EXACTLY how underconfident do you have to be in the strength and integrity of your own party’s political platforms to go into a tailspin at the mere hint that a new party might be forming?

I am not wading here into the great debate about whether a new left party formed and/or led by Jeremy Corbyn and/or Zarah Sultana (or neither) is a threat to the future of the Labour Party. Any political wounding of the Labour Party has already been entirely self-inflicted. After all, if you decide that a peaceful, paint-throwing anti-genocide group is as great a threat to national security as the Moldovian neonazi terrorist Maniacs Murder Cult, then you deserve what’s coming.

But now the flap is also on this side of the Atlantic, on the heels of an announcement by multibillionaire Elon Musk that he intends to create a new political party and challenge the US two-party duopoly.

Whether the erratic Musk will actually achieve any such thing with his unimaginatively named America Party is highly debatable. But all the same, any hint of a threat to the political stranglehold of Democrats and Republicans immediately elicits fears of a “spoiler” ruining their chances of future electoral success.

This is the accusation still pointed at left-wing lawyer and consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who ran for US president four times, most notoriously in 2000 during the contest between Republican George W Bush and Democrat Al Gore when Nader was the Green Party candidate.

When Bush narrowly won the state of Florida over Gore, pushing the final result in his favour, fingers were pointed at Nader for eroding votes from the Democratic side and costing Gore the presidency. But more registered Democrats in Florida voted for Bush than there were votes for Nader in that state. If anyone should have been asked “what were you thinking” it was those Democratic defectors.

Today, some Democratic Party grandees are rushing to distance themselves from the trouncing that socialist Zohran Mamdani, who ran as a Democrat, just gave the party’s preferred candidate, disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, in the recent Democratic primary for New York City mayor.

A few progressive New York Democrats have endorsed Mamdani. But the most senior members of the delegation, including its governor and the state’s two senators, minority leader Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, have been notably noncommittal. (Schumer might have been too busy getting his photo taken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who just spent four days in Washington DC meeting President Trump and other political leaders.)

There has been no endorsement for Mamdani either from New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the US house minority leader. Jeffries, like Schumer, is one of the biggest recipients of Israel lobby money in Congress, in his case “$1.3 million and counting” according to AIPAC Tracker, which monitors contributions to elected officials from the zionist lobby.

Much like the Labour Party in Britain, US Democrats are too busy looking left rather than right, and seem far more frightened of the progressive flank of their own party than the rise of fascism in the Republican ranks. Unlike Labour, however, the Democrats are yet to purge socialists from their ranks; they simply run challengers against them in primaries.

The concerns about Musk’s political ambitions should centre less on the prospect of a third party — a healthy sign that democracy might actually be alive and well in the US — but on the fact that the world’s richest man could be about to buy his way back into the White House. After all, it was his almost quarter-of-a-billion-dollar contribution that helped Trump regain the presidency in last November’s election.

The South African-born Musk won’t be able to run for US president, though, a right reserved under the constitution for US-born citizens. But his politics, such as they can be divined, are potentially dangerous. We all remember the Nazi salute and the heartless firing of thousands of federal workers by the Department of Government Efficiency that Musk led during his time inside the White House.

Trump has already bristled at Musk’s political ambitions, claiming his former right-hand man has gone “off the rails,” and calling a new party “ridiculous,” a schism many saw as inevitable when you put two — and too many — narcissists in the Oval Office.

Musk’s “third party” may never take off, but independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders may still be hoping to jump-start a new socialist movement as he criss-crosses the country on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.

Sanders has not talked specifically about forming a new party, but he famously chastised the Democrats after their defeat last November, saying: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

Nader, meanwhile, continues to push for a third party that is disentangled from the control of corporate America. “We have a two-party duopoly that has huge fences around itself, erected by the corporate-conflicted political and media consultants,” Nader told Mother Jones in an interview last year. But, he added: “The problem with these third parties, compared to those in the 19th century, is they don’t come from the people.”

That is where Dan Osborn comes in. The blue-collar union leader ran for US Senate as a Nebraska independent in the last general election, losing narrowly to his Republican opponent (the Democrats did not field anyone to challenge him).

Osborn, a mechanic by trade, has announced he will try again in a run for the state’s other Senate seat. “It’s going to be the CEO versus the guy from the shop floor,” said Osborn, who believes working-class Nebraskans will relate to a candidate who knows “what it’s like to punch a clock.”

As for a new left party in Britain, Labour supporters have been quick to sound the “spoiler” alert, warning it will send votes to Reform by splitting the left. But you can’t exactly pull left-leaning voters from a party that has abandoned all semblance of socialism. They are already long gone.

Some of them have headed to the Green Party, which clearly sees an advantage in Labour’s implosion, whether or not a new socialist party arises from those ashes.

“There’s a huge political void,” said Green Party deputy leader, Zack Polanski, who is running for party leader, and who identifies as a socialist, when we spoke last month before Sultana’s controversy-inducing announcement that she and Corbyn had been chosen to lead the creation of a new party on the left.

“The Labour Party have very noticeably been captured now by corporate capital. I think anyone who’s staying in the Labour Party to fight needs to consider what their theory of change is. After Corbyn stepped down, the rules have changed. There is no way there can be another left-wing leader of the Labour Party,” Polanski said.

“Since then, we’ve had hundreds of essentially right-wing lobbyists who are now Labour MPs who will make sure that the Labour Party never stands up for working-class and marginalised communities,” he added.

That responsibility now lies with those who can convince their electorates on both sides of the Atlantic that they represent the needs and values of working people, repudiate genocide and stand for genuine social reform and a society that is fair, just and equitable.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.