Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana form new UK political party: “Billionaires already have three parties fighting for them. It’s time the rest of us had one”

4 July, 2025

Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn, photo by  Leon Neal/Getty

Zarah Sultana has announced that she is forming a new UK political party with Jeremy Corbyn after resigning from Labour.

Sultana, who has served as MP for Coventry South since 2019, confirmed that she was quitting the Labour Party after 14 years last night (July 3).

It comes after she was stripped of the Labour whip last summer when she voted to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Sultana is also a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, and was its chairperson between 2020 to 2025.

“Today, after 14 years, I’m resigning from the Labour Party,” she began her letter. “Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other Independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.”

Suntana continued: “Westminster is broken but the real crisis is deeper. Just 50 families now own more wealth than half the UK population. Poverty is growing, inequality is obscene and the two-party system offers nothing but managed decline and broken promises.

“A year ago, I was suspended by the Labour Party for voting to abolish the two-child benefit cap and lift 400,000 children out of poverty. I’d do it again. I voted against scrapping winter fuel payments for pensioners. I’d do it again.

“Now, the government wants to make disabled people suffer; they just can’t decide how much.”

She added: “Meanwhile, a billionaire-backed grifter [Nigel Farage] is leading the polls [with Reform UK], because Labour has completely failed to improve people’s lives. And across the political establishment, from Farage to Starmer, they smear people of conscience trying to stop a genocide in Gaza as terrorists.

“But the truth is clear: this government is an active participant in genocide. And the British people oppose it. We are not going to take this anymore.

“We’re not an island of strangers; we’re an island that’s suffering. We need homes and lives we can actually afford, not rip-off bills we pay every month to a tiny elite bathing in cash. We need our money spent on public services, not forever wars.

“In 2029, the choice will be stark: socialism or barbarism. Billionaires already have three parties fighting for them. It’s time the rest of us had one. Join us. The time is now.”

Since being suspended last year, Suntana has sat in the Commons as an independent. However, she remained a member of the Labour Party despite this.

During an interview on ITV’s Peston, former Labour Leader Corbyn explained that he and fellow pro-Gaza independents would “come together” and said “there will be an alternative” to the main parties.

“If you supply weapons to somebody that is accused of acts of genocide, as the Israeli government is, then you yourself become complicit in those acts as well,” he continued.

Corbyn, who is independent, and has been MP for Islington North since 1983, said that this alternative would be based on “peace rather than war”. He urged: “Let’s look at the humanity of the situation.”

He served as Labour Leader between 2015 and 2020. In 2019, he lost the election to Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party. Corbyn was succeeded as Labour Leader by current Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

He remains a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, along with Sultana.

Earlier this week, Sultana spoke out against Palestine Action being proscribed as a terror organisation, before MPs voted for it to be put into law (via Sky News).

She argued that to proscribe it was “a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity and suppress the truth”. The MP declared: “We are all Palestine Action.”

The draft order to amend the Terrorism Act 2000 and proscribe the group, laid in Parliament by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, passed the Commons on Wednesday (July 2) by 385 votes to 26.

Corbyn has also shared a statement from the Independent Alliance, saying that it “unequivocally oppose[s] the proscription of Palestine Action”.

In May, Corbyn made an appearance at London’s Wide Awake Festival, where he expressed his support for “people in a desperate situation in Gaza”.

He also told the audience that he had tabled a bill in Parliament, calling for an inquiry into the British military’s role in Israeli operations in Gaza. Elsewhere in the speech, he addressed the blockade of aid and food to Gaza: “They are being deliberately starved to death.”

Earlier this year, Corbyn announced a new live music campaign in a bid to push the government to help protect the UK’s music venues.

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