02.10.2025

Republicanism and the split

It is not yet possible to assess whether Corbyn or Sultana are champions of the UK’s social monarchy or the English social republic, says Steve Freeman. Choosing between them is not a matter of age or experience, but politics

While the appeal in July 2025 by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana to launch Your Party met with a response from 800,000 people, this interest was born out of hope and fear: hope was for a left alternative to a rightwing Labour government; fear in the growing concern about the rising tide of Reform UK and fascism, with no effective political opposition. Of course, we cannot ignore the pull of Corbyn, the most widely known and respected former Labour leader.

We all know about the huge rows that divided the two wings of YP - supporters were shocked and disappointed, while their enemies were pleased. Yet it was a moment of realism: there is no easy path to building a new party. There have been and will be arguments, unifications, splits and realignments and this will not be the last. Now, after widespread dismay, there seems to be peace - Sultana’s threat of legal action was withdrawn and she declared: “The stakes are too high for failure to be an option.”

Your programme

What can we understand and learn from these struggles? Provisional parties are more chaotic than democratic? Is the repeated conflict between the co-leaders the result of personality frictions, power struggles? Or does it represent a manifestation of a deeper, more strategic, programmatic dispute? Is it a power struggle over the same programme or the beginning of a struggle between different programmes?

The central problem in establishing Your Party on solid political foundations is precisely the creation of a strong programme, based on solid theory. The term, ‘party programme’, emphasises the unity of the two parts: the programme is the party; the party is the programme. A republican party is the organisation of a republican programme and a Communist Party is the organisation of a communist programme, but even a provisional party must have a provisional programme. Your Party cannot exist separately from Your Programme.

A brief statement on Your Party website says:

We will only fix the crises in our society with a mass redistribution of wealth and power. That means taxing the very richest in our society. That means an NHS free of privatisation and bringing energy, water, rail and mail into public ownership. That means investing in a massive council-house building programme. That means standing up to fossil fuel giants putting their profits before our planet.

What is missing from this provisional statement are questions of democracy - state power, government, sovereignty, self-determination, constitution and law. In the United Kingdom, sovereignty has been stolen from the people and vested in the crown-in-parliament. Labour is a party built on the assumption that this so-called ‘democracy’ enables the people and the working class to win political power - an assumption that goes unchallenged by Labourism.

When 800,000 people are considering joining Your Party, we are discussing mass politics and a mass party. This is not about another small communist sect. The appeal gained mass support because it came from a former Labour leader who fought for and won millions of votes around the 2017 and 2019 Labour manifestos. It does not mean that this programme was correct then or is now: it simply means that this programme can attract mass support.

However, democratic republicanism rejects this completely. It addresses all the questions of political democracy and popular sovereignty. This too can pass the test of mass politics. In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin is already a mass republican party and in England about 30% of voters - especially among young people - are in favour of abolishing the monarchy. Of course, being anti-monarchist is not the same as fighting for popular democracy. Rather it shows there is a mass constituency for democratic change in the constitution and class system.

Your kingdom

On September 13 150,000 marched to ‘Unite the Kingdom’ under the flags of Jack and George. It has not gone unnoticed that ‘your kingdom’ is in a hell of a mess and far from united. Evidence includes the ‘crisis of democracy’, the growth of poverty and social exclusion, underfunded public services, the rise of Reform UK and the support the crown has provided for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

‘Your Kingdom’ is divided by nation and class. It has long suffered from a democratic deficit. The tectonic plates on which the kingdom and the union are built are beginning to move. A ‘crisis of democracy’ is turning its fractures into a chasm. On one side are conservatives - unionists, loyalists and social monarchists; and on the opposite side are radical democrats - anti-unionists and republicans. The ‘Unite the Kingdom’ slogan stands firmly on the conservative side.

Reform UK knows exactly where it stands. So does the Conservative and Unionist Party. Similarly, Labour has always been a loyalist unionist party and the Labour left is no different. It has normally ignored democratic questions or, at best, has been ‘democracy-lite’. Its programme has always been to ‘capture’ the loyal Labour Party and then storm the corridors of Whitehall and, as ministers of the crown, bring social reforms to the people ‘from above’. The bureaucratic road to ‘socialism’ is the very opposite of popular sovereignty and democracy from below.

Your Party and whatever its programme is are provisional. But the signs are not good. Your Party UK Ltd is the business registered to oversee its creation (the use of ‘UK’ is a political, not an administrative, declaration). It seems that Your Party is simply repeating the loyalist and unionist politics of the Labour left. In trying to straddle the democratic chasm, it will fail the test of democracy.

There are two main proposals originating from within the Labour left from which to develop ‘Your Programme’. The first is derived from the 2017 and 2019 Labour manifestos - both aiming to rebuild the 1945 British social monarchy. The second has its origins in Tony Benn’s republican Commonwealth Bill, introduced into the House of Commons in 1992. Benn’s commonwealth was an historic break with the old constitution of the crown-in-parliament from 1688.

The overwhelming majority of the ex-Labour left and communists (sometimes identified as Stalinists and Trotskyists) supported the 2017-19 social monarchy manifestos. They have ignored the major break and its implications evident in Tony Benn’s republican bill, not least because democracy is alien to the politics of Labourism and seen as a diversion from bringing ‘socialism’ to the masses.

Social monarchism is the politics of the Labour Party traced back to Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson. It is both reactionary and utopian: it is reactionary in looking back with nostalgia to the post-war welfare state as a ‘socialist model’; and utopian because it imagines that Attlee’s programme could be recreated without the social conditions that existed in the febrile atmosphere of World War II.

