THE SOCIALIST PARTY has withdrawn from the United Left Alliance.

In a statement published on its website, the party said it was withdrawing because of the decision of other members within the group to ‘ditch’ the spirit of collaboration in which the alliance was set up two years ago.

Though the party said it was “genuine in our preparedness to work with others on the left on a respectful, democratic and principled basis”, the decision of others not to act likewise had “decisively undermined” the alliance itself.

The alliance had already been in “a weakened state as ordinary working class people had not joined it in any significant numbers”, the SP conceded.

The party said the withdrawal offered new opportunities to reorganise the working class in its opposition to Government and Troika austerity measures, and said it remained committed to building a “mass and democratic party of the working class”.

The withdrawal only means the ULA’s Dáil membership falls by one – as Joe Higgins was the only remaining Socialist Party member within the group, following the departure of Clare Daly last year.

However, with Tipperary-based Seamus Healy having already pulled his Workers and Unemployment Action Group out of the alliance last year, the party’s Dáil ranks now stand at only three.

Those are the two People Before Profit deputies, Joan Collins and Richard Boyd Barrett, and Clare Daly who remains affiliated to the ULA outside of the Socialist Party fold.

“As a result, any potential the ULA had of playing a role in building a new mass Left in Ireland is now gone,” the Socialist Party said.

Read: ‘It’s imperative the left unites’: How the ULA wants to become a political party