A new party has launched in the UK, and it didn’t take long for it to become the subject of frantic speculation. Will it split the left? Will it create more of an opening for Reform UK? Should it forge an alliance with the Greens? The stunning speed with which Jeremy Corbyn’s new party amassed supporters, now standing at 600,000 in a week, reasonably makes it feel like a real and viable thing. And the next logical step is to assess its chances in meaningfully challenging the mainstream. But the bigger question is, can the mainstream be meaningfully challenged, or is the future one of increasing fragmentation, with a persistent but tense monopoly on power by the political establishment?
The signs that the centre is fraying at the margins became clear at the last general election. There was a historically low turnout by share of the population (resulting in the most disproportionate election outcome in history), Labour won its lowest share of the vote among those in deprived areas, and up came a new crop of independent MPs and Reform winners.
Since then, the already “broad but shallow” mandate given to Labour has diminished even more, with approval ratings dropping the most for any governing party within its first year since John Major’s disaster in the 1990s. And internally, a raft of suspensions over the welfare reform bill continue to expose a party struggling even to maintain satisfaction within its own ranks. This is not a stable state of affairs, but it could very likely be a sustainable one. Because even as establishments rot and lose public support, they still benefit from scale and deep roots within the governing and electoral system – there’s a reason it’s called an “establishment”. Combine this with no proportional representation, and you have a situation where numbers do not necessarily translate into seats.
Cycling between two mainstream parties, both out of ideas and solutions for everything from the cost of living to foreign policy, has led to a state of repetitive disaffection. The story in the US is the same. The Democrats were rejected for a second time in eight years in favour of Donald Trump, but Trump himself is now posting the lowest approval rating of his second term. Neither centrists nor rightwingers can deliver, and yet their parties squat and sprawl on the site of government, with high barriers to entry precluding outside challenge and disincentivising internal reform. This is a recipe for permanent disconnect; failing governments, angry protest movements on the right and the left, quirky election results – and no change. Those individuals who break through, from Zohran Mamdani in New York to independent MPs in the UK, instead of alerting the parties they are closest to that the political net must be widened, are in fact actively fought against. The most senior Democrats in the House of Representatives have still not endorsed Mamdani.
And why would they if they can stay in their political comfort zone, then win again on their own terms when the disenchantment with Trump kicks in proper, and the cycle resets? In the meantime, the sort of vexation that coalesces around figures such as Mamdani and the UK’s new party means that they inherit a gigantic burden of expectation. It is one that is impossible to fulfil, because frustration with mainstream parties is so high that new ones, unless they become constant foghorns channeling feelings of anger rather than political projects, will have to constantly manage being the voice of outrage against the government, as well as working out how to be the alternative.
Adding to the clamouring appetite for sharp challenge is a new information ecosystem where there are now more ways to dispute mainstream accounts of political reality. The process of fragmentation combined with persistent monopoly is one that is mirrored in the media. Over the past two years alone, entire outlets have grown and flourished over what it seems is the media’s inability to adequately capture and express anger over Gaza. From Zeteo (dubbed a “breakout hit”) to Drop Site Newswhich launched only a year ago, now has almost 400,000 subscribers and closely works with journalists in Gaza, there is a vast appetite for more uncompromising discourse and intimate coverage of the Middle East and complicity on Gaza.
Still, this has not diminished anger at mainstream outlets because it is understood that these organisations still have enormous reach and therefore power over public opinion, and by extension political outcomes. It is why the New York Times’s reports on starvation in Gaza have been heavily contested by pro-Israeli government voices, as the paper holds huge authority in the one country that has power over Israel.
But all that residual power, from politics to the media, does not change the fact that something big is up for grabs – the default belief that these establishment institutions deserve their power, whether it can be taken away from them or not. Talk about new leftwing movements empowering Reform or the threat to the Labour government (talk that we have been hearing since before the last general election) misses the broader point – it’s too late. Labour is running on inertia, legacy, and historical and physical entrenchment, rather than active belief in the party. It has long given up on shaping public opinion, rather following, headless, what cynical politicians have forged, and economic and geopolitical realities have created. It is now a mutant party that is chasing Reform voters by trying (and failing) to outflank Nigel Farage, while trying to win over pro-Gaza opinion with a bizarre threat to recognise Palestine if Israel does not agree to a ceasefire. As well as trying to continue austerity while putting out the fires that it causes.
There are two ways in which new parties and movements can produce results. The first is by actually being in government, and the second is by gathering enough support that they can apply pressure on government. The second is a more immediate and tangible way forward, but the problem is that the scale and range of what incumbent parties have failed to address, or take control of, is now too wide and polarised for any outside pressure to create breakthrough.
The risk now is of a sort of permanent bifurcation. On the one hand, increasingly out-of-control hysteria on immigration empowers ghouls like Farage and makes them and their poisonous rhetoric permanent features of our lives and politics, while rage over Gaza and economic policies constantly clouds the political atmosphere. On the other, a government is caught in the headlights, unable to tackle anything, while also hoping that it’s too big to fail and its opponents too small and diverse to succeed. What if the problem isn’t that the centre cannot hold, but that it can, and in doing so brings about a new, volatile, miserable status quo of escalating rage and impotent government?
