How Gaza became the final straw for UK Labour's Corbyn wing

On polling day on 12 December 2019, activist and writer Sonali Bhattacharyya was out in the rain until the evening, knocking on doors to get people out to vote.

“I’d been there since morning. I remember coming back to the local Labour party office just as the exit poll was dropping. And we were all in tears,” she recalled.

“I put a lot of hours in… sort of seems quite unthinkable now, actually.”

Bhattacharyya joined Labour after its defeat in the 2015 general election, as the situation seemed “desperate”.

“I’ve never been a party political person, I never thought I'd be active in the Labour Party, never really had much truck with electoral politics, never really thought that it was worth putting time into,” she said.

But Bhattacharyya quickly worked out that the party was “impenetrable” for campaigners like her.

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