23.10.2025

The last thing we need is a Mandarin bureaucracy

A study in control freakery

The four founding documents need at the very least serious revision. However, there are no official channels whereby members and branches can exert an influence, let alone take control, says Carla Roberts

Finally, on the evening of Friday November 17, the four draft ‘founding documents’ of Your Party were published - weeks late and just hours before they were being discussed at the first regional assembly in Norwich. This first assembly has shed a further light on the massive problems:

Around 150-200 attended, despite the assembly covering three counties and a hall which could hold 500.
It was chaired and run by Sean Halsall and Artin Giles from Your Party HQ, rather than local members.
Participants were arbitrarily allocated to small working groups of around 10 people - with each group discussing parts of the documents. At an online facilitator training last week, Giles explained that from now on, the constitution and standing orders would be split into 11 sections - “And we don’t want to allow people to choose which bits they can discuss; otherwise everybody wants to speak about how the leadership is elected.”
The facilitators in each of the small groups took pages and pages of ‘notes’, which will now go to HQ, “where a group of volunteers will go through them”, as Giles explained. He could not, however, explain how those volunteers would decide what is a good suggestion, what is a bad one - or, indeed, which one will make it into the next draft (there will be two more versions). It does not take a genius to guess that all those comments and amendments that HQ does not approve of are highly unlikely to make it to the launch conference.
Only 30 minutes were allocated for ‘feedback’ from the groups at the end of the assembly, with no voting. There was considerable disquiet, we hear, with a number of attendees raising objections to the process from the floor. But, as Larry O’Hara speculates in his amusing report,¹ Norwich was probably chosen as the location of the first assembly, because “organised left groups are thin on the ground. Thus, if you wanted the first assembly to take place without great dissension, and much less debate, the ideal place.” No concrete amendments were moved.
However, in the facilitator training, Giles explained that, “although we are not going to allow voting in the assemblies, if it turns out in the feedback session that there is a clear consensus on a subject - for example, on the ban of other parties - then this can be communicated and will be added”. He mentioned the formulation on “the ban on other parties” at least three times. Perhaps there is, as we have speculated, disagreement at the top on this.
It is still entirely unclear if participants at the launch conference on November 29-30 will be able to move any amendments or if they are merely able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to whatever HQ puts in the final draft.
As if sortition (ie, lottery) was not undemocratic enough, it now transpires that certain loyalists like Alan Gibbons in Liverpool do not have to go through the process at all: they have been handpicked by Corbyn’s right-hand woman, Karie Murphy, to attend conference. Corbyn will be another special VIP and no doubt there will be dozens more.
All these issues amount to a huge democratic deficit, which is compounded by the added problem that the promised online portal - where individual members were supposed to be able to submit amendments and alternative proposals - is not in use and we hear is very unlikely to go live before the launch conference. Artin Giles could not give a date, but said: “I hope it will be soon.”

Team Corbyn blames Team Sultana for the latter problem. She and the directors of MOU Ltd (Andrew Feinstein, Beth Winter and Jamie Driscoll) are allegedly ‘withholding’ the membership data and the money collected when Zarah Sultana, fed up with the dithering, unilaterally launched a membership scheme on September 18. Team Sultana, on the other hand, understandably demands certain legal guarantees that mean they cannot be held liable for penalties potentially running into millions of pounds - the consequence of Team Corbyn reporting them to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

In any case, clearly the portal should be opened and there are tons of possible technical solutions to overcome the problem of the membership data not being merged. The whole portal arrangement was only ever a sorry excuse for real democratic participation of members and was probably going to come with the Momentum-style requirement that any amendment would have to be supported by hundreds or even thousands of members in order to go to conference.

But the fact that even that is not working turns a serious democratic deficit into what can only be described as an absolute shit show: there is now literally no method for members to at least try and ensure a particular amendment makes it to conference.

Draft statement

The content of the four documents is broadly what could be expected - maybe a touch worse. Take the very short draft political statement.² We expected it to be mainly empty waffle, focusing on equality, peace, justice and all things nice, along the lines of the platitudes that Jeremy Corbyn usually comes out with (garnished perhaps with a vague reference to ‘socialism’, whatever may be meant by that). And the statement certainly contains all those things.

