The Left has failed. Failed to offer an alternative to neo-liberal, unrestricted, market capitalism.

The failure spans both ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, we’ve seen a dramatic failure on the part of the mainstream ‘centre-left’. Despite five years of radical cuts, the Labour Party hasn’t made its voice heard. Scared that any questioning of job cuts and privatisation would lead to Tory guffaws in the Commons and slurs of ‘Red Ed’ in the press, Miliband has broadly accepted the Tory-Murdoch mantra that austerity is the only option available to us. On the other hand, there has also been a distinct failure of the radical left to mount a coherent ideological opposition to the coalition. By continuing to alienate ordinary people through internal factionalism and bickering over who has interpreted Marx in the right way, radical left-wing parties have left many disengaged and without political organisation. 

That’s not to say leftists groups, especially here in Cambridge, don’t do important work. The march against the EDL last year, the occupations during the Student Movement in 2010 and more recently the victories of the Living Wage campaign all demonstrate the energy for political activism that runs through the student body. And more importantly, they show how this energy can be converted into tangible political success, albeit on a small scale. But ultimately, these efforts have failed to mount a sustained attack on austerity because they lack a coherent political programme.

There is a space for a credible party to the left of Labour that could send shockwaves through British politics. And this call for a new way of doing politics isn’t just loony left-wing rhetoric. It’s happening across Europe. In the 2009 Greek legislative elections, SYRIZA, a coalition of left parties, polled 4.6 per cent of the vote, and in the elections of June 2012 this increased to 26.9 per cent. The same is happening in Spain. Podemos was officially created on January 16th 2013 with the modest goals of achieving 50,000 supporters, creating policy via open participation of its members, and opposing austerity in solidarity with other left-wing parties. Just four months later, Podemos had gained an 8.4 per cent share of the vote.

Undoubtedly the task seems to be much harder here in the UK. Our conservative voting system, fairly stable political traditions and more fortunate economic position mean significant change in the political sphere can be hard to achieve. But with further cuts to child benefits, proposals to raise tuition fees (introduced and then raised by Labour), and greater privatisation of the NHS (accelerated by Labour’s PFI scheme), the need for change couldn’t be more pressing. We need some way of combatting the normalisation of these radical right-wing policies. By rallying behind Left Unity, we’ve found a way to do just this.  

On Thursday 16th October at 1pm, Cambridge Student Left Unity will welcome representatives to King's College from Podemos and SYRIZA to discuss the rise of the radical left in Europe, and launch the youth wing of Cambridge Left Unity. 

Find the event here: http://www.facebook.com/events/864930793524816