What's next for TWT?

The challenges that lie ahead for the British left are clear, even if the path through them is not. This election result is a landslide by negation - a wave of rejection of the Conservatives, not of hope for Labour. We know Farage’s racist agenda will find fertile soil as living standards continue to decline and mistrust in politics deepens. And we know too that the way to beat the far right is to improve lives, implement fair economic policy and build a proper democracy - something Starmer’s ideological commitments and alliances with finance capital will hardly allow. So what next?

The World Transformed has been at the side of every Labour Conference since 2016. While Jeremy Corybn was leader, the festival became a vibrant space where thousands of activists from trade unions, social movements, campaign groups, Momentum and other socialist organisations met and strategised. Connections were built which sparked new campaigns and organisations. Under Starmer, it posed a challenge to Labour’s rightward shift and empowered those resisting within and without the party. Across all these years it was a place for the left to come together in a unique diversity of forms and traditions. To truly hash it out, talk it over, learn, argue, fallout and make up - in summary, to get on with the messy and unglamorous business of developing a progressive, hopeful strategy for the future. TWT has always been utopian in spirit, but fundamentally deeply pragmatic in approach.

And so it will be again. The terrain now is radically different, and the need for a space to be together only more clear. While the main parties and much of the political-media class are drifting further and further right, there are millions of people across the country who are open to radical left wing politics. The success last night of Greens running on a progressive policy platform, of Independents refusing to accept the genocide in Gaza, and of Jeremy Corbyn defeating a vulture capitalist, have shown that this radical politics is capable of expressing itself as a meaningful independent political force.

Beyond Westminster, over the last few years we have seen the emergence of organised, sophisticated and determined campaigns and organisations, and a trade union movement waking from its slumber. These forces will inevitably be drawn into conflict with the new government and the resurgent right. And when we look at the Palestine solidarity movement, strikes and workplace struggles, the climate movement, tenants unions and migrant solidarity campaigns, to name just a few, we see a political force with the potential to not only influence Starmer’s government, but to form the basis of a movement that can reshape society in the coming decades.

The next TWT won’t be this year. And it won’t be at Labour Party Conference. But in the Spring of 2025 we are coming back. The landscape has shifted and the contradictions of our time have sharpened, but we think the proposition at the heart of The World Transformed is as necessary now as it was in 2016: bring the left together from across the country and the world and connect struggles, build relationships, have a dance, get organised.

Will we see you there?