16.10.2025
Another fine mess
At the top there is secrecy and there is bungling. Comrades need to get organised on a serious and principled basis, says Carla Roberts. Chasing unity for unity’s sake can only but result in fudge and confusion
Everything is hunky-dory at the top - at least according to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, speaking jointly at a number of events over the last week. They have made up, apparently, and are “moving forward together”, holding hands.
Anybody who has been paying any attention, however, will know that this is a blatant lie. Not necessarily a malicious one - on a personal level, the two might indeed be getting on better. But then it is not them who are running Your Party. Behind the scenes, it is the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat, Karie Murphy, who for some reason has been appointed by Corbyn to run the ship (because she did such a fine job when he was leader of the Labour Party?). And, boy, is she messing things up again! The lack of transparency and democracy in Your Party is bad enough. But, coupled with the sheer incompetence at HQ, things have been rapidly descending into a right old mess.
Let us take a look at what has been happening.
- As I write on Wednesday, we hear that the four ‘founding documents’ are just about to drop - only a few days before they are to be discussed at the much-postponed first regional assemblies1 (which were announced only a couple of days before that - often to the surprise of the local proto-branches, who in some cases were still trying to find venues). We will look at the documents in more detail in the future, of course.
- Those assemblies were supposed to bring all members and supporters in Your Party together to discuss and amend. Alas, there are huge areas without an assembly in sight.
- They are also extremely underfunded. Initially planned as holding “2,000 people each” and with money being no object, they have shrunk dramatically and are now organised mostly in venues that hold a few hundred. How can members who live nowhere near any of the venues have any input into amending the documents? Yes, supposedly there will be an online portal for amendments too, but clearly, one person proposing a change will in all likelihood be ignored - much harder to do that when 500 people in an assembly demand the same thing.
- The assemblies are supposed to be “deliberative” and non-voting - but we are hearing from many areas that comrades are planning to see by a ‘show of hands’ which options/amendments are the most popular. This is in fact what Andrew Feinstein suggested in a public meeting in Hastings2 - and that comrades should communicate the outcome in emails to both Sultana and Corbyn. Clearly, he does not trust the process - or that emails sent to the official address will trigger much of a response.
- Money seems to be a real problem. Although the application at the electoral commission states that the party is worth £800,000, this seems to be referring to the money held by MOU Ltd - the company set up by Andrew Feinstein, Jamie Driscoll and former MP Beth Winter to collect all the cash from the membership portal that Zarah Sultana launched on July 18. But, when Jeremy Corbyn publicly accused her of “misuse of data/breach of data protection laws”, this resulted in an investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). It first appeared as if that was the reason that the accounts and database remained frozen and inaccessible. But in a video of a meeting on September 30, Andrew Feinstein explains that, in fact, MOU is withholding the money3 (“safeguarding it until legal frameworks are in place”) - because, so we hear, Team Corbyn wants them to hand over all the cash, but retain the liabilities for the legal problems they now find themselves in, thanks to being reported to the ICO. Possible fines run into millions of pounds. What a mess!
- Then there is the delay in publishing the founding documents (which were supposed to come out in September). Are there political differences that explain the delay? What are they? Should we not be told? Perhaps it is about the ill-thought out ban on dual membership, which has already been changed three times? Or perhaps things have simply ground to a halt with the departure of James Schneider, who was drafting most of the documents, but was so fed up with the incompetence at the centre that he resigned a couple of weeks ago (though we hear he is already sneaking back in). Not that we have been told any of this by YP HQ. Apart from a few bland emails, there is no transparency, no openness. It is all rumours, leaks, whispered conversations and the odd article.
Like Momentum?
For example, we hear that there will be only two ways in which ‘amendments’ to the documents will make it through to conference: firstly, if the person(s) who drafted the documents accepts them (we expect that the vast majority will not be accepted); secondly, if those rejected amendments or alternative proposals are supported by a set number of members on the online membership portal. If this is indeed the plan, we are guessing that number will be in the hundreds, if not thousands.
