To succeed, the left must get its own house in order. Taking on our opponents and analysing society as a whole are vital too, of course, but so is critical self reflection. 

It’s a cliche to say that we’re in an urgent moment – we’ve always lived with severe injustice, so the cause of the left is always urgent. But the situation at the time of writing, Autumn 2025, is simultaneously especially dire for the world and potentially promising for the left. 

A loss of legitimacy

Key to the current situation is the collapse of the legitimacy of the dominant neoliberal order since the 2008 financial crisis and its zombie-like survival, without support or a plan. Although the economy was stabilised, ordinary people’s lives never recovered and the mainstream parties of right and left have utterly failed to provide an alternative approach that could actually help people. 

They mostly haven’t even tried. Instead, they’ve moved to the right, to domestic authoritarianism, murderous anti-migrant policies and, most recently and heinously, to supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In many countries, including the UK, traditional party loyalties have broken down as people look elsewhere for politicians who actually try to represent their interests. The climate crisis is also key – its effects are ever more obvious, the need to take radical action to decarbonise our economy is ever more urgent, and those in power are failing to do so.

The rise of the right

All this has only served to further facilitate the rise of the far right, of the darkest political forces imaginable. These people will promise to help the masses while selling them out to the super rich and inflicting violence and death on their chosen scapegoats, such as migrants, refugees, Muslims and trans people. This was already being aided by mainstream rhetoric on austerity and migration and a compliant media, which has been happy to give respectful airtime to people like Farage for a long time and reluctant to do so for anyone on the radical left.

An opportunity for the left

And yet, the collapse of the legitimacy of the neoliberal order is also a clear opportunity for the left. Between 2010 and 2015, it seemed as if the left might take advantage of this opportunity, but the populist wave had mostly failed by 2020, though it may now be re-emerging in 2025 with the Greens and the new left party. Understanding and correcting what went wrong is part of our aim with this project. But this failure did demonstrate a latent appetite for leftwing policies. This and the broader erosion and instability of support for mainstream political parties shows that society is in a state of flux – people are suffering and open to something new. The right is currently winning the battle for their newly available loyalties, but they have not yet cemented a clear victory. The left is still in with a shot.

A left that can win

This is why it’s especially urgent that the left get itself together. None of the challenges we address here is really new – many are as old as the left itself. It’s arguable, though, that this is the best opportunity the left has had since at least WWII. If we do not grasp it, the centrists and liberals will not save us – they will collude in their and our defeat by the forces of darkness as our ecosystem collapses around us. 

We think that the left could and should become an ambitious, positive, internally diverse and pluralistic movement. It should pursue power in multiple domains – social movements, communities, government, workplaces and culture. These efforts should be mutually reinforcing and even coordinated – not in competition. It should be bold and principled but also strategic, without slipping into insurrectionary fantasy. This is all much easier said than done – this project aims to contribute to making it happen.