Left social monarchism is a programme of restoring the welfare state under the unionist constitution of the crown-in-parliament. It has a left face, declaring support for socialism, a republic and self-determination for Ireland, Scotland and Wales as long-term aims. The left face is easily forgotten in the tense atmosphere of election campaigns and drawing up manifestoes (although the present ‘crisis of democracy’ and the growth of fascism may force them to reconsider their attitude to ‘democracy’).

Left social monarchists tend to believe that republicanism is achieved ‘from above’ by politely giving King Charles his notice. But republicanism is different: it is about democracy ‘from below’ in the self-organisation of the people; it is built locally in the communities, through people’s assemblies, community organisations and trade unionism.

A majority of the people want radical reform, but are not convinced about how to achieve it. The republican case is that the transfer of political power to the people removes bureaucratic barriers and makes radical reform achievable. The republican party programme is a national plan to establish popular democracy in law (ie, a written constitution).

In England there has been a birth of local grassroots organisation. In the present ‘crisis of democracy’ community organisations and local ‘parties’ have grown in many places. It is unclear whether these independent assemblies contain members of different local parties or are simply future branches of Your Party. We do know that the provisional leadership of Your Party UK is in the hands of MPs, whose job description includes swearing allegiance to the crown.

Left social monarchism and democratic social republicanism cannot exist in a single Your Party, except temporarily. Any form of monarchism is in total opposition to democratic republicanism. There can be cooperation and debate, and even temporary alliances. But there is no such thing as a royal-republican party. A republican party is one whose immediate programme is for a democratic and social republic. The left social monarchists are opposed to that - kicking the can down the road into the long grass. Of course, left social monarchists are ‘left’ because under challenge they claim to be republicans - but only in words, not deeds. Their ‘republicanism’ is confined to the confessional.

Nostalgia for the 1945 social monarchy has become reactionary. It is an ideology that must be debunked. It belongs to the past, not the future: in time it might be a statue in a museum. This struggle for democracy may lead Your Party to split into two parties, one representing ‘Your Social Monarchy UK’ in red, white and blue and the other ‘Your Republic (England)’ in a red, sea-green and violet tricolour.

Many might think such a split would be a disaster, not least because the left is already too fragmented. This is the wrong way to think of the problem of unity. We are discussing major issues of programme and principle about the United Kingdom and not hair splitting over personalities or tactical disputes. If major programme issues are posed openly and clearly, then a split can be necessary and progressive: members will face two clear, alternative programmes.

Your unity

Unity is a political question about programmes, not an organisational matter of setting up one big tent and asking everybody to pretend to agree and shut up. In a social monarchist party it should be obvious that republican democracy is subversive and divisive. A few republicans can be tolerated, as currently they are in the social monarchist Labour Party, but not if they actually activate their republicanism.

An open political split in front of the working class movement between a reactionary monarchist and a progressive republican programme would be a good thing. It would put the political choice before the people, make people think about alternative futures and how the present 1688 constitutional arrangements have failed.

Two rival ‘Your Parties’ would not prevent them working together in a united front with other left parties against common enemies such as Labour and Reform. Indeed, as republicans, we could make the case that all left parties in England should form such a united front against those claiming to ‘Unite the Kingdom’.

Finally, there is the issue of the unity of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. ‘Your Party (UK)’ would seek to impose unity through the constitution of the crown-in-parliament (or ‘the union’, as it is known), but ‘Your Party (England)’ would reject that on principle. The Anglo-British union is not a form of international working class solidarity, as social monarchists like to imagine: it is the divide-and-rule policy of the crown. The democratic ‘party’ of England must make clear that Ireland, Scotland and Wales are ‘free nations’. We will repudiate all Acts of Union to make these nations free from the British crown. They will be free to go their own way, free to negotiate a new constitution.

At the time of writing Your Party has no members, no agreed programme and no legitimate democratic means of resolving conflicts. But encouraging a split or a coup in these circumstances would be reactionary, taking us backwards. We should welcome the fact that the co-leaders have agreed to work together for the founding conference.

This will decide which path to follow, between bureaucratic social monarchism ‘from above’ and democratic republicanism ‘from below’. Before conference, the party must become a place where left social monarchism is identified, called out and debunked. Once the conference has made its decisions by democratic discussion and votes, we will review the situation.

Turning again to the dispute between Corbyn and Sultana, the question is whether they are fighting for the same left social-monarchist programme. If the answer is ‘yes’, then their arguments are over power, influence, tactics and timing, in which case there is no valid reason for the co-leaders to leave or split into two rival parties.

Alternatively, this conflict between the co-leaders may arise from different strategies and programmes as yet unrecognised or untheorised. In which case a split into two parties might become necessary - not least because the tensions and conflicts will only grow until their root cause, in programme, becomes apparent. Moreover, should Andy Burnham emerge as Starmer’s successor, this would attract many left social monarchists back to the loyal Labour Party. Such was the fate of Left Unity with the rise of Corbyn Labour.

If this conflict between the co-leaders is the beginning of the battle between left social monarchists and social republicans then it will not be resolved until the former are defeated. A split over principle would be progressive, if it can be openly justified to the movement.

It is not yet possible to assess whether Corbyn or Sultana are champions of the social monarchy or the social republic. Any choice we make to back one or other co-leader has nothing to do with age, experience, ethnicity or any other distraction. We can support any leader who publicly recognises Tony Benn’s commonwealth as the point of departure for the kind of politics that we need in England in 2025.