade unionists, this would seem to be it. 

A royal toast to US capitalist control

LAST Wednesday’s lavish, taxpayer-funded state banquet saw Donald Trump and the elite of US capitalism wined and dined by Charles Windsor in the castle whose name his family took nearly 100 years ago. 

Stephen Schwarzman, boss of Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity fund with over $1.2 trillion in assets, sat between Keir Starmer and BAE Systems boss Charles Woodburn. 

The National Grid’s Paula Reynolds rubbed shoulders with Vivian Hunt of UnitedHealth, possibly the only corporation less popular than a British utilities giant. 

US tech giants were represented by Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Ruth Porat of Alphabet/Google. 

Further down the pecking order, Morgan McSweeney sat next to Rupert Murdoch — Peter Mandelson’s absence, like Banquo’s ghost, a mere discomforting memory. 

What brought these bankers, spies and oligarchs together was the £150 billion US buy-up of Britain, more even than the US achieved under previous Tory administrations. 

Blackstone committed to invest £100bn in the next 10 years in British private equity deals, real estate and credit. 

Microsoft plans to spend £22bn by 2028 building AI infrastructure, including Britain’s largest new supercomputer. Nvidia will invest £500 million in cloud computing, giving Britain the largest AI computing power in Europe. 

Locking Britain into US technology and investment dependency is a US strategic goal in its battle with China for global AI dominance. 

US AI software company Palantir will invest £1.5bn in Britain by 2029 and won a £750m extension to a Ministry of Defence contract.

The party at Windsor Castle to celebrate a US takeover of Britain tells us all we need to know about the vacuum of political representation for working-class people in Britain.