By Mark Perryman

Following Keir Starmer’s election as Labour leader there was a steady exodus of left-leaning Labour members.

Jeremy Gilbert very acutely described this process as: “Keir Starmer wants you to leave the Labour Party. He wants me to leave the Labour Party. If we leave the Labour Party, then we are giving him what he wants. It is a pretty basic principle of political strategy that we don’t give our enemies what they want unless we are forced to do so.”

It was true then in 2020; it’s true now in 2025.

Unless … (I’ll come to that in an ideological moment).

My political background isn’t in the Labour Party.

First Rock against Racism taught me that an activist-led politics is absolutely futile and rooted in privilege when based on the dullness of duty, rather than the absolutely joyful militancy this movement created and on the way stopped what threatened to be a generational shift to the far-right. Never forget the Sex Pistols and Siouxsie Sioux’s flirtation with Nazi-chic. Punk’s nihilism could have turned out very different to what it became. Rock against Racism ensured it didn’t, by providing a politics we could dance to.

Second, reading Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism, drawing the lessons of the ‘pre-figurative’ that ‘how’ we do our politics must absolutely shape why we do our politics – not in a self-indulgent, individualised way divorced from any kind of movement, but as a movement, AKA ‘The personal is political.’

Third, reading, writing and organising events and local groups for the magazine Marxism Today. Never shying away from the absolutist professionalism the magazine’s editor Martin Jacques insisted on. The huge influence on me of Bea Campbell, Eric Hobsbawm and Stuart Hall via their collective critique of Labourism.

All of which amounted to next to zero interest in joining the Labour Party.

Which comes to an absolutely key point for both all those hollering about leaving Labour and those like Jeremy Gilbert who are left to pick up the pieces of what-might-have-been.

The (Gramscian) distinction between tactics and strategy.

I joined Labour as a registered supporter in 2015 to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership election. I absolutely don’t share Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour hard left politics, framed pretty much by ‘labourism’ as the Labour right. But despite this, in 2015 it was his moment to detonate labourism, which is what he threatened to do. And when he won it was obvious that I and tens of thousands of others wanted to be a part of this.

2017 proved how possible this could be. The term wasn’t used at the time but Corbynism had turned Labour into a ‘left populist’ party, the very antithesis of Labourism.

There’s a variety of reasons why 2017-2019 failed to build on this. The ‘Brexit’/Remain’ split, which too many use to entirely explain this failure, in my view is not sufficient. Some of the reasons were self-inflicted, some not. But at the core was the retreat into the cosy security of Labourist culture Corbynism’s appeal lay in disrupting.

Starmer, standing as the Corbyn-continuity candidate in 2020, knew he could win the Labour leadership only from the left. Yes he’s broken every single pledge since then, but only because he knew he could get away with it (see Jeremy Gilbert quote above).

Which is where we come to the unless…

Those leaving in 2020 have now been joined since the General Election by one member every ten minutes doing the same. Not just members either, former MPs, former Parliamentary candidates, Labour National Executive members, leaders of Momentum, councillors, and of course Jeremy Corbyn himself. While some have joined the Green Party, this is more than a critical mass for a populist left party.

Realistic? Again, a slight ideological diversion.

Gramsci, some would argue Lenin too, (of Leftwing Communism: An Infantile Disorder vintage), wrote of the crucial distinction between strategy and tactics in effecting change.

I share almost all opposition with those who’ve left to what this Starmer government is doing on Disability Benefit Cuts, Gaza, the refusal to challenge the racism that belies much of the so-called ‘debate’ on immigration and asylum, the cut to the aid budget, retreat-after-retreat on the measures to reverse the climate emergency.

There is absolutely nothing to stop my opposition as a Labour member; nothing in the rule book precludes this. Yes, if I want to stand as an MP, even a councillor, I’d probably be blocked, but I don’t.

Like any Labour member I can pick and choose when I will campaign for the Party. The overwhelming majority of members don’t actively campaign at all, whatever their politics.

So the ‘strategy’ is near identical, in, or out.

Which needs distinguishing from the tactic.

I’m staying in: the local Party is pretty hospitable; if it becomes inhospitable, life’s too short, I’m out. My views haven’t changed to conform, I will continue to oppose, including publicly, Starmer’s government where it’s wrong.

So strategy-wise in, or out, there’s plenty to agree on.

Which brings to leaving as a tactic.

We’re talking about an independent MPs’ group of five, led by a former Labour leader, unarguably the best known socialist in the country. Independent councillors number 100+, with tens of thousands of supporters, many with a rich variety of political-organisational experience. Yet at the 1st May local elections, it is Reform UK which will most likely make a breakthrough, with any left challenge next-to-non-existent. Any that there is will be entirely localised with the spurious moniker ‘independent.’

This is the ‘unless’. The only point to leaving surely is to build anew. Yes, of course, we have campaigns and social movements – but a party too surely? Again look at Reform and the threat they pose to the Tories. To be brutally honest, rather than anything remotely resembling this to Labour’s left, all we’ve seen so far is a great big blank space. We’re close to twelve months on from Jeremy Corbyn winning in Islington North. For those who thought this the start of something. It wasn’t.

So as V.I. always asked: What is to be Done?

First off, don’t mistake a tactic for a strategy.

The latter is a government that taxes the rich rather than cuts disability benefits. Re-nationalises the public utilities. Builds council houses with no right to buy, rather than the weasel words of affordable housing and social housing. Doesn’t boost arms spending at the expense of the foreign aid budget. Condemns what Israel is doing in Gaza as genocidal and in return recognises the State of Palestine. Makes no retreat on moving towards net zero with publicly owned renewables at the centre of this ambition. Argues that immigration is a socio-economic fact and asylum a fundamental human right.

That will do, for starters.

Which leaves, the how? The above can be achieved both by those who, like me, remain Labour members, and by those who leave to join either the existing parties of a broader progressive bloc which share such views, or part of an ambition and new parties.

In, or out, shake it all about, and then some.

Mark Perryman  is the editor of The Starmer Symptom  to be published by Pluto in September.

Image: Jeremy Corbyn. Author: Sophie Brown, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.