10.07.2025

After the ‘comrade Delta’ rape scandal, the SWP is seen as a liability

Still waiting for Jeremy

Factional differences in the Corbyn movement have been fought out in secret and then leaked to the bourgeois press. Both sides show not the least understanding of the transparency, democracy and programme that our class urgently needs, says Carla Roberts

It would be difficult to think of a more efficient way to mess up the launch of the new Jeremy Corbyn party than the sorry charade we have witnessed over the last week or so. Yes, negotiations have been going on for almost two years now and everybody knew something was brewing, but Zarah Sultana’s sudden announcement on July 3 that she was leaving the Labour Party to “co-lead the founding of a new party” with Corbyn did come as something of a surprise - not least to the 60 organisations officially involved in that strange melange otherwise known as Collective (and, or so it appeared, to the man himself).¹

As soon as she issued her statement, there were rumours swirling of Corbyn being deeply unhappy. And then, less than an hour later, Sunday Times journalist Gabriel Pogrund tweeted: “Exclusive: I understand Jeremy Corbyn has not agreed to join the new left party with Zarah Sultana yet. He is furious and bewildered at the way it has been launched without consultation.”²

Pogrund is the author of the 2020 book, Left out: the inside story of Labour under Corbyn, which paints a not entirely unsympathetic picture of Corbyn as a leader who simply could not deal with the accusations of anti-Semitism and “retreated”. He interviewed many people close to Corbyn and clearly retains a working relationship with at least some of them.

The fact that he was onto something was paradoxically confirmed by Corbyn’s online silence. It took the independent MP until 1.38pm on Friday July 4 to release his own statement: “Congratulations to Zarah Sultana on her principled decision to leave the Labour Party. I am delighted that she will help us build a real alternative.”³ It does not take a genius to see the substantial difference between “help us build a real alternative” and Sultana’s formulation of being the co-leader. Corbyn’s statement was supposed to limit the damage - instead, the rumour mill went into overdrive.

News of a fraught Zoom meeting of the ‘inner Corbyn circle’ preceding Sultana’s announcement quickly started to spread. This secretive Organising Group, put together by Corbyn and his allies, is where the actual decisions about the new Corbyn party are being taken, with Collective having been well and truly sidelined many months ago (there are just too many of the weird and wonderful involved). Of course, there are no minutes and no official reports available, because this is all happening in secret. Still, we soon got to hear that there were 30 present at the afternoon OG Zoom call of July 3 and that a vote on the proposed leadership of the new party had taken place. Apparently Corbyn and his camp lost by 10 votes to 20.

Two leaks

It took until Sunday July 6 to get a fuller picture. Sadly, it was not Corbyn or Sultana who told the left (or the working class, for that matter) what had actually happened - but, once again, it was Gabriel Pogrund, writing in The Sunday Times. At least one person involved in the OG must have given this Murdoch journalist extensive background information about the ill-tempered Zoom meeting. Clearly, this is somebody on the losing side - ie, in the Corbyn camp. Somebody for whom secret meetings, backroom deals and shaping politics by leaking information to bourgeois journalists comes as second nature. That is, after all, how Labourites do politics. Instead of fighting openly for the politics they believe in, it is all about the dark arts of manoeuvring and spin.

Most people I have spoken to point the finger at Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s right-hand woman when he was Labour leader. But she was not actually at the OG meeting, we understand. She was on a plane at the time. Still, that does not mean she would not know what happened.

In any case, we read in The Sunday Times that at the said July 3 OG meeting:

[Andrew] Feinstein anonymously submitted a memo arguing for a party co-led by Sultana and Corbyn. Corbyn’s allies had submitted their own, arguing that only he had the authority to be leader and ought to do it alone. Corbyn himself agrees - not due to a desire to be front and centre again, some close to him say, but rather because he believes joint leaderships do not work.

In the event, [Salma] Yaqoob, who chaired the meeting, called a vote on both papers. Corbyn’s allies were dismayed, arguing the group had no authority to vote on anything and that such an exercise undermined the dialogue and consensus supposed to be at the heart of any venture.