But there are also some serious additional political problems. We read, for example, that “Billionaires and corporations are now in control of our country. Your Party aims at its democratic and socialist transformation: by redistributing that power and wealth to all.”

We kind of get how you could - theoretically - reduce the billionaires to millionaires and then distribute their wealth to the rest of the country. It is pretty obvious though what would happen: most, if not all, of the 156 billionaires currently residing in Britain would not wait for that particular Corbyn legislation to go through, but take their billions elsewhere. ³ This tax-financed version of national state socialism would soon collapse.

Then there is this: “Its [Your Party’s] task is to build a mass party for the many that represents and is rooted in the broadest possible social coalition, with the working class at its heart” (all emphasis in quotations from YP documents has been added).

We suspect this cross-class formulation is a reflection of the class composition of the Independent Alliance of MPs. Zarah Sultana remains frozen out and Corbyn seems to have decided to subordinate himself to the four petty bourgeois MPs (small business owners and landlords all). This is also reflected in the draft constitution’s long passages on ‘local assemblies’. Sounds all very democratic and the type of thing Roger Hallam might come up with - but look closer and you see worrying suggestions that these should be able to initiate and decide on the party’s policy, as well as on its candidates (more below). Incidentally, we hear that Hallam has taken a step back from Your Party. He is apparently concerned that it is discrediting things like sortition (in our view, it is mainly sortition that is discrediting itself!).

Of course, socialists and communists should try to win over the petty bourgeoisie. It exists between the working class and the bourgeoisie and can seriously harm revolutionary forces, if we do not manage to get them on the side of the working class. That does not, however, mean that we should subordinate ourselves to this class. And Your Party seems to be on the way to doing exactly that.

This populist waffle needs to be replaced by a clear commitment to socialism - and an explanation of what it actually is and how it can be achieved. Unless there is such a clear formulation, it will soon become indistinguishable politically from the pro-capitalist, petty bourgeois Green Party. If you are not bothered about fighting against capitalism as a system and you do not think that the working class is the only class that can lead the fight for the revolutionary break with the system, then you might as well join the Greens. If anything, they look a lot more snazzy and media-savvy, thanks to Zack Polanski.

The Green Party also looks a lot more democratic than the stitch-ups emanating at the top of Your Party, by the way. Thousands of clearly fed-up YP supporters have already made that choice: Green Party membership now stands at 126,000 - up by 80% since Polanski was elected leader last month.⁴ Needless to say, in our view the Greens are very much part of the problem, not the solution.

Mistrust

The draft constitution,⁵ the draft standing orders⁶ and the document, ‘Organisational strategy’,⁷ have to be read as one, as most of the details of the constitution have confusingly been shoved into the standing orders. They come with a few pre-written sets of ‘options’ that members may choose. This is mostly about dumb stuff like whether local meetings should be run in a ‘hybrid format’ - though there is also the option to choose between a delegate structure and ‘sortition’ for future conferences. We will soon produce a voting guide on all of these, as well as a set of concrete amendments - not that there is currently the democratic space to actually move any of them.

All documents are characterised by a deep mistrust of the membership. The draft constitution, according to the proposal, can only be changed by “a two-thirds majority of delegates at conference” - this should serve as a warning to all those naive loyalists who argue we should just ‘get the party started’ and then repair anything wrong afterwards. It will be almost impossible to do so! There should be no such barrier to the will of the membership - a simple majority should suffice.

This culminates in proposals for a strong bonapartist Leader (with a capital ‘L’ just as in the Labour Party) and, of course, the proposed ban on left groups (more on both below). But it also affects the attitude towards branches.

No mention is made of the many proto-branches that have sprung up across the country, in which thousands are already actively involved. Yes, there are problems in some of them - but that is very much all down to the refusal of HQ to coherently collect and share membership data. Even requests to forward notifications of local meetings to all those who have signed up locally have been rejected (well, remained unanswered, like anything being sent via official channels). Naturally enough, it has fallen to the organised left to take the lead - and that comes with its own set of problems. In some areas, eg, Cambridge and south London, there are three rival groups. In Manchester, the Socialist Workers Party has been behaving appallingly. In other areas it is Counterfire that is the main problem. That is to be expected: that is what sects do. But it is an entirely avoidable situation.

