JEREMY Corbyn has claimed that Labour MPs are telling him “I think you’re doing the right thing” by setting up a new party.
The former Labour leader, now setting up a new political vehicle with ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana, said that his former colleagues back his challenge to Keir Starmer from the left.
Speaking in an interview with journalist Owen Jones, Corbyn compared his reception from new Labour MPs as being like the Old Testament story of the parting of the Red Sea.
He said: “When I was re-elected to Parliament last July, I walked into the Labour end of the tearoom and I now know what happened with the parting of the waves.
“It was complete silence when I walked in and I just walked through these swathes of new Labour MPs: ‘He’s got bubonic plague, by the way, don’t go too near him.’ So I walked on through.
“But now what I find is that a lot of Labour MPs come and search me out in the library, they look around like this [and say]: ‘Jeremy, I think you’re doing the right thing.’”
On Starmer, Corbyn said he believed he had “very little to say”, after the Prime Minister was disparaged by his aides in a book detailing his victory in the 2024 General Election.
According to the book Get In, his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney had described Starmer as “like an HR manager, not a leader” and another member of the PM’s inner circle was quoted as saying: “Keir’s not driving the train. He thinks he’s driving the train, but we’ve sat him at the front of the DLR.”
The DLR is a driverless light rail service in London, where passengers can sit right at the front of the train to enjoy the view usually reserved for drivers.
Speaking of his time working with Starmer when he was shadow Brexit secretary, Corbyn said: “What I found with Keir was that, outside of the formal, detail, legal stuff, he had very little to say and very little opinions on anything.
"He’s not somebody that would come here to this park with you and me and start chatting to that wonderful woman we’ve been talking to who’s been walking the dogs. He wouldn’t do that.”
Jones interjected to say that Starmer (above) was not “Mr Personable”, to which Corbyn replied: “All politicians don’t have to be Mr Personable but I do think you have to have some empathy and understanding of people’s lives, what their hopes are, what their fears are and what their wishes are.”
He added: “We live in a country that is deeply divided, getting worse, poverty is getting worse, I’ve never known so many rough-sleeping homeless people, never known so many hungry children, never known people so stressed or so in personal debt and yet we’re heading off in a direction of waving flags, spending more money on weapons and less and less on the needs of people and we’re doing that on a global scale.”
Corbyn and Sultana's new party has not yet been named, though a vehicle called Your Party, which will lay the groundwork for its creation, has already received more than 600,000 sign ups since it was launched a week ago.
Early polls suggest the party could expect to take at least 10% of the vote.
Some cooperation with the Green Party of England and Wales could be on the cards if Zack Polanski wins the leadership election.
Corbyn added: "I do like Zack Polanski [....] Will we work with him? Yes, on issues.
"Generally, we'd agree on environmental issues, we'd agree on social justice issues, they're not a socialist organisation and they seem to be into an internal riven debate between trying to appeal to a sort of, semi-Conservative-voting suburban electorate, as opposed to a committed, environmentally-conscious electorate.
"So yes, we [the Independent Alliance] work with them in Parliament and yes, we would cooperate, but we're not forming an alliance with them."
