Neither here nor there: what’s wrong with Labour in the UK and Democrats in the US?

Today, after 14 years, I’m resigning from the Labour Party.

Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other Independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.

Join us. The time is now.

Sign up here to stay updated: https://t.co/MAwVBrHOzH pic.twitter.com/z91p0CkXW0

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) July 3, 2025

While Sultana mentioned several issues including rising inequality, welfare cuts, and the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, her resignation from Labour spotlighted a larger tension — some would say schism — within the traditional liberal, “left of centre” parties in the West, especially in countries like the UK and the US that have entrenched two-party systems.

How parties work: limits of a two-party polity

Political factions are products of self-interest, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote – those coming from similar situations and having common interests come together to further their own lot.

In his 1911 work Political Parties, the political theorist Robert Michels wrote: “The political party is founded in most cases on the principle of the majority, and is founded always on the principle of the mass.”

People support parties that they believe will further their interests. Since individual interests can be diverse, party platforms provide common points around which voters can coalesce.

In theory, an individual can simply shift their allegiance if they are unhappy with their party. But the choices and opportunities that modern politics offer are often limited.

This is especially true of polities in which just two parties are overwhelmingly dominant. Not only is such a system incapable of capturing diverse political positions within a country, the lack of choices for electors also often makes these parties less receptive to their concerns. All that these parties have to do to retain support is be the “lesser of two evils”.

Over time, however, such a situation breeds resentment and engenders dissonance between a party’s base and its leadership.

The path of moderation: neither here nor there

For the past three-and-a-half decades, Democrats in the US and Labour in the UK (and similar parties elsewhere) have taken a path of moderation, trying to not rock the boat. Despite ostensibly being the party of blue collar voters and of the less privileged generally, their rhetoric and policies have been largely status quoist.

This, these parties have come to believe, has the broadest appeal, and can win over so-called fence-sitters and moderates, who are not wedded to any one party. For instance, Keir Starmer has spent his first year as Prime Minister vacillating between making seemingly empty promises to Labour’s base while stopping well short of instituting the reforms they seek, so as to not antagonise Britain’s more conservative voters.

But in an age of flux and socio-economic turmoil the world over, people are increasingly resentful of the status quo, which has placed some fundamental limits on the politics of moderation.

Conservative politicians, and those who are generally on the right, have realised this – and successfully tapped into voter resentments. Although their politics mostly does not offer effective solutions, it does speak to people’s anxieties.

Take Donald Trump. His rhetoric on immigration claims that “aliens” are “stealing” the jobs of hard-working Americans. Both the claim and the solution — deporting immigrants to “bring jobs back” — is questionable. Yet it speaks to the millions of Americans who are struggling to pay the bills and put food on the table.

Labour in the UK and Democrats in the US are yet to discover a coherent idiom to capture these concerns. In trying to gain fence-sitters, they have failed to address the legitimate concerns of a sizable section of citizens, including their base. This is at the heart of what ails them today.

Labour and Democrats, stuck in the 1990s

There are historical reasons for these parties’ drift towards status quoism.

The 1980s were a decade of disappointment for both Labour and the Democrats. Neoliberals Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher oversaw a push for deregulation and austerity, focused less on public welfare and more on stimulating the growth of businesses, whose fruits they believed would eventually trickle down to the masses.

While this was fundamentally different from the political and economic outlook championed by the Democrats and Labour since the Great Depression, their response during this time was to essentially embrace neoliberalism.

Tony Blair’s “New Labour” and Bill Clinton’s “Third Way”, which led to their parties’ resurgence in the 1990s, were attempts to find a political centre that kept big business happy, promised more social security to citizens than their rivals, and prioritised social and cultural rights over economic ones.

Both Labour and Democrats have largely stuck to this blueprint ever since – and have effectively precluded the more left-wing strands within their parties from gaining greater influence.

In 2020, therefore, the Democratic establishment basically banded together to prevent socialist Bernie Sanders from becoming the presidential candidate. And while Jeremy Corbyn did lead Labour from 2015 to 2020, he faced significant opposition within the party, including accusations of anti-Semitism due to his steadfast criticism of Israel.

Looking ahead, looking back

In the view of many commentators, the fundamental problem with both Labour and the Democrats is that they do not reflect the views of the people they claim to stand for.

Take for instance the disability cuts proposed by Starmer to control the UK’s ballooning debt. This was widely unpopular and led to a rebellion within the party. Starmer was eventually forced to stand down.

The same can be said about the Democratic Party’s (and Labour’s) inability to call out Israel for its actions in Gaza. This is contrary to what most voters believe — a Pew survey from March this year showed that 69% of Democratic voters held a “negative” view of Israel.

The tension within these parties reflects the growing frustration of left-wing politicians with the party establishment, and its insistence on remaining at the centre. That some left-wingers have enjoyed success – Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral primary, for example – has deepened these schisms. It is to be seen whether the breakaway socialist party in the UK can eat into Labour’s vote in coming polls.

Left-of-centre parties enjoyed the peak of their popularity under the likes of Franklin D Roosevelt and Clement Atlee, who instituted ambitious welfare programmes addressing key concerns of the time. Now, the so-called “radical left” is calling for a return to a politics that is centred around working people, and prioritises the average voter over wealthy party donors.