The left needs more than enthusiasm – we need a real plan

SEPTEMBER 5, 2O25

Gordon Maloney looks forward to The World Transformed 2025.

Keir Starmer’s first year in government has been nothing short of a disaster.

Despite an enormous mandate at the last election, the past year has seen him fall to becoming one of the most unpopular political figures in the UK. Despite repeatedly trying to ingratiate himself with far-right voters for Reform or the Tories, including bizarre attempts to show everyone how much he loves the English flag, this has won over no voters from these parties. At the same time, his repeated betrayals of workers, renters, migrants, and perhaps most consequentially the Palestinian people, have cost him dearly in support from progressives.

Starmer famously quipped that if leftists didn’t like the direction of his new party, “the door is open and you can leave.” It seems like many have. 

And the polling speaks for itself. Labour now routinely trails double digits behind Nigel Farage’s Reform. Starmer’s personal approval ratings, along with those of his cabinet members, are in free fall. Unless something truly enormous happens, Starmer will be handing over the keys to Number 10 straight to Nigel Farage at the next election.

Meanwhile, after a wave of far-right street violence last summer, anti-migrant mobs are once again terrorising Britain’s communities. Rather than confronting their bigotry or addressing the genuine grievances these movements prey on, Starmer’s Labour have offered them political and ideological cover. The contrast with the way Starmer and the police have attacked and criminalised Palestine solidarity activists is yet another example of his revolting hypocrisy.

Starmer’s strategy is not working, and there is a clear and desperate need for a different direction. We cannot continue like this. And that demand for a different direction has been made very explicit in the last few weeks. Eight hundred thousand people have flocked to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new party, and eco-socialist Zack Polanski has won a landslide victory in the Green Party leadership election. Across the UK, hundreds of thousands of people are clamouring for something genuinely different – not Reform’s snake oil. People understand what’s at stake, and they know what will happen if Starmer stays on this path.

But enthusiasm alone is not enough. If we want to stop Farage from winning the next election, if we want to stop the far-right thugs emboldened by his politics, if we want to stop militarism, if we want to stop landlords, bosses, and warmongers, the left in the UK needs strategy. We need deep coordination. We need to learn from movements across the world. And we need to plan meticulously for the months and years ahead.

That is exactly what The World Transformed is for. This October, over the course of four days, The World Transformed 2025 will bring together individuals, organisations, and movements from every corner of Britain and beyond to share, to learn, to debate, and most importantly, to plan. Sessions will cover everything from our response to two years of genocide in Palestine, enthusiastically backed by the British government, to the housing struggles that have ignited an unprecedented wave of tenant organising across the UK, and from the rise of militarism to confronting the far-right both directly and by tearing away the poverty and desperation they prey on.

The World Transformed will be a vital place to cut through the impasse and to begin, in earnest, our collective response to the failures not just of Starmer, but of the entire political class since the economic collapse of 2008.

The conference will also, and crucially, be a place for the full movement of the British left to shape these crucial discussions. Delegations from organisations across the UK will be taking part, from trade unions to Black Lives Matter, tenant groups, and international allies such as the Democratic Socialists of America. Because this is not just about conversation, it’s about building the capacity and shared strategies that our movement needs to be able to win. 

The stakes could not be higher. How the left responds to Reform, to Labour, to genocide, will not only determine the electoral fortunes of the next five years and beyond – it will determine life and death for thousands of people both at home and abroad. 

We cannot afford to get this wrong. Join the movement at The World Transformed 2025 to help forge the path forward. 

Gordon Maloney is a member and activist of Living Rent, Scotland’s Tenants’ Union.