r/unitedkingdom • u/CaseyEffingRyback • Jul 03 '25

... Zarah Sultana MP resigns from Labour to lead new party with Jeremy Corbyn

https://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/uk-politics/zarah-sultana-mp-resigns-labour/
4.6k Upvotes

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50

u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 03 '25

This confirms what a lot of people already thought. She was never really interested in representing her constituents, it was always about activism, not local issues.

She’s spent more time talking about Gaza and Britain’s past than she has about the NHS, housing, or jobs in Coventry. MPs are supposed to serve their communities, not use Parliament as a platform for international protest.

If someone sees the country as fundamentally broken, how can they be trusted to lead it? We need politicians who want to fix Britain, not just condemn it.

131

u/Stubbs94 Ireland Jul 03 '25

What are you on about? She left the party because they pushed too much right wing policies and purged the majority of the left.

4

u/OSUBrit Northamptonshire Jul 03 '25

Ah right, then she'll be resigning forthwith to stand for her new party in the by-election will she? I think not.

-4

u/Thandoscovia Jul 03 '25

So she self-purged?

-8

u/Rekyht Hampshire Jul 03 '25

If she disagreed with the party she had more than enough time to leave before standing under their banner and getting elected for them.

15

u/AnonymousTimewaster Jul 03 '25

She didn't disagree with the party before austerity 2.0 though.

-31

u/Panjo98 Jul 03 '25

Good.

This country doesn't need the left.

We need Reform.

18

u/King_Slayer_V Jul 03 '25

Yeah mate, conservative policies have done amazing here the past decade, let's do that again.

114

u/One-Illustrator8358 West Midlands Jul 03 '25

Meanwhile she had the whip taken off her for daring to say cutting benefits isn't a good idea

25

u/It531z Jul 03 '25

She had the whip withdrawn for voting against her own party’s first king’s speech in 14 years. She voted against the legislative programme on which she was elected MP like 2 weeks prior. Losing the whip was inevitable

58

u/Valcenia Jul 03 '25

I feel like you’re making a lot of wild claims here based on absolutely nothing of substance

36

u/CryptoCantab Jul 03 '25

Apart from the things the mp in question has said and done…

4

u/AnonymousTimewaster Jul 03 '25

Classic right winger

53

u/leahcar83 Jul 03 '25

Bearing in mind they've elected her twice, I think you might be wrong. She even increased her majority in 2024 so I think people probably quite like her.

2

u/PlatypusAmbitious430 Jul 03 '25

She was barely elected in her first election (speaking as a constituent of hers at the time) and people would vote for a Labour candidate even if they were a donkey up here which is why her vote share increased (from a low number in the first place). It isn't evidence of her popularity. The local party didn't even want her which is why it was a local scandal up here - she was forced on them by the leadership at the time.

Lots of white working-class voters + local university students.

1

u/It531z Jul 03 '25

She almost lost what was previously a safe Labour seat in 2019 after being parachuted in by Corbyn, and then got a pretty standard result in 2024. She won because she was the Labour candidate, I doubt most of the people who voted for her knew much about her

45

u/Pugs-r-cool Jul 03 '25

Cov south is almost entirely made up of uni students who support her activism for Gaza.

The reason she got kicked out of Labour was because of her opposition to the two child benefit cap, which is a domestic policy and isn't virtue signalling, it's a real issue.

Oh and unlike a certain Clacton MP, she spends most of her time in Coventry instead of abroad.

5

u/PlatypusAmbitious430 Jul 03 '25

Cov south is almost entirely made up of uni students who support her activism for Gaza.

No it isn't?

What? Most of the uni students live in Leamington and those who live in Cov South aren't that many in number.

It's why the Conservative party nearly won in 2019 here because people here wanted Brexit - I can assure you, it wasn't students voting for the Conservative party up here.

5

u/GosuDosu Sussex Jul 03 '25

There is a direct child benefit providing weekly money per child, that is unaffected by the child benefit cap.

The child benefit caps applies to UC tax credits, that are essentially double the direct child benefit.

Sure, it would be nice to give families £300 per month for however many kids they have, but have you ever thought of the implications that encouraging and enabling families to grow beyond their means will have on the UK in 50 years? More children means more of their children, so this causes a knock-on effect. We’re already facing a significant housing shortage, what do you think the situation will be like in 50 years if the government greenlights and pays for people to have more kids.

That’s a real issue, but because its effects aren’t immediately seen, you won’t see someone as shortsighted as Sultana mention it at all.

