WeeklyWorker

27.11.2025
Wonder who the comrades are backing?

Neither king nor empress

Do not take sides in a power struggle between MPs. Stop the organised left being banned and proscribed. Vote for an emergency, a temporary collective leadership. Fight for a party republic. Jack Conrad outlines the communist case

Never before have the hopes of so many been disappointed by the egotism, narrow calculation and control-freakery of so few. Everyone knows the story. Naturally cautious, perhaps vainly hoping to be admitted back into the Labour fold, Jeremy Corbyn delayed and delayed again before finally launching what is, for the moment, still known as Your Party. Nonetheless, more than 850,000 signed up to express an interest.

Already suspended, Zarah Sultana formally resigned from the Labour Party in July 2025, declaring that she would co-found YP alongside Corbyn - the giveaway presumption being that YP would not only have a king, but an empress too. She has recently restated that ambition to “co-lead”.1

While Corbyn was initially prepared to go along with the dual monarchy idea, it was definitely not to the liking of Len McClusky, former Unite general secretary, and more importantly his partner, Karie Murphy, the éminence grise, who ever since her Loto days has acted as the power behind Corbyn’s throne.2 Nor did Corbyn’s wife, Laura Alvarez, want any diminution of his ‘legacy’ (she has, note, recently been made YP’s International Coordinator).

After repeated fallouts in hush-hush meetings of Collective and the Organising Committee over the dual monarchy idea, the six MPs, organised in the Independent Alliance, were supposed to restore peace and put together a working group to steer YP towards the founding conference. It was agreed that the Peace and Justice Project (or Your Party UK Ltd), effectively controlled by Corbyn and Murphy, would take charge of the mailing list, while MoU Operations Ltd (directors former Labour MP Beth Winter, Jamie Driscoll, ex-mayor of North of Tyne and Andrew Feinstein, the former South African MP) would be responsible for holding donations.3 A compromise arrangement which, predictably, did not mark the outbreak of peace. Impatient, and badly advised, Sultana unilaterally launched her membership portal. Within days it notched-up tens of thousands of members and some £800,000 in donations.

Civil war

We, therefore, arrived PDQ at a situation analogous to the 1139-53 fratricidal civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda. School textbooks call it the ‘The Anarchy’ (with a capital ‘T’ and a capital ‘A’). With the constant skirmishes, raiding, looting and general mayhem, England and Normandy were both devastated. A famous passage from the Anglo-Saxon chronicle summed up the situation: “Wheresoever men tilled, the earth bore no corn, for the land was ruined by such deeds; and they said openly that Christ and the saints were asleep.”4 As for the feudal elite, they frequently changed allegiance or simply pursued their own selfish interests. That is what has happened in Your Party.

King Jeremy now cuts something of a lonely figure. He has just two other MPs on side: Shockat Adam and Ayoub Khan. There are no trade union barons, no corps of local councillors, no claque of adoring intellectuals. The organised left has been completely alienated - that is for sure.

True, Corbyn has his Peace and Justice Project. This provides the wherewithal for a little team of brown nosers and ladder climbers. Acting fully in the spirit of HR department henchmen, justifying themselves with AI voodoo doodoo, they are the ‘facilitators’ who have presided over the farcical regional assemblies. No proper debate, no votes, no self-organisation has been allowed (though east London and Sheffield successfully rebelled). In the name of founding “the most democratic” party “this country has ever seen”, members have been cynically put together into harmless groups of ten and treated with utter condescension. Suggestions were meant to be written down and passed on by the ‘facilitators’ before being processed by the magic of AI. Typically there was not even the pretence of that. Instead cynicism reigned. Hence the deep well of resentment.

On the face of it, Empress Zarah is far weaker. Despite a BBC Question time appearance, unlike Corbyn, she has limited household name recognition. Nor does she have any other MP on her side. Andrew Feinstein counts as a kind of confederate, so, maybe, does Salma Yaqoob. Moreover, under legal threats MoU Operations Ltd, of which she is now the sole director, has been forced to hand over £200,000 (more is promised, albeit in “tranches”).

However, what Sultana can do - and is doing - is exploit rank-and-file frustration. So-called proto branches have formed up and down the country - in reality they are branches - but have had to rely on existing left organisations, local political circles and social media because Your Party UK Ltd, refuses to pass on contact details. Tellingly, the lists are treated as private property.