Jon Lansman instituted a similar system when he was running Momentum - it is still in the constitution and clearly, those running Your Party have learned a lesson or two from Momentum in terms of how to stifle the membership. Somewhat perversely listed under the paragraph title, ‘Direct democracy’, we read that “procedures for petitions” and “constitutional amendments” in Momentum require the support of at least “5% of members or 1,000 members”! And, if there is no majority on the leadership in support of such a proposal, it then needs “a petition signed by 10% of the membership” in order to “trigger a vote among all members”.4 To our knowledge, this has never happened and unsurprisingly so. Expect similar horrors in Your Party’s draft constitution.
In any case, this clearly demands that the radical left get together urgently to discuss a set of amendments that we can jointly push forward - it would be an absolute tragedy if different groups opposing the bureaucratic rules propose different formulations. In all likelihood, they would all be ruled out because they do not have enough support. We have been arguing for such a campaign in the Democratic Socialists, so far with limited success (more on this below).
There is also still a total lack of clarity on how the launch conference will actually be run. In a recent article in The Guardian, for example, Corbyn casually writes that “members will be chosen at random to debate our founding documents. Then, every member will get the final say online through ‘one member, one vote’”.5 So, no voting in Liverpool? The website, however, states: “A representative selection of members will then vote on these documents, and amendments, at our founding conference in November. And to ensure everyone has a say, the final decision will be up to members in a ‘one member, one vote’ [OMOV] system.”6
Voting, no voting - it almost does not matter. After all, we hear that conference participants will only be there for a few hours, with the two-day conference divided up into four chunks, with four separate sets of ‘delegates’. And anything conference votes on could then be overturned by an online OMOV vote! Who at home will really follow 16 hours or so of conference proceedings? The majority will just vote on the documents in front of them - and, if our Jeremy chimes in to support this or that version, how do we think the online vote will go?
In other words, going to conference sounds like an absolute massive waste of time. Of course, Weekly Worker supporters will try to get ‘sortitioned’, and distribute the paper and a voting guide outside the venue in any case (get in touch if you want to help out: email editor@weeklyworker.co.uk). But in terms of democracy, this is a total stitch-up and Corbyn should hang his head in shame for supporting such a farce - all in the name of democracy, of course. He states:
When highly centralised political parties answer to nobody but themselves, you get policies that nobody asked for. When political parties are democratically accountable to their members, you get policies that the British people want and need. I’ll go further: undemocratic parties produce undemocratic societies, where a small section of society owns the resources we all need to survive. Democratic parties produce democratic societies, where wealth and resources are owned by us all.
Quite, Jeremy. This undemocratic launch conference cannot actually produce a democratic party. Perhaps those pushing back from below might be able to turn things around, but it is getting increasingly difficult (more on some of the new initiatives below).
Posing left
One person who is certainly pushing back is Zarah Sultana - good on her. Despite the public hand-holding with Corbyn, she has been entirely sidelined. Her unilateral launching of a membership scheme sealed her fate: Murphy was finally allowed to get rid of her. We hear that there are now “six or seven people in the exec team”, all under the tight control of Murphy, partner of Len McCluskey (former Unite general secretary).
Sultana has been moving left with lightning speed - she seems to understand that there is no point coming out with left platitudes about peace and justice - Zack Polanski more than covers that ground now (Green Party membership has soared to 100,000 incidentally, way more than the rumoured 40,000 who have joined Your Party).
Speaking alongside Jeremy Corbyn in Liverpool, Zarah started by giving a shout out to Audrey White and the Merseyside Pensioners Alliance - clearly positioning herself with the ‘left of the left’ in the city. The ‘official’ YP connection in Liverpool is via Alan Gibbons, who runs the Liverpool Community Independents in the same way as he did Momentum: very badly and very undemocratically. Gibbons, as former Constituency Labour Party secretary of Liverpool Walton, refused to speak out (or even allow the tabling of motions) in support of the Wavertree Four, who were expelled on fake anti-Semitism charges. When he was the leading member of Momentum’s national constitutional group, he only criticised the suspensions of those who were victims of the ‘second wave’ of the witch-hunt, after Corbyn’s defeat. Despite promising to make Momentum more democratic, he continued to enforce Jon Lansman’s constitution, according to which anybody expelled from Labour could not be a member of Momentum. So, when it was his turn to be expelled from Labour, he had to, of course, leave Momentum too!
