JEREMY CORBYN has launched Your Party’s local election drive with a focus on backing community independent campaigns in former Labour heartlands.

Mr Corbyn, who has been named the troubled party’s parliamentary leader, wrote in the Standard newspaper that it was “organising for an alternative to the despair of Labour and the division of Reform.”

Your Party is standing 24 candidates on May 7 under its own banner, according to the party’s website, but the main effort is going into supporting already-established independent local groups, like Aspire in London’s Tower Hamlets, which has run the borough since 2022.

These candidates “share our socialist, anti-austerity politics,” Mr Corbyn wrote, and “in contrast to the snake-oil alternative of Reform, will be campaigning for socialist policies that can transform people’s lives: free school meals, social housing, and the in-sourcing of public services.

“And they will be standing fearlessly against this government’s shameful complicity in genocide.

“Your Party’s support for community independents is part and parcel of our foundational purpose: to build a new kind of community-based politics that empowers local people to fight for the future they deserve.”

That is a formula which corresponds to Mr Corbyn’s original vision for a new electoral force on the left before the turmoil which beset its launch as a more fully developed socialist party.

Your Party lists 14 local groups around the country enjoying the party’s backing. They do not include the Islington Community Independents, standing in Mr Corbyn’s own constituency, apparently because of internal disagreements.

The Workers Party of Britain is standing 69 candidates in English local authorities, including 27 in Birmingham and 11 in Manchester, as well as 14 for the Scottish Parliament.