This general mistrust towards the membership is expressed in the proposal that branches “shall be established in a process overseen by the central executive committee or its appointed representative”. What would the role of that CEC police be, we wonder? To keep the left out? Or to make sure that everything is done ‘democratically’ - the implication obviously being that local members would not be doing that if left to their own devices. A terrible attitude.

Branches have to be “linked to Westminster parliamentary constituencies” and ward groups may only be established when a “a particular threshold is met”. This makes sense if your overriding aim is to contest elections. But if you want to build a real party of the working class then this does not necessarily make sense at all. There might be big workplaces where we should set up a branch. Or areas where the division along constituency lines is inappropriate. It obviously should be up to the branches themselves to decide. That would be real grassroots democracy.

Workplaces

Branches should also receive a fixed percentage of the membership fee of those living locally (30%-50%) and then decide autonomously and by a simple majority on what to campaign. But, no, the constitution only states that: “All branches shall undertake workplace engagement and party organising activities in the community, as well as regular canvassing, and shall be appropriately resourced to do so.”

Well, what happens if a local branch decides to also do something else? Run a film club, for example? Or decide to financially support a particular strike or campaign? No, that is not a proposal for a “member-led” organisation: it is in fact stifling local initiative and democracy. If there was a way to move amendments, the need for firm financial support for branches would certainly be one of the most needed ones.

Then there is the rule that that “local parties should be encouraged to discuss national policy formation for conference, with a view to forming consensus”. Consensus is the worst possible method for decision-making. It silences minorities, because they ‘hold up’ proceedings. No, we need a culture of open debate, where different ideas are openly discussed - and with clear, sharp formulations, which can then be voted on, showing minority and majority positions. Consensus leads to political fudges and a very strong bureaucracy, which usually manages to get ‘consensus’ on their particular viewpoints.

The constitution also explains that “the new left party will adopt a two-pronged system for local parties - one based on meetings and organisation of full party members; the second based on open, publicly facing democratic assemblies”.

Further on in the document, we learn, very much bit by bit, that branches are, in fact, required to build those assemblies: “A component of party meetings must be a focus on the running of a local assemblies.” And: “Local party officers and members must be involved in the coordination and running of local assemblies. Local assemblies must serve their local communities. Community members must be invited to local assemblies, and must be invited at least 14 days before any such local assembly meeting occurs.”

In another section we read that “all branches shall undertake the necessary work to run regular public-facing, local community assemblies. These assemblies shall be democratic and contribute to community activity and party policy development”.

Hold on: the entire “community” is supposed to get involved in the development of the policies of Your Party? Not just that. In a long, painful and convoluted section, which distinguishes between “policy initiation”, “policy development process” and “policy approval”, both for “local policy” and “national policy”, it is clear that HQ is hoping that members will want to tick the options that state, “the local assembly will have the final say on whether to accept or reject the local policy proposal” and that even “national policy to be sent to conference by a local party is discussed and voted on democratically at the local party assemblies”.

What a ludicrous and dangerous idea. Who exactly is “the community”? Presumably it means literally everybody who happens to live locally, including members and supporters of the Tories, Labour and Reform. It gets worse.

This is the entire, full section on the important issue of ‘mandatory reselections’ of sitting MPs: “Incumbent, publicly elected party members shall be subject to cyclical primary contests, to be held by the local party before the relevant scheduled public election.” No further explanations or options: you can only “accept or reject”.

But how concretely can members get rid of a sitting MP or councillor? What is meant by “primary contests”, for example? Sounds very much like the US primaries system. And are the local assemblies included in “the local party”? We suspect so. This paragraph is extremely vague and, we presume, that is very much by intention. The six MPs - who have written, or at least approved, this formulation - might not be too keen on rules which mean that local members can replace them.

Socialists should definitely try to replace this paragraph with a clear commitment to mandatory open reselection, as, for example, they did in the Labour Party. Needless to say, we do not campaign for something like the undemocratic ‘trigger ballot’. A simple majority of local party members (and nobody else) should be able to decide if it wants to keep the incumbent candidate or replace them with somebody else. The same goes, of course, for deciding local or national party policy.

The way to interact with the ‘local community’ is not to hand the power to decide policy or candidates to forces outside the organisation - but to win them over to become members of the party.