He is now on the de facto leadership of Your Party and has let it slip that he will be a “sortitioned delegate” at the YP launch conference in November. That’s handy - no need for ‘celebrities’ like him to put themselves through the trouble of sortition! We suspect there will be plenty of others, including, of course, Jeremy Corbyn himself.
Zultana’s speech in Liverpool was way to the left of anything she has put forward so far and it is worth quoting her at some length, because she is clearly positioning herself as part of the radical left of Your Party (and because this has not been published verbatim anywhere else, as far as we can see):
We are here for a fundamental transformation of society, the means of production controlled by workers. And another very simple idea, the working class controlling the wealth that they produce. It’s called socialism. And let’s be clear, working class people aren’t turned off by class politics. They live class politics every single day … So I say, let’s embrace class war because it’s about time we won.
And nationalising a few industries isn’t enough. We need democratic control of the economy by workers. Because capitalism isn’t just a few bad bosses or greedy companies. It’s a system geared and built for private profit, not social need. And, as long as this system remains, it will continue to reproduce inequality and exploitation. It is only socialism that can lay the foundation for genuine equality, solidarity and freedom …
And let me say clearly, from Liverpool to London, our movement will be proudly anti-Zionist … We will keep boycotting, divesting and speaking until Palestine is free and until every single person who enabled this genocide is held accountable for their crimes. Because a day of reckoning will come for those who have enabled genocide. Blood is on their hands and we will not rest until Keir Starmer, David Lammy and the rest are in the dock at The Hague. We must sever all diplomatic ties and relations with the apartheid genocidal state of Israel. That means every ambassador expelled. That means every embassy shut down. Because Israel must be treated the same way apartheid South Africa was treated: as a pariah state. We cannot have normal relations with genocide. Full stop.
And Your Party must be unashamedly anti-imperialist. We know that Nato isn’t about peace or security. It is an imperialist war machine that profits from death and destruction. You cannot greenwash Nato. And look at its record - Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya; endless wars have made the world less safe. That’s why we must argue for the immediate withdrawal from Nato.7
OMOV illusions
In an article for Tribune, Sultana concentrates on the democratic structures of Your Party.8 Yes, she still harbours illusions that “‘One member, one vote’ must be the bedrock of party democracy, used to decide policy, conference decisions and leadership.” As we have argued before, OMOV is naturally the most democratic decision-making method for local meetings. But it turns into its opposite when used at a national conference - as it will be in November. Reduced to an online vote, it will empower the undemocratic leadership, who can easily manipulate proceedings and the vote.
But she also makes many good points in her article. Most importantly, she argues against the proposed ban on dual membership. She quite rightly explains that this is obviously not aimed at members of the Green Party or the Labour Party, as quite a few naive souls seem to think (see below). It is clearly aimed at the organised left:
And we must be open. The rule banning Your Party members from joining other parties should be scrapped. The left has been in the wilderness for years, kept alive by smaller parties, independents and local campaigns. Those who saw what needed to be done and refused to wait for permission are exactly the people we need with us. Shutting them out would be a grave mistake. We cannot allow a Labour-style witch-hunt on the eve of conference. For socialists to unite, we must let all socialists become members and take part in the conference.
Quite right.
She has been accused by Corbyn loyalists of wanting to cuddle up to the Socialist Workers Party and perhaps she does hope they might support her in any leadership battles. That is, of course, Sultana’s weakness: she believes in the Führerprinzip - the principle of the strong leader (or two). No doubt, things would be better in YP if she was leader and not the eternal compromiser and ditherer, Corbyn. But communists reject bonapartist leaders for a number of reasons. We want collective leadership, where the members of a steering committee are accountable to each other, as well as the wider membership. We must avoid making her - or anybody else - into another messiah. Jeremy Corbyn is the reason Your Party exists, yes - but he is also the reason why it is in such dire straits. Nobody should be able to hold an entire organisation to ransom like that. If there has to be a ‘leader’ because the electoral commission demands it, let’s pick somebody from within the new collective leadership body - but make sure they do not have any special powers.
