27.11.2025
Assert sovereignty of members
Instead of a Bonapartist regime, witch-hunts and cynical manipulation, Carla Roberts calls for a collective leadership elected by democratically chosen delegates. But everything relies of the left giving a lead and voting for an emergency resolution and a temporary national committee
“We promised to do things differently - and we have.” There is no denying that this first sentence on the Your Party website is absolutely spot on. This launch conference has become one of the biggest stitch-ups in the history of the workers’ movement, certainly in Britain. Members have been entirely sidelined and bamboozled with sham democracy by sitting together in non-voting circles, discussing things, while nobody at HQ has had to pay any attention to their actual views. Instead of real democracy, the plan is that we will be given a temporary leadership chosen by sortition - something we must absolutely resist (see below).
The issue of ‘dual membership’ reflects quite what a stitch-up this is. We know that in every single regional assembly, members have expressed their opposition to a ban on existing left groups. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people have inserted amendments into the clunky crowd editing tool. And yet this is what conference is being presented with:
Option A - Dual membership with aligned allied parties
Members shall be permitted to hold membership in other national political parties where they have been approved by the CEC as aligning with the party’s values, to include those with whom the party cooperates electorally. The approved list shall be subject to ongoing CEC review and annual ratification by national conference.
Option B - No dual membership
Members may not hold membership in any other national political party.
This is a choice between ‘Do you want the left to get banned - or really banned?’ It gets worse: while there was a possibility to move some amendments online for a measly 36 hours, this did not apply to this point and a number of other sections. The reason: HQ presents them as so-called “roadmap amendments”, which allegedly have taken on board the feedback from the assemblies, etc, meaning they have to be ‘protected’ from, you know, the members at conference. Any amendment presented as part of the “roadmap” is basically set in stone. Karie Murphy really has outdone herself with this little trick.
Weekly Worker supporters will be arguing for a point of order at conference to demand that ‘roadmap options’ are open for debate and actual amendment. Clearly conference should be able to change anything in front of it - it is, as the constitution states, “sovereign”.
In the case of the dual membership, we would want to amend option A, along the lines of what the Sheffield Demands argue for - delete everything after “national political parties” and replace with: “Members have full rights to organise openly into tendencies or platforms, permanent or temporary, and advocate publicly for political positions, even if they differ from the current majority.”
If Your Party is launched with a witch-hunt against the left, it clearly could not become any kind of useful vehicle to unite the left - or, for that matter, the working class. It would exclude right from the start many of the most active and dedicated members. It appears Jeremy Corbyn has learned absolutely nothing from the witch-hunt in the Labour Party. He sacrificed his supporters then, in the hope of appeasing the right. Why is he supporting a purge now, when there is not even any pressure on the party to do so? Presumably this is aimed at pre-empting any attempt to tarnish Your Party as being part of the hard left or some such nonsense.
Organised left
Of course, such a ban would not even work, on many levels. It would not work politically, as Corbyn really should have worked out. Every time he took a step back when he was leader of the Labour Party, the right moved two steps forward. Every time he threw one of his supporters to the wolves, the right came for two more. In the end, of course, they got Corbyn himself.
It also would not work on a more basic level: Members of the Socialist Workers Party and other groups would still be involved in Your Party - but they would have been forced to do so wearing different hats. Much better if we know which organisations these comrades really represent.
We must also keep in mind that witch-hunts really do have a habit of spiralling out of control. Some people at the launch conference might be tempted to support banning the SWP, because it either aims to control or else jeopardises anything it touches. But we should not think for a moment that the SWP is the only target of this campaign against the left: anybody who becomes a problem could be gotten rid of - and that includes members of harmless campaigns and organisations like the Democratic Bloc or RS21.
We also must get rid of the next proposed rule (which is up for amendment - at least theoretically): “Members may not affiliate with or participate in organisations undermining party values or actively seeking to undermine the party. Such matters shall be subject to ongoing CEC review.”
