YourParty supporters are getting used to periodically hearing about what is happening in the closeted world of the party’s leadership from media articles where some faction or other has leaked about it to friends in the MSM. The latest public row was kicked off by a Guardian article about the mess over the party’s finances and data. And it has been a mess – different cliques accusing each other of lack of trust, honesty and competence.
How many more prospective members (or already signed up members) will decide to give up on Your Party and join the Greens or just walk away from party politics entirely?
And who could blame them? The sense of hope generated by the launch of a new party left of Labour has been steadily eroded by continued secrecy about the party’s bureaucracy, public spats, and the mess around the two online membership portals. Meanwhile on the back of a new leader the Greens are positioning themselves as the real left opposition to Labour and Reform (however performative this is).
The immediate reaction on left social media to the Guardian article and the statements that followed from Zarah Sultana and then the three MOU directors has been a mix of fury, denial, or confusion. Those around Corbyn (especially people involved in Collective) are accusing the three (about to be ex) MOU directors of fabrication. Pro-Sultana members, the opposite. Others are just distressed this has become yet another own goal. And others attack anyone criticising what has happened as ‘mudslingers’.
Without knowing the full facts of this particular saga it is hard to be entirely certain about the claims and counter claims (although the Canary claims here it does know) but it does seem like Feinstein, Driscoll and Winter have been treated very badly. As always, Corbyn is silent. The threat of taking comrades to court (and this isn’t the first time), the leaks and the deliberate misinformation have been disgraceful in what professes to be a progressive socialist party.
What is clear is that the tensions at the top haven’t diminished. And that the factions are not fundamentally about politics (except for Sultana calling out the social conservatism of four of the independent alliance MPs and Corbyn’s annoyance at her stating YP has to be anti-Zionist). The rifts seem to be more about strategy, tactics and control than ideological differences even though Sultana has been more overtly left wing in her interviews and at rallies.
The fault lines in YP in any case didn’t start with the botched membership launches but with the internal and secret meetings about establishing a party led by Corbyn in the previous three years.
None of that has changed – we don’t know the names of who is in charge. There’s been no explanation of why the independent alliance MPs should be given an oversight of the running of the party between November’s conference and the election of the first CEC – why should it be MPs and especially the independent MPs who have never claimed to be socialists?
Who wrote and signed off the consultation papers? Who decided that there would be one leader elected as the party’s first leader and not a joint or collective leadership? Was there consensus over the two-party ban? Recent comments from Zarah Sultana suggest there wasn’t.
Despite the rhetoric about party democracy the papers expose worrying degrees of control over the membership at local and national level – particularly in how the party envisages branches being established and then run. What we have seen is months of inaction and then, as Ken Loach has described at a rally in Thanet – a huge rush to get out the consultation papers with only weeks to go before the founding conference. To call all this a lack of transparency is an understatement. It could result in a founding conference which is either chaotic or which establishes a constitution which is unsatisfactory and not built on a democratic basis.
The debates in YP since its launch have been almost entirely about party democracy (mostly the lack of it). There’s been very little about its political direction. The national leadership has not used the launch to collectively promote the principles behind it or the urgency of an alternative to the government with its increasing authoritarianism, its continued complicity in a genocide, and its attacks on the worst off and most vulnerable. Nor have they used the opportunity to savage Starmer’s aping of Reform and his puerile patriotic messaging.
The political statement – one of the four papers included in the consultation papers – reflects this absence of discussion at all levels of the party. It does, at least, attempt to explain the socialist basis of the party but does it in a muddled and unclear way. Is Your Party against capitalism or just neo-liberalism, is it proposing the replacement of a capitalist society with socialism, how can distribution of wealth and power take place? These are fundamental issues which must be core to developing the party’s programme and should have been part of a debate in the last few years about the establishment of a new party of the left. The statement doesn’t even give any context of why a new party is urgently needed – for the UK and globally – and why it is only international socialism that can deliver solutions to the growing global crises of wars, the suppression of human rights, environmental devastation and the growth of the far right.
Socialists should have no illusions about the politics of a party which emerged from the collapse of the Corbyn project. It will be reformist even though more radical than Corbyn’s Labour party. But it is the first party left of Labour to emerge which has any chance of shifting the political landscape. It’s a real opportunity for the left to influence and widen the political debate. Left groups are continuing to organise around the assemblies even though they are set up as talking shops and to build towards the founding conference at the end of November. Proto branches are still being set up by grassroots members despite the chaos of the centre.
To waste the possibility of what could become a mass working class movement because of power struggles and incompetence would never be forgiven.
TAS has published many articles about the development of Your Party, which can be seen elsewhere on our website. The videos of TAS public zoom meetings can be found here.