Democratic Socialists
Unsurprisingly, there are also a number of campaigns and factions that have started to organise within Your Party, though Zultana is keeping away from all of them. At the annual The World Transformed (TWT) event, which took place from October 10-12 in Manchester, a ‘unity statement’ was produced, signed by “seven Your Party groupings” who now apparently form a “network”. Most of them are pretty marginal groups and in the vicinity of Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century (RS21) and the Democratic Socialists in Your Party9 of Max Shanley and Archie Woodrow. The latter is generally a very useful campaign, focusing on the need for democracy and socialism - a number of Weekly Worker supporters are actively involved with it.
The statement, ‘For a member-led socialist party: united proposal from Your Party groups’,10 has made quite a splash and it contains many good phrases. We particularly like demands for a “workers’ wage: elected officials and party staff should take a salary no higher than the median wage in the area they live. The remaining money should go either to Your Party or to local class struggle organising.” “Anti-capitalism” is good too (though we are somewhat bemused by the phrase, “socialist horizon”, instead of, you know, ‘socialism’). We also agree with demands for “mandatory reselection” and for a “sovereign conference: decisions made at conference are binding, the parliamentary or council whip should be used to ensure MPs and councillors vote in line with conference decisions”.
A supporter of the Weekly Worker was in attendance online at one of the two 60-minute-long meetings taking place during TWT, but we did not sign up to the statement. Why not? For a start, online participation really is no substitute for ‘being there’ - another reason we oppose ‘online democracy’: we could not properly engage. The whole process was also very rushed, as the organisers wanted a TWT assembly to adopt their statement immediately. No proper invites went out to the many other groups and organisations who are working for democracy and socialism in Your Party. A mistake - and one that is compounded by the fact that the list of supporting organisations is now ‘closed’, it seems: “We have started a network for our groups and will coordinate to do everything we can to see these demands win. You can join any of the organisations involved in this to coordinate for proto-branches, regional assemblies, conference, to get these demands put in place.”
We should say in all fairness that it is disputed within Democratic Socialists that those representing them at TWT even had the authority to form such a “network”. Without wanting to sound patronising, it does show that the organisation is led by enthusiastic, but mostly young and therefore somewhat inexperienced, comrades. Max Shanly has argued that the text should simply be “ignored”, while others declare it is “a castle made of sand”. We agree - though it is worth looking at it in more detail, because it does highlight some of the problems that arise when you chase unity for unity’s sake.
For a start, there was no real discussion on any of the points ‘agreed’ (by the undemocratic consensus method) and most of them remain at the level of platitudes. Branches should be “well funded”, we read - who would disagree with that? No percentage is mentioned, so it is entirely abstract. Or point 10: “Base-building (meaning bringing new people into class struggle and movements) should be a core part of Your Party strategy.” Karie Murphy could sign that.
And what on earth is meant by the demand to “weaken British militarism, Nato, Zionism and all cogs of the British imperialist machine” (our emphasis)? Cut the military budget in half? Slowly leave Nato? Or maybe replace it with a ‘European defence alliance’, as suggested by Zack Polanski? How do you “weaken” Zionism? No, Nato needs to be abolished, Zionism needs to be fought, relentlessly and with everything we have, and real socialists support Karl Liebknecht’s famous phrase, “Not a man and not a penny for this system”, when it comes to funding the army and the system responsible for our oppression. Other subjects like the climate catastrophe are entirely missing.
