06.11.2025
Misleadership control-freakery
Legal threats, secrecy, tightly controlled regional assemblies and sheer incompetence has repelled many. However, the left seems to be getting its act together, says Carla Roberts
Preparations for the launch conference of Your Party have been so shambolic that many fear it might still get cancelled at the last minute.
Yes, Liverpool’s ACC has been booked for the weekend of November 29-30 and the “contracts have been signed this week” - but, of course, booking and paying are two different things. There is now enormous pressure on Zarah Sultana to release the £1.3 million held by MOU Ltd, of which she recently became the sole director - replacing Andrew Feinstein, Beth Winter and Jamie Driscoll in a move designed to absolve those three of any legal responsibility and any hefty fines for the ‘data misuse’ that Jeremy Corbyn publicly accused them of, when Sultana launched her membership portal on September 18.
These fines and the prospect of a potential criminal prosecution no doubt explain why Corbyn and the other male members of the Independent Alliance of MPs refused the offer to become directors themselves, which would have given them control over the money and the data of the 20,000 or so members who joined via that portal. Incidentally, they are not part of the 50,000 members that Your Party now officially claims - a figure that is just about ‘okay’, considering there were 800,000 who previously expressed an interest in joining. It is unsurprising really that the vast majority have taken one look at the shambles that is Your Party and said, ‘No, thank you’. Many have undoubtedly joined the Greens (whose membership now stands at over 140,000).
Should Sultana continue to ‘refuse’ to hand over the money (which includes £800,000 in donations that were made before she launched the portal), it could be used as a reason to cancel the conference at the last minute - and it looks like journalists are already getting briefed to that effect.1 Considering that conference takes place in just over three weeks time and that the sortition process has not even started, with no details about conference arrangements having been published, that is still a distinct possibility.
Add to that the fact that there is absolutely no mechanism to ensure any proposed amendments are guaranteed to reach conference - no matter how widely supported they might be - and it would be a relief to all of us if this shambolic event were to be cancelled. The thousands and thousands of notes and amendments taken down by facilitators in the regional assemblies will no doubt be processed in the same way as the numerous ‘edits’ that members have input in the ‘crowd editing tool’ on the Your Party website - ie, not at all.
When questioned about this amendment process, Artin Giles (who officially works for the Peace and Justice Project and now acts as Karie Murphy’s enforcer in Your Party) mumbled, at a recent facilitators’ training, that “a group of volunteers in London” would be going through them. Even if that were true (which is very doubtful), how on earth are these ‘volunteers’ chosen? How will they decide which amendment will make it into the next draft of the founding papers - and which ones will not? It does not take a genius to work out that this method gives all power to the unelected leadership.
Meanwhile, Sean Halsall, in charge of setting up YP regional assemblies around the country, has repeatedly explained that there is “a desire” and “a plan” to introduce a “ranking system” for amendments on the online portal, to allow the most popular ones to go through. That would at least be something and give members an (inadequate) opportunity to at least try and influence what the launch conference will be voting on (if there will be voting). Alas, we cannot be sure this ranking method will actually be introduced or whether it will remain an empty ‘desire’, born out of an attempt to placate members for as long as possible.
On a more positive note, a number of socialist organisations and representatives from proto-branches have started to come together on the basis of their general support for the Sheffield Demands,2 which focus on a set of key amendments to the constitution, standing orders and organisational strategy papers published by HQ. A much-needed and welcome initiative by the Democratic Socialist Platform, which saw a first meeting last week of 21 representatives from groups like the Democratic Platform of Ken Loach, Counterfire, the CPGB, Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, Republican Labour, the Manchester Left Caucus, Trans Liberation Group, Eco-Socialist Horizon and a number of proto-branches.
The Socialist Party in England and Wales, the Socialist Workers Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party were among the groups invited, but did not show. We hope they will change their minds - considering that the first of the Sheffield Demands is the desire to form “a party of the whole left”, which opposes bans and proscriptions, and enshrines the right to form temporary and permanent platforms and tendencies. We would have thought that the SPEW, SWP and RCP comrades would agree to it.
The meeting agreed to form a small working group, which has now gone through some proposed ‘tweaks’ to the Sheffield Demands, which will be presented to a second meeting of all reps on November 8.3 Such cooperation is politically important, in that it reinforces and strengthens calls for the kind of party we actually need - democratic, transparent and without the type of powerful and untouchable leadership positions that the founding documents propose.
Close cooperation will also be absolutely necessary, should a ranking system be introduced. Such a system comes with the obvious problem that different groups might have similar criticisms of the same issues in the founding documents - but because each group and proto-branch submits its own alternative version, none of them get ‘ranked’ high enough to go through.
Our first meeting also agreed to hold a fringe event in Liverpool on Saturday November 29, which can play a number of useful roles - hear and share feedback from the launch conference, discuss the Sheffield Demands, as well as where our ideas might differ. It will hopefully also be a useful platform to discuss future cooperation of the socialist, democratic left in Your Party.
The meeting, however, agreed that we are unlikely to be able to formulate a joint alternative to the dire political statement put out by the YP HQ. Ken Loach proposed a number of points, which most participants thought did not go far enough. He was mainly focusing on protecting the welfare state and such - all important and supportable demands, which are now more than covered by Zack Polanski’s Green Party. What we really need, however, is a party with a radical alternative vision, which clearly spells out our view of what socialism is - and how we can get there.
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www.politicshome.com/news/article/zarah-sultana-accused-delaying-transfer-funds-your-party.↩︎
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Get in touch if your group is not already involved at mail@dsyp.org.↩︎