NOT since the foundation of the Labour Party in 1900 has the need for an alternative political vehicle in Britain been more urgently required.

The defeat of the Jeremy Corbyn project left millions of people bereft.

So much hope and expectation was invested in the Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership.

But the direction in which Sir Keir Starmer has steered Labour for the last two-and-a-half years has created a political vacuum on the left.

Millions of people in Britain no longer have an electoral home. All the political parties currently sitting in the Commons favour retaining the economic and foreign policy status quo.

This makes a mockery of our democracy. Politics should be about giving people choices — but in Britain there is no real choice.

It doesn’t matter whether Labour or the Conservatives win most seats at a general election.

They are both committed to retaining the neoliberal and imperialist status quo, as are the SNP and Lib Dems.

Of course, there would be some tinkering at the edges, but nothing would fundamentally change whether a majority Tory or Labour government was elected or whether a coalition was formed with the Liberal Democrats or SNP.

All these parties would preside over rising poverty, worsening inequality and increased authoritarianism that would undermine our fundamental rights — and Britain’s involvement in overseas wars would continue apace.

It is 110 years since Vladimir Lenin published his seminal pamphlet about the situation in tsarist Russia, What Is to Be Done.

We need to ask ourselves the same fundamental question — what is to be done in 21st-century Britain?

It is an entirely futile exercise to waste time and effort trying to make the Labour Party a force for socialism and anti-imperialism.

We had our chance and we blew it. New grassroots organisations have sprung up like Enough is Enough, and I helped to found the Resist Movement a few months after the 2019 general election.

Trade union militancy is also on the rise as a reaction to the cost-of-living catastrophe that has been facilitated by Nato’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

But although these initiatives are inspiring, it still leaves the question about what is to be done at the next general election.

Are trade unions and the Enough is Enough movement going to urge people to vote Labour even though a Labour government would retain the system that has created the explosion in poverty, insecurity and inequality?

Britain’s democracy is a sham, but I believe the political vacuum could be filled by a rejuvenated Socialist Labour Party (SLP), the alternative party founded by Arthur Scargill in 1996.

I have lost count of the number of people who have said to me that what we need is “a socialist Labour Party.”

That is why Resist’s steering committee unanimously recommended to our members that we should join the SLP, and in a poll of Resist’s membership last month, 89 per cent voted in favour of the move.

Lenin recognised the need for a vanguard political party — and I believe the SLP could fulfil that role.

Corbyn showed that there is an appetite for a socialist alternative and I think the SLP has the potential to mount a serious challenge to the political duopoly.

It won’t be easy of course. The first-past-the-post system favours the mainstream parties, but the political duopoly has been broken before — and it can be broken again.

More recent attempts by parties like Respect, Tusc, and the SLP for that matter, floundered because the timing wasn’t right.

There was still a hope, when those parties first emerged, that the Labour Party was salvageable — but the evidence from the Corbyn experience proves beyond any shadow of doubt that it isn’t.

I firmly believe that the zeitgeist has shifted in favour of an alternative socialist party. One of the key benefits of the SLP, apart from its unambiguous commitment to socialism, is its name recognition.

Even though there is huge dissatisfaction among the electorate with the Labour Party, it is still ahead of the Tories in opinion polls because many people still see Labour as the natural alternative to the Tories.  

Consequently, having the name “Labour” in the SLP’s title is hugely beneficial, and a socialist Labour Party is precisely what many people have been clamouring for.

I want to see a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families in this country.

That was a pledge given by the Labour Party in its 1974 manifesto before it was abandoned after Denis Healey went to the IMF on a false premise.

Tinkering with the system will not do. It is system change that is required now.

There is currently no political outlet in Westminster’s corridors of power for the anger that is being expressed through street protests and industrial action.  

So, my plea to all Morning Star readers is to join us in this endeavour to build the Socialist Labour Party into a serious electoral force.

You can join us in Liverpool this Sunday at the Liner Hotel, which is a minute’s walk from Lime Street Station, when we will be formally announcing our intention to join the SLP.

Chris Williamson was MP for Derby North from 2010-15 and 2017-19.