FORMER Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has confirmed the launch of a new party.
On Thursday, former Labour MP Zarah Sultana announced that she had quit Keir Starmer's party and would be setting up a new one with Corbyn.
Sultana said the two would "co-lead the founding of a new party", with a leadership election expected to follow after it is established.
Corbyn has been working with an informal group of MPs, named the Independent Alliance, but had previously hinted that a traditional party format could be on the cards.
And now, the Islington North MP has confirmed the move with a full statement on X/Twitter.
Corbyn wrote: "Real change is coming.
"One year on from the election, this Labour government has refused to deliver the change people expected and deserved Poverty, inequality and war are not inevitable.
"Our country needs to change direction, now.
"Congratulations to Zarah Sultana on her principled decision to leave the Labour Party.
"I am delighted that she will help us build a real alternative. The democratic foundations of a new kind of political party will soon take shape.
"Discussions are ongoing - and I am excited to work alongside all communities to fight for the future people deserve.
"Together, we can create something that is desperately missing from our broken political system: hope."
Independent Iqbal Mohamed, MP for Dewsbury and Batley, said on Twitter/X: "Real change is coming."
Social media users were quick to show their enthusiasm for the move.
One said simply: "Count me in."
Another added: "Will 100 per cent be voting for these two going forward."
We previously told how More In Common suggested that a new Corbyn-led party would eat into Labour support and pick up as much as 10 per cent of votes in a General Election.
The poll most notably suggested such a party would finish first among 18 to 24-year-olds, on 32 per cent.
Sultana, who represents Coventry South, said the party would involve “other independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country”.
She added that “Westminster is broken but the real crisis is deeper” and the “two-party system offers nothing but managed decline and broken promises”.
Sultana was one of seven Labour MPs who had the Labour whip suspended by Starmer when they supported an SNP amendment to the King's Speech on removing the two-child benefit cap.
While four of those seven had the whip restored earlier this year, Sultana was not one of them.
Meanwhile, Govanhill writer and poet Jim Monaghan wrote on Twitter/X that he is part of the "interim Scottish Secretariat" of the group.
"It's on," he said. "Some of us have been holding on to this information as things have developed.
"I am a member of the new party and part of the interim Scottish 'Secretariat'. Let's talk, let's build. Another country is possible."
Corbyn led Labour between 2015 and April 2020, stepping down after the party’s loss at the 2019 General Election.
He was suspended from Labour in 2020 after refusing to accept the party broke equality law when he was in charge, and said antisemitism had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.
Corbyn was blocked from standing for Labour at the 2024 General Election, and was expelled after announcing he would stand as an independent candidate.
He won the Islington North constituency with a majority of more than 700.