Labour mark two

The proposed structure for the leadership is almost a carbon copy of the Labour Party’s national executive committee. The central executive committee is to be made up of:

The leader, elected by online OMOV (one member, one vote), who will stay in the post for “no more than 21 months”. There is no mention of a co-leadership team - another indication that Sultana is frozen out. Not that we support that idea - we argue for a collective leadership.
16 ordinary members, elected “bi-annually” (we suspect they do not mean every six months, but ‘biennially’ - ie, every two years) and also by online OMOV.
four public office holder representatives (two of them MPs).
two “devolved nation representatives” (one each for Scotland and Wales).
Up to five “reserved seats for organised sections” (“social groups such as the LGBTQ+ community, the disabled community, minority ethnic communities, etc”).

In other words, out of the 28 people on the leadership, only 17 are elected by the members - 60%. Clearly, in a member-led organisation it would be 100%. And this body would be elected at conference, by delegates who are themselves democratically elected. More problematic still are the automatic seats for the ‘public office holders’ and the five reps from ‘organised sections’.

Then there is this: “The CEC shall elect national officers, including chair, deputy chair, secretary, treasurer, political officer and spokesperson, who shall, alongside the leader, make up the Officers’ Group.” This is a proposal to create a Mandarin bureaucracy. It will really run the organisation … and pursue its own professional, careerist, interests. We suspect Karie Murphy fancies herself for the job of general secretary.

Real recallability

Any truly democratic party puts accountability of its leadership at the heart of its structures - and that must include clear rules on how members can get rid of leaders and representatives. As we discussed, the draft constitution contains nothing about how to replace the national leadership - a massive problem. It basically means that people would stay in the post for two years, no matter what. Unacceptable.

The standing orders mention recallability twice - for “local party officers” and for “candidates for public office”. In both scenarios, a staggering “40% of members in good standing within the relevant party unit” need to sign a “dedicated recall petition”, which will then “trigger a vote”, which presumably would have to be won by simple majority (which is elsewhere stated as the standard method).

40% of all local members, that is! It is very hard to get that kind of turnout in most organisations or unions. No, clearly it should be up to a simple majority in a branch meeting to call for such a vote - and then call a dedicated meeting where the issue is discussed and the officer, councillor or MP can account for themselves.

Not surprisingly, the standing orders do not mention anything either about the principled socialist demand of a workers’ wage for workers’ representatives. MPs currently enjoy a healthy annual wage of £93,904 - with plenty of benefits and perks on top. With that kind of income (and with all the other attractions that come with being an MP), it is only a matter of time before they lose touch with those they are supposed to represent. We demand a cap on their income set at the level of a skilled workers’ wage, requiring them to pay the balance to the party.

In the trade unions and in our socialist parties, the workers’ wage remains an important principle that ensures our MPs do not want the job in order to enrich themselves, but to serve the party. Needless to say, it should also apply to any staff employed by the party - they should get a flat party wage.

Our MPs and councillors must also be required to fight for the party’s programme. That sounds like an obvious point, but one that is harder to enforce than it sounds. It is incredibly easy and incredibly common for elected representatives to be pulled into the orbit of the capitalist lobbyists and the schmoozers of the upper classes.

Censorship

Last, but not least, the most problematic section: “Members may not hold membership in any other national political party, except if specified by the CEC.”

As an aside, this is almost exactly the same ‘demand’ put forward by Mish Rahman’s so-called Democratic Bloc.⁸ He too wants the leadership to decide which groups are ‘acceptable’ and which ones are not. He has since clarified that, in his view, it is only Green Party members that should be allowed to hold “dual membership”. He opposes left groups joining and has called them “infiltrators”.⁹ No, socialists should treat Rahman and his ilk with not a little suspicion. He is only posing left now because he lost his place in the inner circle when Karie Murphy closed down the OG (we did not recall him arguing for democracy, when he was a member of that group). We hear that the Democratic Socialists will not continue their ‘network’ with Rahman’s campaign, which was formed at the recent ‘World Transformed’ conference. Good. It is clear that the chief reason for his engagement was the hope to use the left to get enough support to be elected onto the CEC. He is a careerist - and a very opportunistic one at that.

There is still confusion about exactly which groups are to be classified as a “national political party”. Is this really about Greens or Labour Party members? Or is this about left organisations like the SWP, SPEW, the CPGB etc? No doubt, the lack of clarity is on purpose. It can be interpreted any way the leadership likes.

