Janet Sillett reports on the TAS public zoom meeting 11 August 2025: How can we make YourParty democratic and socialist?
The video of the full meeting can be viewed here.
The Talking About Socialism public zoom meeting on Democracy and Socialism on 11 August 2025 was the second of a series on ‘Your Party’ – in the run up to the launch conference due in the late Autumn.
TAS members Barry Biddulph and Stephen Owen introduced the themes of the meeting – how to promote socialism within the new left party and what internal mechanisms can deliver the political objectives of communists and socialists: what opportunities does this new party present to promote socialism and what are the potential barriers that we will face? You can read a summary of their introductions here and here.
What issues were raised in the discussion – well, lots – and many ideas, too, on how to focus our energies in intervening in the period before the conference and in what results from that crucial step.
Although most speakers recognised the difficulties, there was optimism about the ability of the collective left to overcome them. Of course that doesn’t mean ignoring realities – the secrecy in which the new party has been conceived (and is still continuing); that the base of the party’s eventual membership will be reformist social democratic; that the lessons from the failures of the Corbyn movement may not have been learned; that the focus of the new party could quickly become fighting elections; and that the danger of Labourism remains.
There were practical suggestions – such as how to reach out to those signed up when we’re not being given information about who they are. Local groups are springing up everywhere even without the data – why not try and get your local press interested – one speaker had done this successfully. There clearly is a lot of interest out there – even if the national media is playing it down.
How should this party be structured to open up the space for socialist ideas and a left programme? There are already different models being supported and the left isn’t united about which: a federal umbrella versus a central structure with branches, affiliates or caucuses, a leader or joint leaders or collective leadership, direct democracy or representative democracy?
Several speakers wanted to see open factions – where groups and individuals come together and argue their case. A mass workers’ party must be open to different views being represented – it needs to have a dynamic internal life or it becomes a sect.
A mass socialist party would be far removed from the sham democracy of the Labour Party – where conference decisions were ignored if they didn’t suit the leadership, and where trade union block votes were sometimes used to back up the leader against the wishes of the membership as a whole. A party based on individual membership is democratic theoretically, but it depends on how that would work – clicking online on limited options proposed by the elite without debate and discussion is the opposite of democratic.
Much of the discussion was focused on the prospects for the promotion of socialist ideas and a left programme in the new party. Several speakers were clear that this had to be the main objective: the 800,000 people who have signed up already with an interest in Your Party were motivated by anger and despair at Labour’s record in office, at the genocide in Gaza Starmer has been facilitating, at imperialism and austerity, at the growing suppression of protest, at the climate crisis. Yet a reformist party ultimately has no answers – managing capitalism doesn’t work.
One speaker stressed that the new party will be full of contradictions. There will be a huge range of opinions on critical issues. There will be rows and dissent. But this should be seen as an opportunity for the left to argue for a new kind of socialist party which has abandoned labourism and tepid social democracy. We need to build united fronts in and outside the party and across the class. Another speaker stressed that socialists have to inspire new people – the young for example who are active in climate justice or those who have protested month after month for Palestine. That means thinking about how we present ideas – and there is so much more scope to be creative now.
Stephen said in his response to the debate that socialists and communists in the party need to find ways to move forward collectively. And Barry was clear that we won’t do that by hiding our criticisms, views, ideas. Our socialism.