Yaqoob, wielding the digital gavel, passed [sic] ahead anyway, stating most of those on the call wanted a vote on the two options. Corbyn and his allies boycotted the contest, saying some kind of wider democratic event was needed to make such a decision. In turn, Feinstein and his allies were able to vote and claim victory. This prompted Sultana’s post a short time later: the new party was born.⁴

Leaving aside that Pogrund is wrong to state that Sultana’s announcement had somehow led to the immediate launch of a new party - she had been careful to write that she would only co-lead “the founding of a new party” - the article does show the rather embarrassing next chapter in the sorry saga. It is embellished with screenshots from the WhatsApp group of the bigger, now sidelined, Collective outfit. It shows the clearly disgruntled group admin, Karie Murphy, removing, one after the other, members of the winning side - apparently in revenge for ‘ambushing’ Corbyn at the OG meeting: Karie Murphy “removed” Andrew Feinstein and Salma Yaqoob. She also removed two comrades named Huseyin and Leah.

It is quite likely that these screenshots come from a second leak, from the other side - ie, the Feinstein/Yaqoob faction, whose members, according to Pogrund, “share a sense of frustration that Corbyn has not been decisive enough since his election victory as an independent in July last year. They sympathise with him over the traumatic experience of his leadership and subsequent suspension from the Labour Party for alleged anti-Semitism, but believe time is of the essence”.

This ‘Get a move on’ faction now also seems to include Andrew Murray, the former Straight Leftist and Morning Star political commentator, who served as an adviser to Corbyn from 2018 to 2020, when he did his stint of entry work. Incidentally, Murray rates the chances of a party launch as “60%-70%. Probably within the next three or four months.”⁵ He reported, in a July 7 article, that “the [OG] meeting, which I attended, believed the party would work best with both Corbyn and Sultana at the helm. It did not take up a separate proposal for Corbyn to be sole leader. Sultana’s resignation and her announcement of the new leadership were putting into practice that collective decision, which she had told the meeting she would do.”⁶

Andrew Murray

So, according to Murray, Corbyn should not have been very surprised about Sultana’s move. Or were he and his close allies shocked that the (admittedly limited) democracy of the OG meeting was not simply overturned, when it turned out the decision taken was not to his liking? Pogrund tells us that Corbyn “implored Sultana to delete her message, to no avail. His wife Laura Alvarez, the Mexican socialist and former coffee bean importer, did the same. She, too, was ignored.”⁷

It is also worth asking whether or not comrade Murray’s presence at these meetings is on behalf of the Stop the War Coalition, the Morning Star or as a semi-detached member of the CPB? Does the CPB’s executive committee exercise control? If not, why not? Does he take his cue nowadays from John Rees and Lindsey German and his Counterfire mates? Or is comrade Murray still really committed to Straight Leftism and its Communist Liaison offshoot? Answers on a postcard.

As an aside, real communists would argue against any such directly elected leaders - interim, co or otherwise. It creates overly powerful Bonaparte(s). A truly democratic party should be led by a transparently elected leadership committee which is fully accountable to those who elected them. And, most importantly, they should be recallable, at all times.

In any case, we understand that Corbyn was dismayed because he wanted to ‘soft-launch’ the new venture in the autumn - at least according to none other than Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who writes on his blog: “As Jeremy Corbyn told me when I met him in London a fortnight ago, an independent party will be created in the autumn.”⁸ Perhaps the plan was to launch it on the eve of Labour Party conference (which starts on September 28) or to coincide with the government’s next budget. Who knows? Certainly not the working class in Britain, who this new party presumably wants to represent.

The Sunday Times article makes for extremely concerning reading indeed, chiefly because the disagreements between ‘Team Jeremy’ and ‘Team Zarah’ seem to be about nothing political at all. Can this all really just be about timing and having either one or two ‘interim leaders’?

Months ago

The much more important question of ‘What kind of party?’ was settled a couple of months ago - negatively, from our perspective. We know there used to be two ‘camps’ on the question - we previously called one of them the ‘partyists’, because those comrades were arguing for a membership organisation of some sort, with a national structure and local branches (Pamela Fitzpatrick and Karie Murphy, the two directors of Justice Collective Ltd, as well as Murphy’s partner, Len McCluskey, former general secretary of Unite). Then there were the ‘federalists/localists’, who argued for a looser network of pre-existing or newly formed, so-called ‘independent’ local groups, which included Andrew Feinstein, Jamie Driscoll and, crucially, Jeremy Corbyn himself.