Worst of all, when there were differences, they were glossed over. Some issues were simply dropped, because there was no time to discuss them. Others fudged. For example, there was a proposal to explain that the group is in favour of a democratic, “delegate-based conference”. Quite right. But some in the room actually thought that sortition (ie, lottery) is much better. Rather than see what the majority in the room thought, the formulation was quickly fudged to “a genuinely democratic and sovereign conference”.
It is obviously not “genuinely democratic” to choose conference participants by lottery: those people are entirely unaccountable to their branches. Sortition atomises and demobilises the members and does not build vibrant branches or collectivity. The driver for sortition is not worries about democracy - it is actually ‘anti-sectarian sectarianism’, as most supporters of this method will (sooner or later) admit: a method to keep the organised left groups like the SWP from hogging delegates or positions on a committee. This is entirely counterproductive and throws out the baby with the bathwater. Not only is sortition undemocratic - it makes the leadership even more powerful.
Democratic Bloc
Another, hugely important issue that is missing in the statement is the proposed ban on dual membership. This will clearly be one of the key issues we will have to fight over. It is an attempt to keep out the organised left, with Karie Murphy in particular harbouring great hostility against “the Marxist sects”. We understand that the issue was raised on the Saturday at TWT, but in such a confused way that it was simply dropped.
It appears it was the centrist Democratic Bloc of former Labour NEC member Mish Rahman who raised the issue: they do want dual membership - but only for Green Party members. The representatives of the other groups then quickly opposed that because they want a “unitary party with open factions” - thereby completely missing what is actually at stake with the proposed ban. That happens when you try to rush unity.
In its snazzy campaign literature, the Democratic Bloc actually campaigns in favour of the ban. Dual membership should only be allowed for “approved democratic parties” and “all these parties should be democratic, open and share their books with the new party’s NPC - so that we can understand the size of their membership, their finances, their GDPR compliance and their disciplinary procedures”.11 Groups like the SWP, the RCP - or the CPGB, for that matter - are unlikely to want to open their books to be judged by bureaucrats like Karie Murphy, Alan Gibbons or Mish Rahman, who would then no doubt find reasons to oppose them making it onto the ‘approved list’. Rahman confirmed in a public Zoom meeting of the Democratic Bloc on October 14 that he wants dual membership only for Greens, because he wants to “prevent entryism”.
For those who do not remember him, on the NEC, Mish Rahman kept his mouth firmly shut, when it came to the witch-hunt in the Labour Party, only making mealy-mouthed statements against the second wave of exclusions. He left the Labour Party and Momentum just a few months ago - clearly, the bureaucracy saw no reason to get rid of him. He was a loyal vice-chair of Momentum, served on its national constitutional committee and, just like Alan Gibbons, implemented the Lansman constitution, which, we should remember, was put in place via an OMOV coup and which abolished all democratic structures in Momentum.
It also turns out that he was actually a member of the secretive Your Party organising group of 30 or so people - until it was disbanded, when Sultana launched her membership scheme. Not that Rahman admitted to it: it was Andrew Feinstein who ‘outed’ him in the Zoom call on October 14. We wonder how seriously Mish Rahman was fighting for democracy and socialism, when he was part of the inner circle? He certainly did not do so publicly.
The Democratic Bloc quite rightly opposes sortition to select conference participants - but, instead of empowering branches by electing their own delegates, they want conference to be run entirely via OMOV - which can only be achieved by atomised online voting (Zoomocracy). No need to get together in a big conference hall even.
They propose that the “leader(s), the deputy leader and Scottish and Welsh leaders”, as well as the “National Field Director, Regional Field Directors and National Campaign Coordinator” (and a 16-person-strong “National Political Committee”) are all elected via “OMOV” - ie, in an online vote of all members. This would become a mere beauty contest, in which known names will win out. And how can such directly elected officers be effectively challenged, unless by another OMOV vote? And who would be able to call such a vote? This is enshrining an entirely unaccountable leadership. Much better to vote for a collective leadership team that decides among itself who will serve in which position, etc - people could be quickly replaced by the rest of the committee if they do not do their job properly.