Nonetheless, the branches are real and Sultana has become their champion, not least by posing left and opposing the Corbyn-Murphy unilateral ban on members of national leftwing organisation from joining. Sultana also condemns the IHRA so-called definition of anti-Semitism, echoes trans rights exclusionary mantras, takes occasional pots against landlords and even peppers her speeches with half-digested Lenin quotes. Note, the Independent Alliance has more than its fair share of petty landlords and small businessmen.

As might be expected, the overall effect, of what is an ongoing civil war, has been profound disorientation and demoralisation. Out of the initial 850,000 only around 53,000 have actually signed up, most, if the regional assemblies are anything to go by, are veterans. Younger comrades seem to have voted with their feet. Many thousands will have joined the Green Party, not least because of Zack Polanski’s stunning leadership victory in September. Moreover, Adnan Hussain MP has jumped ship. So too has Iqbal Mohamed MP. Jamie Driscoll has returned to his Majority UK localist vanity project. Even previously loyal Corbynites, Mark Serwotka, former PCS general secretary, and Beth Winter, former MP, have rebelled over HQ not handing over contact details ... and treating Wales with “contempt”.5 Worryingly, nation, not class, seems to come first with both of them.

Shrunken pool

However, ironically, because of the unexpectedly shrunken sortition pool, the failure to finance transport and accommodation costs, a pervasive ‘why bother’ rank and file attitude after the regional assemblies and with all the infighting, the organised left can expect to have a healthy proportion of those actually going to Liverpool. Maybe the purge will begin on the doors of the ACC. Maybe not. Either way, the organised left, because it is the organised left, carries a special responsibility.

The Liverpool conference, for all its many shortcomings and flaws, is the legitimate sovereign authority in Your Party. As such it should set its own agenda and, crucially, elect an emergency, a provisional, a temporary leadership tasked with encouraging, organising and financing the branches and preparing a fully democratic conference in 2026 based on elected and accountable branch delegates (we would recommend by STV).

If the organised left fails to carry out its duty, if it adopts a timid, reformist approach, if it lacks the willpower, if it relies on Corbyn-Murphy, the Independent Alliance, Peace and Justice and an OMOV leadership election somewhere down the line, then it will do more than condemn itself to an inevitable witch-hunt. It will betray the hopes expressed by the initial 850,000 … indeed it will betray the interests of the working class. Yet another lost opportunity to do something really serious in these really serious times … climate crisis, the rollback on basic democratic rights, the distinct possibility of a hot war between the US and China.

We should add here, for the sake of clarity, that communists do not reject the concept of leaders and leadership - to do so would be both absurd and self-defeating. No class in history has ever achieved victory without cultivating, testing and pushing forward capable individuals: Solon and Cleisthenes, Pericles and Demosthenes, Lucius Sextius Lateranus and Tiberius Gracchus, Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax, Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Danton and Jean-Paul Marat, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, Zhu Yuanzhang, Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong.

Likewise, in our struggle to supersede capitalism, we need our theoretically educated, programmatically armed, far sighted and tactically astute leaders. Whatever their class origins, their gender, their ethnicity, such people are not two-a-penny. They should be valued. However, those leaders should not be self-appointed. Nor should they be elected via a referendum. A recipe for a budding Bonaparte who rides roughshod over national committees, etc, because they were elected as The Leader by an atomised membership.

Because it is an underclass, the working class needs the ‘light and air’ of democracy.6 Without that it cannot self-organise and it cannot self-liberate. That is why democracy in trade unions, in our workplaces, in society at large is a profoundly important question for the working class. The same goes for our party. Therefore, what is required is a collective leadership … or, to use an evocative phrase, a party republic.

Leaders must not only be elected. They must be recallable by their peers. Branch officers should be elected - and recallable - by branch members. Regional officers should be elected - and recallable - by members of regional committees. National officers, including the legally required position of ‘leader’ - should be elected - and recallable by the national committee. Comrades who work alongside you, get to know your talents, your strengths and your failings.