If this is aimed at the right, it is superfluous, because adherence to the party programme is covered elsewhere. But, we fear, this is aimed chiefly at trouble makers from the left. It makes mere ‘association’ with particular organisations a possible offence. Again, the same kind of rule that allowed the Labour Party bureaucracy to get rid of Corbyn supporters who ‘liked’ a Facebook post by an organisation critical of what Labour was doing. And now Your Party could be trying to establish exactly the same! We have submitted an amendment to delete this. However, taking into account that our amendment on the ‘dual membership’ might not even be heard, we also propose to replace this sentence with: “Members have full rights to organise openly into tendencies or platforms, permanent or temporary, and advocate publicly for political positions, even if they differ from the current majority.”
Incidentally, we hear that the Socialist Party has been “promised” that it will be safe from any purges, as long as its members wear the hat of its lame front organisation, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. Is that the real reason why SPEW has been so quiet and has not got involved with the Socialist Unity Platform? That would be quite amazing, considering that SPEW’s forerunner, Militant, was brutally witch-hunted inthe Labour Party in the 1980s. Silence on the issue of an impending witch-hunt is complicity. It is also incredibly stupid if the comrades really believe what Karie Murphy promises them. As soon as it becomes a ‘problem’, Tusc will be taken off the ‘good list’ and will go into Saint Jeremy’s bad books.
Which leadership
It looked like a pretty boring video interview, with lots of head-nodding and the usual ‘I just want unity’ - but in the middle of Jeremy Corbyn’s 30-minute video with the New Statesman, he suddenly dropped this bombshell: “The purpose of the conference is to legally and formally endorse and establish the party, elect a group of people to manage the process going forward. The Independence Alliance group of MPs were only ever there to steward us towards the conference, not to take political decisions and we’ll take it from there.”1
Well, that’s certainly news to us - and every single rank and file member of Your Party. For 24 hours, social media was ablaze with excitement: will we actually get to elect a real leadership at conference and take the party out of the hands of the cynical bureaucrats at the top?
Alas, no such luck. The One year strategy guide contains, hidden away in a new point 4.iv, a proposal for a “new Members’ Oversight Committee”, which, for the short period between the founding conference and the election of the first CEC in February, will “act as caretakers, executing the democratic wishes of the party, as voted on by members in the founding conference.” Oh and guess how those five will be chosen? By “sortition from the whole membership”!
This proposal is a clear admission of guilt. The current leadership has utterly and totally messed up, on every single level. Zarah Sultana has long been frozen out and two of the six MPs who were allegedly ‘steering’ Your Party have now resigned. Not that any of them have ever been really involved with Your Party - that is all down to Corbyn’s right-hand woman, Karie Murphy. This has become abundantly clear from the MPs’ resignation statements. Even hard-core Corbyn loyalists (and there are still a few of them around) could not stomach the idea of Karie Murphy being seen to run the show for another four months.
Together with bringing the CEC elections forward by a month, this proposal is supposed to take the wind out of the sails of those, like the Weekly Worker and Counterfire, who have been arguing for an emergency motion at conference that would elect a new emergency steering committee, tasked with organising a reconstituted conference in June. The proposal is aimed at side-lining the Socialist Unity Platform and the many members in the branches who have been increasingly vocal in their opposition to the lack of democracy and transparency in the party. Clearly, the many problems in Your Party will not be solved by a group of sortitioned members, who might well have no experience in how to run a local five-aside football club, let alone a membership organisation of over 54,000! Which is, of course, exactly why HQ is proposing this - it will keep Karie Murphy firmly in charge, while giving the appearance that five randomly chosen poor sods are now in charge of things.
The closer to conference we get, the more shambolic things look. The current leadership needs to go, and it needs to go now! We support the emergency motion put forward by Counterfire and the SWP. We had proposed a very similar motion to the Socialist Unity Platform, which at first was agreed. But, the closer we got to conference, the more the representatives at the SUP organising meeting started to suffer from cold feet.
