JEREMY CORBYN says the Palestine solidarity movement is a game changer in British politics.

“The Palestine movement is absolutely huge. And like the movement against the Vietnam war of the 1960s, which had a huge impact on political thinking — the rather fossilised structure of both major parties started to disintegrate after that — it means things have to change.”

It’s one of the reasons he says the time is right for a new mass party of the left. “Your Party,” as it is provisionally known, has its founding conference this weekend.

“In my estimation at least two million people in Britain have done something about Palestine over the past 18 months — attend demonstrations, marches, meetings, sent emails, signed petitions.

“A lot of people are coming together on Palestine and at all the Palestine events I’ve been at there’s been a huge interest in the idea of a new party.”

Corbyn, meeting the Morning Star in his Westminster office, isn’t saying one issue would be enough to build a mass movement for change on — but the immense public anger at our Establishment’s complicity in a genocide is a galvanising moment.

One that comes at a time ripe for Labour to be challenged from the left.

“Labour has lost all appeal to the radical sections of the population.” And that, today, means a lot of people.

“Nobody really believes the left are going to be back in power in the Labour Party, because of the structural changes Starmer has brought in,” says Corbyn. Changes everyone knows are intended to prevent anything like Corbyn’s own 2015-20 leadership of the party happening ever again.

“Now is the time for a left party in the tradition of the labour movement. That is where I see myself. I am not leaving the labour movement. I am helping form a political party which will be part of the labour movement.

“We must challenge the ‘triopoly’ of the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems on political, social, environmental and economic thinking. They all believe in austerity, they all believe in market economics, they’re all running away from addressing the environmental crisis and on social justice issues.

“Labour had a ‘loveless landslide’ just over a year ago in the election. A spectacularly low vote for a party moving into government.” Corbyn points out that, while “we didn’t win either election, I fully appreciate that,” the highest Labour votes at general elections this century were both under his leadership, in 2017 and 2019. An important reminder that the idea socialist policies are unpopular at the ballot box is a media-manufactured myth.

Since coming to power Starmer’s government has been “disastrous. Maintaining the two-child benefit cap [finally lifted a day after we spoke], trying to take away the winter fuel allowance, attempting to remove personal independence payments from disabled people.”

On housing, he slams Labour’s refusal to take on the private rental sector or stand up to for-profit builders, who have a stranglehold on construction and resist efforts to include social and council housing in new builds.

He also ties the government’s decision to ramp up military spending to “effective cuts to every other area of public spending.” The government claims it’s increasing spending on the NHS, but he points out that two hospitals near him in north London are cutting spending by £20 million — and all over the country similar cuts are taking place across hospital trusts.

The increased military budget covers “a new generation of nuclear weapons and for the first time since the 1960s airborne nuclear bombs being stationed in Britain. There is no agenda for anything other than war.” And back to the trigger issue, Gaza: “A Labour government has carried on selling arms to Israel while a genocide is going on.”

The appetite for a party that will challenge all this is obvious. But a lot has changed on the British left since Your Party was first announced in July. Most notably, under a new leader, Zack Polanski, the Greens have shifted dramatically left and exploded in size, with many of those joining believed to be from the same 800,000 people who expressed interest in Your Party. Is another left party needed in that context, and isn’t the left becoming a crowded field?

“I want to be part of a socialist party — one fundamentally about social and economic transformation. I agree with a lot of what the Greens say, especially on environmental issues, and will work with them. Just last night I was working with the Greens on an amendment to the English Devolution Bill.

“But this is at root about public ownership and workers’ control.

“A crowded field? Well, the first-past-the-post system does mean a crowded field gives opportunities for smaller parties — with four or five credible candidates in any constituency you could conceivably be elected on less than 25 per cent of the vote.

“That wouldn’t be democratic and I will be proposing Your Party has a serious constitutional commission to look at the electoral system.” Such a commission would also look at electing Britain’s head of state and reviewing the royal prerogative, abolishing the House of Lords and bringing in an assembly of nations and regions, he says. And it’s true PR would allow left-of-centre parties to complement rather than compete with each other.

Polanski’s appeal is seen as one reason the original 800,000 expressions of interest in Your Party have “only” translated into 50,000 paid-up members — though we should keep that in perspective: it is still the first socialist party to hit 50,000 since the Communist Party of Great Britain’s 1940s peak membership, and it is only just being launched.

But others have been turned off by reports of bitter infighting at the top of Your Party, controversies over how democratic its mass meetings are and how its conference is being organised — particularly the use of sortition, in which representatives are randomly selected from the membership, rather than a delegate structure with elected attendees.

“There’s no handbook to forming a new political party,” Corbyn reflects. “We’re hamstrung by GDPR regulations on handing out data, and that’s been a bone of contention.

“On a ‘democratic deficit,’ we don’t yet have a branch structure. So people can turn up in various places and say, ‘we’re the Your Party branch.’ In one city in the north this happened, but a lot of people who’d signed up didn’t even know the meeting was taking place.”

Your Party’s provisional leadership could not legally hand over data to self-declared branches, or verify that these even represented paid-up members. Some also applied their own criteria on who to include and exclude, obstacles to a representative delegate-based conference.

Corbyn is confident that the mass meetings have engaged a huge number of people in the founding process, and stresses that the party is still being shaped.

“Maybe we’ve let the consultation process run too long, but now we’re having the conference. And then we’ll be establishing branches in geographical areas.” Future conferences will include elected delegates, he believes, but he doesn’t rule out a role for sortition in selecting part of those attending, arguing it can help democratise conferences by bringing in voices who don’t thrust themselves to the front of the queue.

But the infighting? Two MPs originally associated with the project, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed, have announced their departure from the project already.

“Social media can be a poisonous place and it can bring out the worst in some people,” Corbyn says heavily. “I deeply regret some of the issues that have arisen — raking over the coals isn’t going to solve them.”

He rejects the idea that “social conservatives” would be unwelcome in Your Party — “I’m not entirely sure what ‘social conservatism’ is supposed to mean. But if the left can’t reach beyond its comfort zone we aren’t going to succeed as a party. We’ve got to be respectful of differences of opinion in many areas, while focusing on core areas: economic and social justice, peace and disarmament, environmental sustainability — and community organising.”

Corbyn wants Your Party to be building local alliances, including with trade unions, to campaign on issues from housing to cuts. “We have to be the antidote to Reform in every community.

“Reform turn up, list the problems that are there on housing and health and education and so on, and blame it all on refugees. It’s complete nonsense.” He rejects the Labour right’s charge that a focus on street politics made Labour under his leadership “a party of protest” rather than of power. “We can build power through protest.”

That’s why, when I ask where he sees Your Party at the milestones of next year’s local elections and the next general election in (we presume) 2029, his first response is to stress that a movement must be built by ongoing activity locally, which doesn’t make everything about electoral politics.

“I want every Your Party branch to be holding one open public event in their community every month — talk about housing, health, mental health, jobs.”

He’s hopeful it will be ready to stand a lot of candidates in May, but dismisses a query as to whether the slogan that once united almost the whole British left — Jeremy Corbyn for PM — has a future. “We’re going to avoid the politics of personality. I’m determined to get this thing up and running, and use whatever experience I have in helping it succeed.

“We’re in a good position now, a lot of people are coming to the conference, we have a programme for discussing the papers that have been put forward on the basis of the deliberative meetings around the country.

“I hope it inspires people.”