Given the straight choice of a leadership vote between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana we might well choose the latter. But we do not want to choose between king and empress. That would be a big mistake. Yes, there is the Revolutionary Communist Group, who seem to imagine that in Zarah Sultana they have found their Ferdinand Lassalle, their Fidel Castro, their Ho Chi Minh, their Hugo Chávez. The Spartacist League seems to take a not dissimilar view.7

But we do not want a Bonaparte, a labour dictator of any kind. Nor do we want Sultana’s politics. She still instinctively reaches for identity politics. After all, she cut her teeth on the executives of the NUS and Young Labour before pursuing her parliamentary career. Hence Sultana, somewhat bizarrely, demands “gender balance” (she is the only woman in the Independent Alliance), threatened her own legal action against the Corbyn-Murphy faction (now thankfully withdrawn as an “act of good faith”) and bitterly complains about a “sexist boys club”, because she has effectively been excluded from decision-making (which is certainly true). Nevertheless, because of her, surely calculated, left posturing, she does have the backing of much of the left - for now at least.

Selective memory

The SWP’s Alex Callinicos pleads for reconciliation, when it comes to king and empress: “We must … demand the two factions reach a compromise. History will not forgive them if they throw this opportunity away.”8 Others have sung the same subordinate tune: eg, Andrew Murray in the Morning Star.9

Despite the feigned even-handedness, it is altogether clear where the sympathies of comrade Callinicos lie. Despite this or that minor criticism, they lie squarely with Zarah Sultana. He gushes: “Sultana’s vision of a dynamic and democratic left party that fights oppression, not simply an election machine, has captured the imagination of tens of thousands.” Callinicos also acclaims Sultana for her implicit threat to exclude “socially conservative” Muslims.10

Proof of the SWP’s infatuation, if you needed it, comes with the latest edition of Socialist Worker and Tomáš Tengely-Evans and his ‘exclusive’ Zarah Sultana praise song with back-up vocals provided by Lewis Neilson, national secretary, on pages four and five.

Either way, a couple of decades ago comrade Callinicos would have condemned such a statement as ‘Islamophobic’, even though it came from a fellow Muslim (see below). Meanwhile, let us outline our approach to the “socially conservative”, Muslim or otherwise. It is education, education, education, not exclusion, exclusion, exclusion.

Education requires patience and above all a striving for unity in action. After all, the class struggle itself is a great teacher. Eg, the everyday ‘homophobia’ that passed with barely a comment in Britain’s coal mining communities was brilliantly challenged just with the formation of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. This was, of course, under the inspired leadership of Mark Ashton, in the midst of the 1984-85 Great Strike.11 Another cultural game changer was Women Against Pit Closures, which united the women with their striking fathers, partners and sons against the common enemy: Margeret Thatcher and her Tory government, Ian McGregor and the Coal Broad, the police, the mainstream media and the Judas, Neil Kinnock.

We should also recognise that ‘transphobia’ stems not only from bigotry: there are real concerns amongst some women. It might too be a good idea to stop medicalising what are political, economic and cultural issues, which need to be approached as such. Eg, labelling next to everything a ‘phobia’ individualises next to everything. Driving out individual transgressors is a gift to our enemies. Unfortunately, just what SWPers in Edinburgh YP have been “successfully” arguing: “transphobic opportunists should be expelled” they say.12 Dumb.

We must, of course, stick to our socialist principles and resolutely defend trans people against state, media and rightwing attacks and demand all reasonable measures to overcome demonisation, disadvantage and discrimination. We should also insist that MPs follow the instructions of our conferences and elected leadership, when it comes to parliamentary votes. Conscience clauses should be rejected as a matter of principle. And we should insist on the principle that our MPs and other elected representatives accept only the average skilled worker’s wage. The rest should be donated to the party.

What of comrade Callinicos? Is he suffering from selective memory syndrome? As a member of the second generation of SWP leaders - others included John Rees, Charlie Kimber, Lindsey German, Martin Smith, Amy Leather and Chris Bambery - he presided over the Respect popular front party alongside George Galloway, Yvonne Ridley, Nick Wrack, Alan Thornet, Salma Yaqoob, the Muslim Association of Britain and various British-Asian businessmen. Even though the SWP had a majority, when it came to conference votes, it was its “socially conservative” allies who set the programmatic limits … the result being that Respect stood on a conservatively tailored platform in elections.