Changes to the proposals of the Democratic Bloc are possible, we read, but only “through consensus decision-making”. Consensus is well known for being one of the best ways to shut minorities up and permanently embed the leadership - ‘You are stopping us from moving forward, so could you not just live with this or that formulation?’ No. Unless it is obvious that everybody agrees, socialists decide matters via democratic votes, ensuring that minorities can be heard properly.
In fact, the entire programme of the Democratic Bloc is pretty much indistinguishable from what Karie Murphy is trying to enforce. Launching this campaign after he was booted off the inner circle is obviously about Rahman seeking to build a little power base - this time as a ‘democrat’. He has with him various other careerists, including councillor James Giles from Kingston, who used to be campaign manager for George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain before he was hired by the independent MP, Ayoub Khan, in 2024 to become his chief of staff, and then employed as advisor by the other MPs of Corbyn’s Independent Alliance (you know, the ones currently in charge of producing the YP founding documents). This is no opposition platform: it is a platform of people who want to get (back) in the inner circle.
Funnily enough, the Democratic Socialists oppose all those things and have generally much better policies.12 So why are they so keen on building ‘unity’ with this outfit? This would be a very shaky unity indeed, probably all in the hope of becoming bigger and bigger - but to do what? How can you effectively fight for democracy, if you ally yourself with a campaign that wants to ban, marginalise and control the left? That wants atomising OMOV online voting rather than delegate-based democracy? What is the point? We suspect this unity will fall apart sooner rather than later.
The radical left in Your Party clearly should try to unite - but on the basis of principled politics, not by fudging and skipping over important political differences. When push comes to shove, such unprincipled unity will prove a hindrance, not a strength.
There are other networks and campaigns which we can discuss sometime. Meanwhile, it is worth highlighting a useful development, that is the Your Party Connections network. Set up by Anwarul Khan, a member of Transform, clearly this is an attempt of that mini ‘party’ to stay, or become, relevant. He runs a tight, but relatively democratic, ship though and only a couple of people seem to be fellow members of Transform.
Open culture
The network has grown massively in the last few weeks. There are now 50 or so proto-branches represented and they meet weekly on Zoom - with the very good principle that nothing is secret. The AI-produced, very detailed minutes are published and shared openly. Everybody is free to quote everybody else. This culture of openness and transparency stands in stark contrast not just to what the YP leadership is doing, but also to how most of the left organises.
So far, it has been useful mainly in terms of information sharing. Local reps have kept each other in the loop about how they organise, motions they have agreed on, etc - and, needless to say, have shared their frustrations about the secrecy and incompetence at the top. This is healthy. Comrade Khan also managed to get Sean Halsall along to answer questions. He has recently been appointed to the thankless task of organising all the regional assemblies with three weeks’ notice. He replaces Josh Virasami, who was sacked after he launched the short-lived campaign, Our Party, which was trying to ‘save’ the launch conference. Clearly another careerist, who only discovered his love of democracy after he was booted out of the inner circle. He now runs the ‘Organising For Popular Power tendency’ in Your Party - one of the seven grouplets who signed the unity statement. Halsall incidentally tried to answer the many questions from the frustrated local reps as well as he could, but had to admit that he was not part of “the democratic process” (!) - and therefore had no idea how the regional assemblies were actually supposed to make concrete amendments.
The network might or might not make the transition from information sharing to the more crucial job of joint organising. The response to the four founding documents will accelerate this process. A number of meetings are planned to discuss them and to try and cohere joint amendments. A good development.
Not surprisingly though, the bigger the network is becoming, the more political differences emerge. There is a small, but very vocal, minority that is extremely loyal to the Corbyn leadership, no matter how undemocratically it behaves. They oppose the attempt to cohere joint amendments and have labelled comrades sharing petitions calling for democracy as “wreckers” and “sectarians”. They want a code of conduct and a ban on “uncomradely” behaviour, while arguing that groups like the SWP should be barred and the ban on dual membership implemented (a bit uncomradely, no?).
Hopefully, these conservative forces will soon be sidelined in the struggles to make the regional assemblies, the launch conference and the party as democratic as possible.