We know that a couple of months ago the federalists had won, and that the preparations for the new organisation were focusing on a structure that had started to look like a diffuse network, with no democracy, either vertically or horizontally, but with, perhaps, a (relatively) strong centre. Or no centre at all, which is what Andrew Feinstein has been arguing for. He wants local groups to do their own thing in loose collaboration until after the 2026 local elections, and only then to hold a delegate convention to vote on a new constitution.

No hard left

Corbyn might have said a couple of weeks ago in Liverpool that “all socialist groups” should get ready to join - but he clearly does not want the larger ‘hard’ left groups to play any official role, because very soon they would be in effective control at a local level, not least by exercising hegemony over the largely formless ‘soft’ left mass. Their early involvement is certainly seen as potentially off-putting. The Socialist Workers Party in particular has a very bad reputation, especially following the ‘comrade Delta’ rape crisis. Despite that, Corbyn throws them the occasional crumb to keep them keen.

Meanwhile, the Socialist Party in England and Wales’ electoral front, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition - while being one of the few groups officially listed on the Collective website⁹ - is preparing to stand in the next round of local elections (and doubtless readying itself for its usual statistically irrelevant vote). In parallel, SPEW is campaigning for “the trade unions” (which ones, exactly?) to lead a Labour Party mark 2 (which, if it ever saw the light of day, would not, of course, turn out to be a farcical re-run of the Labour Party mark 1 founded in 1900).

Laughably, it demands that the Corbyn project adopt a revolutionary programme. If only SPEW would adopt one itself! The Alan Woods Revolutionary Communist Party comes from the same Militant stable and, in the form of its Fiona Lali poster girl, makes the exact same fake argument as SPEW. Only a few years ago the Woods group - then called Socialist Appeal - swore that it was committed body and soul to the 1918 Fabian clause four of Labour’s constitution. Now, while it cynically markets itself with r-r-revolutionary phrase-mongering, any sort of programme is notable by its absence.

As for the SWP, it is completely at sea, with its new, third generation leadership of Lewis Neilsen and Tomáš Tengely-Evans. Its utterly pointless broad front, We Demand Change, effectively acts as a recruiting sergeant for Zack Polanski. His ‘Back Zack’ leadership campaign has seen a surge of people joining the Green Party … most from the befuddled left - for example, John McDonnell’s former economic adviser, James Meadway,¹⁰ and Michael Chessum, long-time fellow traveller of the pro-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.¹¹ Having Green radicals sharing WDC platforms does, though, lend a certain respectability to an SWP that is desperate for respectability. But the real winner is, of course, Polanski.

The SWP’s central committee has recently ‘clarified’ that it does not want the current efforts by Team Jeremy or Team Zarah to culminate in any sort of a proper party. Instead it is arguing for a “socialist electoral alternative” to “bring together the fragmented groups of independents” on an absolutely minimalist platform of demands (“no to austerity and cuts, refugees welcome, fight racism, women’s and LGBT+ liberation, welfare not warfare, free Palestine and real action on climate change”). The SWP, you will be pleased to hear, “would be prepared to offer our members as candidates in such a grouping”.¹²

Of course, there are SWPers involved in many local ‘independent’ groups already and WDC might become their chosen umbrella in some constituencies. I suspect SWP thinking is that they can hoover up a few recruits. The looser, the more politically vague and formless the Corbyn party is, the better for the SWP. A classic case of putting the interests of a confessional sect above the interests of a working class that urgently requires its own, highly organised, politically coherent, political party if it is to act against the existential dangers of World War III and runaway climate change.

Differences

We understand that, about a month ago, it seemed like the Corbyn party was just about to be launched - but that Corbyn and/or those around him got cold feet and called it off. This continued dithering seems to have infuriated even soft federalists like Feinstein, who might have been emboldened by the recent polling by ‘More in Common’, according to which a party “to the left of Labour and led by Jeremy Corbyn” could pick up 10% of the vote (32% among 18-24-year-olds), reducing the vote for the Greens from 9% to 5%.¹³ We also hear that Sultana was about to be expelled from Labour, and that this is the reason why she might have moved quickly. Of course, once again, we are only guessing.