To keep this so-called “united front between revolutionary socialists and Muslim activists” together, SWP tops ensured that their members were corralled to vote down motions advocating international socialism, republicanism, replacing the standing army with a popular militia, opposition to migration controls, abortion rights, etc. The electorate must not be put off. Such was the Blairite argument of SWP speakers.13

Just prior to that, before Respect was formerly established, Lindsey German, speaking at the SWP’s annual Marxism school in July 2003, said this: “I’m in favour of defending gay rights, but I am not prepared to have it as a shibboleth”. Her concern was potential Muslim voters. Those who disagreed were, yes, branded ‘Islamophobes’. This was, as we said at the time, the SWP’s “clause 4 moment”.14

Did comrade Callinicos raise his voice? Did he express his outrage? Did he rebel? You’ve already guessed the answer: it is thrice no! Instead he singled out the CPGB and the “poisonous” Weekly Worker as the ‘proper object’ of his anger.15

When CPGB comrades handed out a leaflet warning against any dropping of gay rights for the sake of electoral expediency, the SWP leadership reacted with fury and our comrades were physically attacked. The SWP ignored our formal letter of complaint and brushed aside our subsequent protests. As if the SWP would ever contemplate ditching its commitment to gay rights! In Respect, of course, it did just that: LGBT rights were “deliberately omitted” from the May 2005 general election manifesto.16

When, today, comrade Callinicos self-righteously sides with Sultana and condemns tolerating “socially conservative” individuals, he would, if he were honest, openly admit his shameful role in Respect.

Sultana’s vision

What about Sultana’s “vision of a dynamic and democratic left party” that so impresses comrade Callinicos?17 Well, although Sultana talks the talk of democracy and membership control, what she appears to mean by that is a dual monarchy presiding over an OMOV Zoomocracy.18 Largely passive members, sit at home in front of their PCs, laptops and smartphones, vote on selected issues every once in a while. But - and this is the great virtue for the aristocracy of MPs and their hangers-on - branches, conference debates and blocs of leftwing delegates can be safely sidelined or swamped in an avalanche of clicks.

OMOV appears as the epitome of democracy. We emphatically support ‘one member, one vote’ for branch committees, electing conference delegates, etc. However, there were good reasons why the Blairites introduced OMOV by isolated members in Labour Party elections during the 1990s. It gave Tony Blair and his clique a “vice-like grip” and reduced annual conference to a “rubber stamp”.19

It is, of course, rather doubtful that Sultana has the Blairite ascendancy as her model. More likely she takes inspiration from Spain’s Podemos. Breaking with the dreadfully ‘old-fashioned’ ways of doing things in the workers’ movement, Podemos excitedly proclaimed itself to be the latest word in ‘horizontalist’ organisation. Predictably, though, its local ‘circles’ exercised no effective power; true, all Podemos members got to vote online. The result was, though, thoroughly Blairite. It gave Pablo Iglesias Turrión a “vice-like grip” over an extraordinarily vertical organisation (well, from 2014 till his resignation in 2021). He became second deputy prime minister in 2020 and Podemos served as a left parliamentary prop for the ‘progressive’, pro-monarchy, pro-Nato, pro-capitalist government of Pedro Sánchez.

Then there is Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (‘France Unbowed’). Inspired by Podemos, LFI likewise boasts of being an up-to-the-minute ‘hoizontalist’ organisation, but once again its ‘groups of action’ and ‘spaces’ lack autonomy, their own finances and ability to initiate. There is performative consultation. Conferences chosen by sortition too. But in reality, things are decided above, conveyed downwards and then endorsed online. Mélenchon’s ‘charisma’ being used to achieve desired outcomes.

So, on the face of it, when it comes to organisational models, there is not really much separating Sultana and Murphy. Note, Le Monde headlined its report on YP: “UK’s Corbyn follows in footsteps of France’s Mélenchon”.20 No wonder there are whispers of Jean-Luc himself doing a star turn in Liverpool.

Organised left

We are told that members of any other “national party” are now officially barred from YP. In other words approved local parties which are registered with the electoral commission are welcome, but members of the SWP, SPEW, Counterfire, CPGB, etc, should keep out.

Tragically, this sets up YP for the sort of disastrous purge regime which repeatedly ripped through the Labour Party during the 1920s and 30s. Communists were banned and proscribed by rule. Principled leftwingers fought back through the National Leftwing Movement. Many were expelled. Naturally, however, there were those on the sham left who refused to fight the witch-hunt, arguing that the communists were disruptive, that the Labour Party could be reformed through a slow, patient approach and not rocking the boat. Attempts to win CPGB affiliation, of course, repeatedly failed. Labour, founded in 1900 as a united front of a special kind, eg, an organisation of all groups and trends in the labour movement, became the property of the pro-capitalist right.