What is clear is that this does not refer to local mini-parties like the ‘Liverpool Community Independents Party’ of ex-Momentum honcho Alan Gibbons, or Pamela Fitzpatrick’s Harrow-based ‘Arise’ - these are considered “provisional associate branches already registered with the electoral commission”, who are going to “affiliate politically to the party” (quite possibly with special powers for people like Gibbons - the kind of bureaucratic loyalist HQ relies on to run local areas with a very firm hand).

However, there is no lack of clarity when it comes to the next point: “Members may not affiliate with or participate in organisations undermining Your Party values.” That is hugely problematic, especially as there are no defined ‘values’ to speak of. What about a communist who argues publicly against a cross-class alliance, for example - would that undermine “Your Party values”? Again, this is very open to interpretation and reminds us of the various ways in which the bureaucracy in the Labour Party hunted down good socialists. Then, it was social media posts critical of Israel that were enough to get you booted. What will count as ‘unacceptable’ in Your Party? A post critical of the empty political statement, perhaps? Criticisms of Karie Murphy?

This assumption is not taken out of thin air, as the next point proves: “Members must accordingly respect the confidentiality of internal party matters.” The leadership has certainly shown that it is no fan of transparency and openness, hiding all proceedings firmly behind closed doors. We still do not know - officially - who actually runs Your Party. It is thanks to the sterling efforts of Archie Woodrow, Max Shanly and, of course, the Weekly Worker that we even know that it is Karie Murphy who is pulling the strings on behalf of Jeremy Corbyn and his wife, Laura Alvarez, who plays an (often neglected) massive role in this mis-leadership. We have tried to redress this total lack of transparency by publishing little snippets of information, secret reports, whispered information and, yes, sometimes rumours. The best way the party leadership could avoid this is obvious: not by draconian rules (which can be sidestepped, though not without difficulty), but by operating openly and transparently, in front of the membership. Otherwise, leaks will naturally continue to spring.

This whole section is made even more problematic by the fact that there is no mention of a disciplinary process - let alone a fair or transparent one. Again, it looks like HQ has learnt some very negative lessons from the witch-hunt in the Labour Party, despite the fact that it was this that brought down Jeremy Corbyn. There is no attempt to establish a more democratic party culture - quite the opposite. The lack of any proposals on how members could defend themselves against accusations of rule-breaking means that this constitution is even worse than the Labour Party rulebook - at least that one has some rules! Clearly there should be an amendment that sets up a separate, elected body that deals with any disciplinary cases and which has natural justice, clear timelines and easy appeals procedures at the heart of it.

Political platforms

Last and perhaps most importantly: Neither document makes any mention of the right of members to get together to form temporary or permanent political platforms or factions. Even Die Linke in Germany manages that, as do the Democratic Socialists of America. The reality is that members will get together with co-thinkers. That is normal. It encourages members to get actively involved in the party, to express their ideas and to organise collectively with others on a political basis (rather than just go canvassing, etc).

We want political tendencies to be able to operate openly and honestly. Much better if we know that somebody is talking up this or that event by Stand up to Racism because they are a member of the ‘Socialist Workers Platform’. Otherwise, SWP members will be there anyway, but they will be forced to present themselves dishonestly as ‘just a trade unionist’, etc.

Naturally, platforms and factions sometimes pose a challenge to the leadership. Which is why they are not mentioned - it is another reflection of the unelected leadership’s mistrust and fear of the members. Considering how undemocratically they have behaved over the last two years, and judging by the reports from disgruntled members and branches up and down the country, they are probably right to do so.

borderland.co.uk/assemble-dissemble-the-your-party-norwich-assembly-19-10-25-by-larry-ohara-21-10-25.↩︎
www.yourparty.uk/political-statement.↩︎
Sunday Times ‘Rich List’.↩︎
greenparty.org.uk/2025/10/19/green-party-membership-surges-past-conservatives-making-the-greens-third-largest-political-party-in-the-uk.↩︎
www.yourparty.uk/constitution.↩︎
www.yourparty.uk/standing-orders.↩︎
www.yourparty.uk/organisational-strategy.↩︎
www.dembloc.com.↩︎
‘Another fine mess’ Weekly Worker October 16: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1557/another-fine-mess.↩︎