The tactic of railroading Corbyn and his supporters might have worked. The jury is still out. It seems obvious that waiting for Corbyn to move decisively or to take strong action on anything is like waiting for hell to freeze over. And indeed, over 80,000 people have already signed the appeal issued by Team Zarah¹⁴ (according to Sultana, the counter on the website is broken and shows ‘only’ just over 62,000, as we go to press).

But the fact that both sides have chosen The Sunday Times of all papers as a vehicle to fight out their differences leaves a bad taste in the mouth. So far, no other members of the Socialist Campaign Group have chosen to jump, though we hear that Jon Trickett at least is keeping a close watch. John McDonnell, former shadow chancellor, who remains suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party, has declared that he will not join Team Jeremy on this occasion. This self-declared Trotskyist is, in fact, a Labourite body and soul (in fact, so is Corbyn).

The four other MPs in Corbyn’s Independent Alliance are also involved in the negotiations, but their politics vary massively. Shockat Adam, MP for Leicester South, is the most leftwing, but that is not saying much. In a recent interview with Novara Media, he indicated he would be up for joining a Corbyn party, but argued against this being a socialist or even a left party: “If we call ourselves ‘left’, people on the other side of the spectrum might feel alienated”!¹⁵

This whole sorry episode should make it crystal-clear that none of the people involved in the topmost echelons of the Corbyn project have the slightest notion about how to build a viable working class party. Political differences, even if they are ‘just’ about what kind of interim leader there should be or when the soft launch takes place, should be discussed openly. There are massive questions that need to be addressed in forming a new party - brushing differences under the carpet (and, worse, leaking them to the bourgeois press) is absolutely the wrong way to go about things.

Fatal secrecy

“The manipulators and the sectarians thrive in secrecy”, Ken Loach quite rightly warned on Sunday’s ‘Crispin Flintoff Show’: “We need a democratic, principled and open party. This kind of secrecy is fatal and if we were open, they could not be able to infiltrate or leak from our WhatsApp groups. I fear there are cliques and egos involved that are pulling in different directions. Instead of this secrecy, we should have a delegate conference to take the key decisions, with delegates elected at regional conferences, in which everybody is allowed to participate, every group and every individual who wants to. And then we need to be prepared for when they come for us - and they will come for us.”¹⁶

The two sides might pretend to have ‘made up’ for now: Corbyn appeared together with Feinstein at the SWP’s Marxism event last weekend. However, a Zoom meeting of groups involved in Collective, which was supposed to take place on Monday July 7 to inform the various ‘stake holders’ about the way forward, was cancelled at the last minute. Clearly, there is still no agreement on how to handle what are petty disputes.

We should expect similar differences in the near future, though the fault lines are far from sharply defined. This explains why Feinstein, who was in the Corbyn camp on the ‘party question’, is now leading the faction opposing him. Pamela Fitzpatrick, one of the few people who dared to openly argue her case for a proper party, now strongly backs the federalist Corbyn. What a mess and muddle!

Incredibly, it looks like none of the arguments are over the programme of the new party. A few weeks back, the organisations participating in Collective were shown - on screen, and very briefly - the draft ‘programme’. It is as dire as one would expect, with ‘sensible’ compromise positions around nationalisations, ‘tax the rich’ and the kind of tame ‘motherhood and apple pie’ demands we saw in Corbyn’s Labour manifesto, For the many, not the few. Those leading the new organisation might have been separated from the Labour Party (through expulsion or resignation) - but few, if any of them, have broken from Labourism. They are hoping to replace Keir Starmer’s Labour Party with a slightly better version - but one that continues to think within the mental cage of the nation, constitutionalism and the rule of law. A dead end.

Communists fight in the Labour Party - when we can - because we understand that it is an important arena of the class struggle, just like the trade unions. In and by themselves, neither will bring about communism. But we have to engage with all those millions of people who are involved with or look to these organisations - in order to convince them to join us in the fight for communism.

Similarly in the Corbyn/Sultana party: if it really does ever see the light of day, it is unlikely to be the kind of party we actually need. Communists will be using every available avenue to argue for a truly democratic structure with faction rights and the kind of radical Marxist programme that actually presents a real, systematic alternative to this rotten system.