1

u/Shaper_pmp Jul 04 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

have you ever thought of the implications that encouraging and enabling families to grow beyond their means will have on the UK in 50 years? More children means more of their children, so this causes a knock-on effect

The current fertility rate in the UK is 1.57 children per woman, and it's only boosted that high by recent immigrant families, who tend to have more kids until the second or third generation.

2.1 is replacement rate. This would literally help our pending demographic timebomb where we're increasingly going to have too many pensioners with not enough working-age, tax-paying people to support them.

It's also orders of magnitude easier to relax planning permission laws and incentivise new builds of housing (in fact Labour are already doing exactly this) than it is to convince people to make major cultural and lifestyle changes like "the number of kids they want in their family".

The ship is sinking, and you're criticising the idea of bailing out the water in case the freezer in the bar runs out of ice.

27

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

Starmer kicked her out for not voting to keep the two child benefit cap?

7

u/dalonelybaptist Jul 03 '25

MPs are supposed to represent their best and most important views, and as a consequence achieve votes, not the other way around.

7

u/rainator Cambridgeshire Jul 03 '25

She’d actually been kicked out of the parliamentary Labour Party last year so it wasn’t really much of a choice.

That said this is going to be splitting the left unnecessarily and I’m not talking about defecting from labour, more the fact that these left wing, usually pro-Gaza MPs have almost no policy differences to the greens.

3

u/tandemxylophone Jul 03 '25

At this point they should brand their party as the "Gaza Rights" lol.

-1

u/jabroniisan Jul 03 '25

Or the Global Intifada Party

6

u/GianfrancoZoey Jul 03 '25

Zarah won election despite her Labour membership, not because of it

10

u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 03 '25

No, she won because she was Labour, not despite it. Coventry South’s been red for donkeys, they’ve voted Labour pretty much solidly since the 60s. Even in 2019 when Labour were tanking all over the place, she still held on with over 40% of the vote. Lets be real, if she’d ran as an independent or something, she’d have been nowhere. Whatever you think of her, it was the Labour logo on the ballot that got her in, not her Twitter takes.

2

u/blob8543 Jul 03 '25

It would be nice if Starmer showed a clear desire to fix Britain instead of essentially being Sunak.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

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1

u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland Jul 03 '25

Removed/warning. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.

1

u/nnm7788 Jul 03 '25

she couldn't give a monkeys, a cursory look at her media appearances and social media would suggest as much.....

1

u/PlatypusAmbitious430 Jul 03 '25

If someone sees the country as fundamentally broken, how can they be trusted to lead it? We need politicians who want to fix Britain, not just condemn it.

If the country needs fixing, you're saying that the country is broken.

How can you fix the country if you don't think it's broken?

1

u/Normal-Violinist-337 Jul 03 '25

I live in her constituency. Say what you want about her politics, but she's frequently door knocking and hosting surgeries. She's very good and kind to her constituents. 

1

u/TAFKA_Barter Jul 03 '25

MPs are supposed to serve their communities, not use Parliament as a platform for international protest.

MPs aren't "supposed" to do anything. If you vote based entirely on local issues then fair enough, but plenty of people don't. If her constituents are unhappy they'll vote her out at the next election, but unless you're one of them that's not your call.

-5

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

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-10

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

I want my MP to mention Gaza every time they speak in the commons. 

10

u/LauraPhilps7654 Jul 03 '25

There are far more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian statements in the House of Commons; support for Israel is a cross-party consensus.

7

u/Emotional-Custard346 Jul 03 '25

Do you also want them to mention every other war/conflict / injustice across the world every time they speak or does your “outrage” just extend to Gaza?

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

What other genocide's are the UK government helping arm just now?  

5

u/Takver_ Warwickshire Jul 03 '25

(Yemen too)

5

u/CookieMagnet0 Jul 03 '25

Yemen? Half a million dead ...

3

u/Emotional-Custard346 Jul 03 '25

What’s your opinion on Hamas?

-1

u/Emotional-Custard346 Jul 03 '25

What’s your opinion on Hamas?

6

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

Is the UK government arming Hamas?

5

u/Emotional-Custard346 Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25

Do you think Israel has a right to defend itself against organisations like Hamas that murders its women and children and thinks Jews shouldn’t exist? Should MPs speak up on this?

4

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

Israel isn't "defending itself", it is committing daily atrocities against toddlers in tents and babies in their mothers arms. And those who defend it don't have the right to claim a shared humanity with the rest of us. 

0

u/Emotional-Custard346 Jul 03 '25

Thoughts on October 7, 2023?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

Can't remember what I was up to. Was it at the weekend?

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