The same happened on a vastly smaller scale with Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party in the late 1990s. CPGB comrades were targeted from day one by the Fourth International Supporters Caucus, which acted as Scargill’s enforcers. While communists were the first to be purged they were far from being the last. Again there were those who joined in the witch-hunting, or turned a blind eye, in the name of putting politics first and not getting diverted by organisational questions (as if organisational questions are not political). Scargill went on to kick out one group after another, including Fisc, till only a pathetic little rump remained.

A YP version of Labour’s bans and prescriptions would be a similar disaster. If implemented, it will sow fear and distrust, and deprive branches of many of their best activists and organisers. For Karie Murphy, that is no problem. She envisages a party without strong, self-organising branches. Instead she appears to favour a YP version of ‘circles’, local assemblies and carefully managed online votes. The Leader and their courtiers calling the shots.

Driving out so-called ‘enemies within’ will definitely kill any possibility of building YP from below and will certainly be a huge diversion from fighting the real enemy, which is without: Donald Trump, Nato, Israel’s genocidal Zionist regime, Sir Keir Starmer, Elon Musk, Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, etc.

Nationally organised left groups have responded in one of two ways: surrender or resistance.

The Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain has surrendered. Though there are more than a few CPBers who openly signed up for YP, general secretary Robert Griffiths insisted that the CPB opposes “secretive ‘entryism’ into other parties”. This is the line the CPB agreed at its November 14-16 congress in Sheffield.

Leave aside Andrew Murray’s entry into Loto as a Unite-seconded Corbyn advisor, according to comrade Griffiths ‘entryism’ leads to charges of “dishonesty and bad faith, including from potential allies in our broad movement work”.21

Not the practice of the old CPGB historically, of course, but a CPB attempt to prove its respectability and trustworthiness to the trade union and labour bureaucracy. A grovelling approach which saw comrade Griffiths actually promising Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, that he would expel any CPB member who had joined in order to support Corbyn while he was leader.22

Comrade Griffiths also fears that the views of CPB members will be “mispresented” by the media, anti-communist parties and sects looking to set party members against “Communist Party policy and against one another”. This rings true. Comrade Griffiths dreads polemic and members thinking for themselves. However, scraping the bottom of the barrel, he went on to say that as members of YP, “Communists would be obliged to promote policies which could directly contradict communist policies (eg, women’s rights, immigration, federalism, the EU, Nato, China, electoral alliances).”23 Obliged! Utter nonsense! No-one has suggested that the YP operate the sort of bureaucratic centralist regime practised by the CPB, SWP, SPEW, etc. Clearly, he has had all the fight knocked out of him long ago. (He formally resigned at the CPB’s Sheffield congress and is due to depart for Portugal in January 2026 and permanent retirement. A replacement is yet to be announced.)

Thankfully the SWP is, like ourselves, committed to an altogether different approach: resistance. National Secretary, Lewis Nielsen, has attended the Socialist Unity Platform, and the comrades seem up for a fight. Reading Party Notes, we find not only a broadly correct explanation of the Corbyn-Sultana civil war as being rooted in “electoralism and Labourism”: SWP members are also told to “sign up and encourage others to do so”. A convenient weblink is provided.24

The comrades quote the email barring members of “another political party”. But, quite legitimately, ask: “Who made this decision? Was there any democratic process? Do the members support it?” Instead of surrender, Party Notes tells SWP members to join “now” and “contest” the ban on the organised left. The SWP says the “clique” which decided on the bar “may well back down”. Frankly, comrades we see no evidence of that.

Either way, on this occasion, three cheers for the SWP. Surrender offers no chance of success. Resistance, at least, offers the chance.

Our approach

We say that there should be elections in YP from the bottom up. Branches must be autonomous, not mere transmission belts, and therefore free to elect their own committees and delegates to regional and national conferences. Being popular, clever … or even a landlord should bar no one. Remember Friedrich Engels was a full-blown capitalist! No less to the point, nor should political shade, background or factional loyalty to a pre-existing nationally organised group. Electing someone you trust, someone you have hopes for, someone who you agree with, someone you believe will perform well - all that should be considered perfectly normal. Not something to be feared and guarded against.