On November 22, SUP agreed (by 15 to 11 votes)2 instead on an emergency motion that, yes, still called for a reconstituted conference, but gave up the fight to elect an emergency leadership at conference. Instead, it accepted the amendment by the Trans Liberation Group to call for the election of seven ‘returning officers’, who would be charged with overseeing the CEC elections. At best, that would have established a dual-power situation. At worst, Karie Murphy would have simply told them to get lost.
Groups like the Democratic Bloc, Socialist Alternative, Ken Loach’s Platform for a Democratic Party, the Trans Liberation Group and even a section of the Democratic Socialists (at our November 22 meeting, their two reps were split on pretty much every single issue) argued in that meeting that we should not be seen as “wreckers”. The most conservative rep was Taisee, a member of the national executive of RS21 - she argued against moving any motion at all! When a comrade argued we should be prepared to cohere our heckles at conference, she wrote in the chat: “This is not the time for heckles. This is the time for discipline.” Fine leadership indeed.
Clearly, we should hold Jeremy Corbyn at his word and demand a democratic election of an emergency leadership, with a proper CEC elected at a reconstituted conference in June. Yes, there are many problems in how the conference has been put together - but it is the most democratic expression of the organisation yet.
So it is fortunate that the most recent SUP meeting on November 26 tilted away from the previous timid, backward, fearful position. Though a single speaker, Jack Conrad, out of a good handful, urged giving full support to the Counterfire/SWP emergency motion, the 14:12 vote marks a belated recognition that we have a real opportunity to turn the Liverpool conference around in favour of genuine democracy. True, some in the minority disingenuously complained that more had spoken against the change of line, than for a change of line! But the vote, though narrow, should be taken as authoritative. That is democracy.
Not that the vote is binding on every group signed up to SUP. Each must decide. If the minority want to scab on the SUP majority and the Counterfire/SWP emergency motion, so be it. We very much hope, however, that the comrades appreciate that unity is strength. Divided we shall certainly fall.
Leadership model
With the conference papers only having been published at 8.30pm on Tuesday November 25, we did not have time to do a thorough analysis (which is, of course, exactly why it has been left so late). But a few things really stand out.
Somewhat surprisingly, in the draft constitution there is a real ‘improvement’ on the question of the leadership. This is, we should say, not a nod to democracy on the part of Karie Murphy - but a rather blatant attempt to stop Sultana’s proposal for a co-leadership. Apparently, “feedback from the assemblies organised by Your Party across the country showed the single-leader model was more popular” than the co-leadership aspired to by Sultana and her followers. Corbyn never supported co-leadership - in fact, Karie Murphy closed down the secretive Organising Group, after it voted for a dual monarchy. Clearly, they think that Corbyn would win in a straight contest with Sultana. From what we can gather though, that looks more than a little uncertain - the shine really has come off the man in recent months, while Sultana is at least posing left, giving expression to the frustrations felt by many members.
Possibly having been told in advance that the option of co-leadership is off the table, Sultana recently tweeted: “As I have always said, subject to members’ vote, I wish to co-lead this party with Jeremy, and I believe that conference should have the opportunity to vote on that option.”3 We rather expect such an arrangement would have been about as viable as the so-called ‘two-state solution’ in Israel-Palestine - ie, not at all. No, we do not want one, two or three Bonapartes at the top of the party - we need a collective leadership instead of the Führerprinzip.
There is now an Option B under point 3c of the constitution, which proposes: “The party shall be collectively led by ordinary members elected to the Central Executive Committee, with the chair, vice-chair and spokesperson in particular serving as the public political leadership”. Entirely supportable - and in stark contrast to Option A, which proposes the election of a strong “Leader who shall provide political, strategic and symbolic leadership”.
Also positive is the clarification that “The CEC shall elect from within their number national officers, including chair, deputy chair, secretary, treasurer, political officer and spokesperson, who shall alongside the leader make up the officers groups” (emphasis added). This was very unclear in the first draft and implied that officers would be appointed from outside the CEC. Presumably, if Option B on the leadership model goes through, the position of ‘Leader’ would be deleted.
