When the launch of YourParty was announced it was met by widespread enthusiasm. 800,000 expressed an interest. Since then, the dead-hand of bureaucracy, political and organisational incompetence, compounded by disputes between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana over money and membership, with threats of legal action, have almost squeezed the life out of the project.
Most of the initial enthusiasm has disappeared. According to the Your Party website, at the time of the last vote held over the Christmas period, there were just 24,459 full members with verified accounts, of which just over 10,000 (10,046) bothered to vote online. A far cry from the potential membership of over three-quarters of a million; or even from the 50,000 that Jeremy Corbyn claimed back in November 2025.
The membership that has remained has been deprived of the data and money and assistance needed to build the local proto-branches that have proliferated on the ground, reflecting a determination to build a mass socialist party despite the impediments imposed by those holding the reins at present.
There is a lack of democracy at the centre of Your Party. The central bureaucracy is anonymous and unaccountable. Rules are made up – take the prohibition of dual membership, and the exclusion of CEC candidates like former Labour MP Dave Nellist (because of his membership of the Socialist Party). It was clear by the vote at conference that members wanted all socialists who supported the creation of Your Party to be allowed to join.
The stifling of democracy reflects a fear of a thinking, socialist membership, which wants to push the politics of Your Party far beyond the wishy-washy liberalism of Jeremy Corbyn’s Peach & Justice politics.
This political difference is emerging in the elections for the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of Your Party. There is a wide gap between the policies of the Grassroots Left, with its calls for the abolition of capitalism, and the vague platitudes of the Corbyn-led list by the name of The Many, which are the two main ‘lists’ to have emerged. There are scores and scores of independent candidates.
Who will emerge victorious? What will a win for The Many mean? Corbyn has already declared that he wants to overturn the collective leadership voted for by conference? Will Corbyn and his allies break away if the Grassroots Left win?
We have to keep the main task firmly in view – the need to build a mass, fully-democratic, fully-socialist working-class party that seeks to abolish capitalism, not to manage it.
In the context of what is happening internationally we need this more than ever.
What do you think?
Join the discussion. Come to the meeting and tell us what you think.