A former Labour MP has said that she will set up a new party with Jeremy Corbyn in another unwelcome problem for Sir Keir Starmer. But the former Labour leader has not confirmed this. Meanwhile, today marks a year since the 2024 general election.
Friday 4 July 2025 10:39, UK
In the wake of the government’s welfare reforms collapsing, there has been talk of a new black hole in the finances that Chancellor Rachel Reeves needs to fill.
Sky News economics data editor Ed Conway explains what’s going on below:
When she announced she was setting up a new party last night, Zarah Sultana said she was doing so alongside Jeremy Corbyn.
However, it’s not clear that the former Labour leader is involved with the project.
Speaking to Sky News, Corbyn’s former adviser James Schneider said his phone had been “exploding with people being extremely excited” about a “home for progressive politics in this country”.
Asked about whether Corbyn will be joining the party – or was even aware of what was happening – Schneider says: “I mean, the party hasn’t yet been launched when it is launched, everybody I’m sure will be hearing from everybody, and I’m sure you’ll hear from Jeremy.”
But he was coy about whether his old boss was “irritated” about the way the announcement was made, as some suggested.
“I can’t tell you any inside track, but it’s very exciting that Zara has left the party after a year in government, which has been basically a failure,” Schneider says.
Sir Keir Starmer should use his deputy Angela Rayner more effectively because she is popular with the public, Harriet Harman has said.
Speaking to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harman said the prime minister can use his deputy in two ways after she successfully led the effort behind the scenes to save the government’s welfare bill from being defeated in the Commons by rebel Labour MPs.
“There’s two ways he could respond to the situation about Angela Rayner,” she said.
“One is to feel defensive about it and that is somehow undermining his power.
“He’s got to find ways to sort of fence her in or to actually recognise that she’s a great communicator, that she’s popular, people like her, and actually he needs to pull her into his leadership and use her for what she can actually bring in.
“The way that Tony Blair used John Prescott to actually augment his premiership.”
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Conservative Party co-chair Nigel Huddleston is speaking to Sky News this morning for the opposition.
He is asked about Zarah Sultana, the former Labour MP, setting up her own party with Jeremy Corbyn.
Huddleston is, unsurprisingly, incredibly critical of Sultana – although he does caveat that there’s a “space” for her views.
The Conservative says he’s not shocked by Sultana’s move, saying: “very much on the hard left of British politics – there used to be a space in the Labour Party for that – but she’s clearly decided she wants to go elsewhere.”
He reckons there’s “not too many people in the Labour Party too worried about her leaving”.
Huddleston says he doesn’t think Sultana is “in tune with the vast majority of the sensible, moderate British public”.
“She’s one of the people who believes that, governments are that to spend other people’s money.
“She’s got absolutely no idea how the economy works, how hard-working people generate taxes, how businesses are essential to good public services.
“So she just believes in traditional hard left politics.”
Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, spoke to Sky News about the risks of the new party set up by left wing MPs.
She appears to play down the risk to her outfit – saying they’ve had “fantastic local results” and the “best ever general election in the history of the party”.
Cooper says the new party “had a bit of chaotic start” – with it being unclear if Jeremy Corbyn was even involved in the project which claimed his involvement.
She says her party is still “feeling pretty chipper and pretty confident” about the coming months and years.
Cooper adds: “What’s interesting is we are now entering a new era of multi-party politics, I think.
“But we still have a first past the post voting system where every single vote doesn’t always count.
“And what we have managed to demonstrate is that we do have broad appeal in many places around the country.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is asked about Sky News about the ongoing proscription of Palestine Action.
She is asked if the banning of the group limits protests, as the likes of former Labour MP Zarah Sultana have claimed.
Cooper says: “We go through a serious statutory process, based on security assessments and advice in these processes, and what you have here is a group that has been repeatedly violent.
This includes what happened at Brize Norton, which Cooper says she can’t comment on in too much detail due to the terrorism charges levelled against a series of people.
The home secretary went on: “But there have been a series of violent incidents and that do end up affecting our national security.
“We have to make clear this is very separate from the right to protest – people can raise protest.
“And also from the issue that people are very concerned about, about the really intolerable events in Gaza and in the West Bank where people want to express strong concern.
“But that is different from the actions of a group that affect our national security.”
Zarah Sultana, the former Labour MP who yesterday announced she was setting up her own party, had already been suspended from the parliamentary Labour grouping due to rebelling against the government.
Asked about her permanently leaving the Labour movement, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says Sultana has “always taken a very different view to most people in the government on a lot of different things, and that’s for her to do so”.
Criticisms levelled by Sultana at the government include failing to help people in poverty.
Cooper says she “strongly disagrees” with her former partymate.
“We’re one year on from the Labour government being elected and as the prime minister said a year ago that change doesn’t happen at the flick of a switch, but it starts straightaway,” the home secretary says.
On the recent welfare rebellion within the Labour Party – in which the rebels were mostly from the left of the party – Cooper says governing isn’t always “smooth”.
Reeves ‘strong and determined’
She won’t rule out tax rises to find the billions of pounds now needed, saying that’s a matter for the chancellor.
On the topic of Rachel Reeves, Cooper defends her colleague after the chancellor was seen crying in the House of Commons.
She says that things are “different” for politicians, because when they have a bad day “they end up on the telly”.
” All of us have days when there are different things going on,” the home secretary says.
“And it’s just it is slightly different when you’re under such media scrutiny.
“But the thing about Rachel is I think she is one of the strongest and most determined people I know.”
By Liz Bates, political correspondent
Leaseholders will be able to more easily challenge extortionate service charges, the government has said.
For those who are trapped in the midst of the leasehold scandal, the reforms cannot come soon enough.
They have been promised change for many years by successive governments and by Labour in opposition, so any progress will be welcome, but is it enough for those suffering financially?
It’s a complex problem but at the heart of it are service charges that go higher and higher in a way that is often inexplicable, unpredictable and opaque.
These are fees for building services and maintenance that are on top of the homeowner’s mortgage.
They often run into thousands of pounds, go way over the initial estimate and it is not clear why they are so high.
By forcing companies to be transparent about the fees they are charging, the government is hoping to tackle this.
The reforms, which the government has said it will push through after a consultation, will receive standardised service charge documentation which spell out clear and detailed information about how their service charges are calculated and spent.
July 5 2024, 1pm: I remember the moment so clearly.
Keir Starmer stepped out of his sleek black car, grasped the hand of his wife Vic, dressed in Labour red, and walked towards a jubilant crowd of Labour staffers, activists and MPs waving union jacks and cheering a Labour prime minister into Downing Street for the first time in 14 years.
Starmer and his wife took an age to get to the big black door, as they embraced those who had helped them win this election – their children hidden in the crowd to watch their dad walk into Number 10.
Keir Starmer, not the easiest public speaker, came to the podium and told the millions watching this moment the “country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal”.
He spoke for the “weariness at the heat of the nation” and “the lack of trust” in our politicians as a “wound” that “can only be healed by actions not words”. He added: “This will take a while but the work of change begins immediately.”
That was a day in which this prime minister made history. His was a victory on a scale that comes around but one every few decades.
He won the largest majority in a quarter of a century and with it a massive opportunity to become one of the most consequential prime ministers of modern Britain – alongside the likes of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair.
But within the win was a real challenge too.
Starmer’s was a loveless landslide, won on a lower share of the vote than Blair in all of his three victories and 6 percentage points lower than the 40% Jeremy Corbyn secured in the 2017 general election. It was the lowest vote share secured for a single party in over 70 years. Support for Labour was as shallow as it was wide.
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