We disagree, however, with the method of the CEC elections. The constitution does not even clarify how those should be organised. But, according to the First year organisational strategy, voting for the Leader (if there is one) will always be “through a ‘one member, one vote’ system and digitalised and postal voting” and “before conference”. Elections for the CEC too “shall be held in advance of our national conference” - ie, online voting. This is a very bad idea and will favour ‘big names’. No, CEC elections should take place at the conference, so that all candidates can be agreed between various factions and platforms and questioned by delegates. We do not want a fait accompli, that is for sure - and we shall challenge this through an amendment.
There are still four reserved seats on the Central Executive Committee for “public office holders” - ie, MPs, councillors, mayors etc. They are now supposed to be elected by the membership, not the office-holders themselves. Hardly any better, and should be done away with by amendment. All CEC members should be elected by the conference delegates. There also should not be any automatic seats for ‘organised sections’. Another amendment is necessary here.
However, and this is new, MPs are not allowed to be members of the ‘officers group’ any more - “other than the leader”! A ridiculous rule and clearly designed for one purpose alone: to crown King Jeremy and move Zarah Sultana to the back benches.
Better and worse
There are a couple of other, small concessions/improvements:
- The ‘local community assemblies’ and ‘community organising structures’ have been entirely downgraded. There is no longer any suggestion that the assemblies should be able to initiate or decide on the party’s policies or even its candidates, as proposed in the first set of documents. Local community organising structures “shall be defined and run by the local parties”. Good - and obviously so. This was always an absurd idea that probably died a death with the departure of Roger Hallam from the inner circle of Your Party.
- HQ also seems to have taken on board one of the smaller amendments from the Sheffield Demands that membership should be open to “anybody residing in Britain, irrespective of immigration, asylum or residency status”. Another concession/improvement.
- Another improvement: The requirement that “members must accordingly respect the confidentiality of internal Party matters” has been deleted. There are, after all, enough other avenues to get rid of troublesome members.
- We also read: “In the party’s first year, a simple majority” shall be required to change the constitution, thereafter a “two-thirds super majority”. This might possibly quieten some critics - but it is a gross violation of democracy. To hell with super majorities. Straightforward majority vote should always decide. That is real democracy.
The rest of the documents are as dire as the first draft. For example:
- The rule on the right to recall is still as undemocratic as in the first draft: It requires 40% of all members to sign a recall petition before any proceedings against councillors, MPs, local officers or a member of the CEC can even begin. This is the key amendment on this matter in the Sheffield Demands: “Branches should be able to decide by simple majority vote to start recall proceedings.” The same goes for members of the CEC - any properly constituted branch should be able to initiate recall proceedings.
- There are two options on the funding of party branches - neither of which spell out what kind of percentage branches should receive. Another stitch-up: we know that the Sheffield Demands’ suggestion for branches to receive 50% was incredibly popular. Option B is worse than Option A, because it also puts the budget of branches under the control of “representatives at regional level”. Another amendment is required here.
- In the Standing orders, we are given the choice that party conference may be made of “delegates elected by party branches, organised sections, affiliates or any combination thereof” or the option of having - in addition - conference participants chosen by sortition. Another stitch-up that leaves members no possibility to choose the obvious third option: delegates chosen by branches only! Again, these are presented as ‘roadmap amendments’ and can therefore not be changed, unless this is successfully challenged at conference.
Your help
- Come to Liverpool on November 29-30 to help us hand out leaflets with our key demands, lobby those attending, come to SUP’s fringe events - and get to know each other! Please tell us if you are coming.4
- Join our WhatsApp Community to coordinate the SUP’s intervention at conference and beyond.
- Get your organisation or local Your Party branch to sign up to the SUP - you can also sign up as an individual! We are asking national organisations to make a donation of £100, YP branches and other groups £25 or £50 and individuals £2.50 or £5: opencollective.com/socialist-unity-platform.
- Come to the sold out Zarah Sultana rally on Friday November 27 before 8.00pm and help us hand out leaflets and other material.5
- Please donate towards the printing costs and the room hire (total of around £1,500): opencollective.com/socialist-unity-platform