Well, here it comes, perhaps: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/03/jeremy-corbyn-hints-at-launch-of-new-party-as-leftwing-alternative-to-labour?

The idea of a new and avowedly socialist party (in the UK) is obviously attractive to an old Leftie like me. I’d even welcome Jeremy Corbyn back, in a leading (if not necessarily the leading) role. It could steal some of Reform’s thunder simply by presenting itself as new, and as more convincingly anti-establishment: replacing Reform’s scapegoats with another kind of ‘boat people’ – rich yacht-owners rather than poor refugees in dinghies, for example, and Etonian toffs rather than welfare cheats; convincingly addressing issues that actually matter to people, homes especially, both ownership and rental; taxing the ultra-rich rather than reducing welfare benefits; cultivating an image of honesty, which is perceived to be in short supply in the other parties (that would require some discipline); cultivating a different kind of ‘patriotism’ from Reform’s: based on pride in the NHS, for example, rather than in the Royal family and the Flag (see my Britain’s Contested History, 2014); abjuring ‘wokery’, or the silliest bits of it; and possibly (if this is popular) supporting the Palestinian cause more genuinely. (Corbyn would see to that.) In other words: it could flourish by distancing itself from the ‘they’re all the same’ image that so harms the established parties today (perhaps unfairly), and which Reform plays on so effectively. It could even come out for proportional representation in elections, which would work to a small party’s benefit (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/09/15/electoral-reform/); and might even (no promises) campaign for re-entry to the EU. Such a party could be popular, without being populist; and preferable, I think, to the cautious Labour government we in the UK have now.

But then we hit the problem of the forces that would be ranged against any such party: the right-wing popular press magnates, the Israel lobby that did so much harm to Corbyn, the power of money, the influence of the USA… and so on. I can’t see a new independent socialist party pushing its way through all that; at least until the time is absolutely ripe for late-stage capitalism to collapse, as is sometimes predicted, under the weight of its own contradictions – aided, perhaps, by the ultra-capitalist Trump. So I’ll stick with Starmer’s Labour Party for the time being; or at least until the new party – if it ever happens – proves its resilience.

Incidentally, I’ve been reading Trump’s recent campaign speeches – rambling, self-glorifying, ignorant, mostly fabricated, and stupid almost beyond belief. Is this the way capitalism ends, I wonder: not with a bang or a whimper (to adapt TS Eliot), but with a mad man’s ravings to his deluded followers?