The political landscape in the United Kingdom is rapidly changing, with a new political party set to be established by former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and MP Zarah Sultana, both of whom are independents. The left-wing political party, at the time of writing, has had well over half a million signups since its announcement in July 2025. Although the party does not yet have a name, Corbyn and Sultana have been using the name “Your Party” as a placeholder. The new party is quickly gaining traction, and given the political landscape, the continuous fracturing of politics has been exposing cracks in the UK’s First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system.
The party seeks to form an alternative to the Labour Party, appealing to the working-class population of the UK. When comparing “Your Party” to Labour, Jeremy Corbyn said, “This is going to be community-led, community-based, grassroot-led, this is going to be very different, and you know what? It’s going to be fun.” The party aims to appeal to disaffected voters seeking a political alternative on various issues. One of the issues the party might take a focus on is Palestine, as both Corbyn and Sultana have been vocal in opposition to the Israeli system of apartheid in Palestine, the current genocide in Gaza, and the UK government’s response to these issues.
A recent poll conducted by Ipsos found that 20 per cent of adults in the UK would consider voting for Corbyn and Sultana’s new party, including a third of those who voted for Labour at the last general election. This could be a sign that there is real potential for another disruption in the British political landscape, as the party doesn’t even have a finalised name yet, and one-fifth of UK adults would consider voting for them. A June 2025 Ipsos poll found that, of UK adults, 34 per cent intended to vote for Reform UK, 25 per cent intended to vote for Labour, 15 per cent intended to vote for the Conservatives, and 11 per cent intended to vote for the Liberal Democrats. With such a fractured political landscape, any growth could put Corbyn and Sultana’s new party at the forefront of British politics. Although it may seem as if most of their growth would come from Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Green voters, there could also be potential for them to take votes away from Reform UK, a right-wing populist party. This is because, if they lean into left-wing populism, they could potentially capture a number of the same voters, especially if they position themselves as a challenger to the Labour party, as a January 2025 YouGov poll found that 19 per cent of people considering voting for Reform UK were most driven to Reform because it wasn’t the Labour or Conservative parties. This all could lead to a very unpredictable result for the next election, especially if support for parties is concentrated in different constituencies.
If anything, the changing political landscape in the UK signals the need for a shift in the voting system. Currently, the UK uses FPTP for elections to Parliament, in which the singular person with the most votes in any constituency wins the seat. Depending on the distribution of votes across constituencies for various parties, this system can lead to a result which is not reflective of the voting of the general public as a whole. For example, at the 2024 UK General Election, Labour won 411 seats in Parliament, or 63 per cent of the seats, despite only receiving approximately 33.7 per cent of the vote nationally.
This problem is becoming increasingly pronounced as more parties are created in the UK, as it can lead to a situation where MPs are being elected on a plurality of the vote in a constituency, rather than a majority, which leaves the majority of people feeling unrepresented. The FPTP system becomes less and less fit for purpose as the population becomes more divided between multiple parties, and I would argue that FPTP is no longer fit for purpose in the UK. Seemingly gone are the days of there only being two major parties (Labour and Conservative) and one minor party (Liberal Democrats); there could now possibly be 3 to 4 major parties between Labour, the Conservatives, Reform UK, and Jeremy Corbyn’s new party.
Given this new political landscape, it will become imperative for the UK to change voting systems, perhaps to a proportional representation ranked choice voting (PR-STV) system like we have in Ireland. With PR-STV, constituencies have multiple members elected, and the public is allowed to rank their choices in their order of preference. This could lead to Parliament being more representative of the wider electorate, especially given the ever-increasing number of large parties. The question in all of this is, when the dust settles, will there be the political will to change the voting system, or will the status quo of FPTP voting prevail? Corbyn and Sultana’s new party has already shown itself to have the potential to shake up the political atmosphere in the UK. The only question is if the UK will now catch up with the times and switch to a voting system truly capable of representing the views of the public.