So the right to form, or belong to, a temporary or a permanent faction or platform should be guaranteed in the rules. Moreover, all committees, up to and including the national committee, ought to be elected, accountable and recallable. The same applies, as we have argued, to officers, but also councillors and MPs. They must be our servants, not our masters. They should certainly not use their positions to further business interests and build patronage relationships. Councillors, MPs, etc, must represent the party, not the atomised mass of their constituents. We want dedicated class fighters.

Along the same lines, whoever the national committee elects as ‘party leader’ should have no more than a symbolic, nominal role, so as to formally comply with the requirements of electoral law. The unedifying ‘who will be the leader’ dispute between Corbyn and Sultana - both career politicians - testifies to a monarchical mindset that ought to be discarded once and for all. No king! No empress!

Programme vital

While organisational models, rules and norms are important, programme is vital.

We communists agree with, and will seek to work closely with, those who want a complete break with Labourism, broad-frontism and all varieties of reformism. Historically, not only has Labourism predictably failed to produce socialism: halfway houses such as Die Linke, Podemos, Syriza and Respect have proved next to useless too. The same has to be said of Corbynism and Corbyn’s capitulationist leadership of the Labour Party between 2015 and 2020.

Harking back to the “mass appeal and bold policy” of Corbyn’s For the many, not the few, as Zarah Sultana does,25 simply will not do. Indeed it screams of a total failure of the imagination. Programmatically, For the many did not even pass muster as reformist. It was, at best, sub-reformist: a hopeless promise of a nicer, a kinder, a fairer capitalism. Such are the delusions brought about by capitalist realism.

We openly seek to transform the YP into a Communist Party. Fundamentally that means equipping YP with a Marxist minimum-maximum programme. The minimum programme is the maximum we can achieve under capitalist conditions and the minimum we require if the YP is to enter or form a government: eg, abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords, establish a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales, support Irish unity, replace the standing army with a popular militia, oppose all imperialist wars, alliances and occupations, proportional representation, go beyond carbon neutral, free movement of labour, work at full trade union rates of pay, abolish the anti-trade union laws, healthcare for all, genuine equality for women, end discrimination against sexual minorities. With state power (albeit in the form of a semi-state) secured, the maximum programme of transitioning to full communism and the principle of ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’ begins.

Something which, of course, has to be international in scope. There can be no local or national socialism.26

  1. Email, November 23 2025.↩︎

  2. Having worked for Tom Watson as his office manager, Karie Murphy joined Jeremy Corbyn as his chief-of-staff in the Leader of the Opposition’s Office in February 2019. A post she retained till April 2019, after which she went on to work in Labour’s HQ on behalf of Corbyn.↩︎

  3. From Memorandum of Understanding, MoU was established in April 2025 and was to hold donations until Your Party was formally registered with the Electoral Commission and then transfer the funds.↩︎

  4. readingroo.ms/4/0/3/7/40371/40371-h/40371-h.htm #XI.↩︎

  5. x.com/BethWinterCynon/status/1990333925776933138.↩︎

  6. A metaphor which originates with Frederick Engels and his 1865 ‘The Prussian military question and the German workers’ party’ (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 20, Moscow 1985, p78). Karl Kautsky adopted the phrase and included it in the Erfurt programme. Lenin, of course, being a Russian Erfurtian made its his own.↩︎

  7. Vincent David, Letters, Weekly Worker, November 6 2025 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1560/letters).↩︎

  8. A Callinicos Socialist Worker September 24 2025.↩︎

  9. Murray writes that the “apparent implosion of Your Party is a mortifying moment for the left in Britain” and quips: “Never have the hopes of so many been dashed by so few” (‘Your Party, their crisis, our hopes dashed?’ Morning Star September 20 2025).↩︎

  10. Pink News September 9 2025.↩︎

  11. For our obituary of comrade Ashton, see M Fischer ‘Good man fallen amongst Euros’ Weekly Worker September 25 2014 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1027/a-good-man-fallen-amongst-euros). Incidentally this is a reprint from The Leninist, and it should also be added that we had real hopes of winning comrade Ashton to our ranks.↩︎

  12. Alex, Archie and Malachi, Letters, Socialist Worker November 19 2025.↩︎

  13. See ‘Rees lays it on the line’ Weekly Worker July 9 2003 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/488/marxism-2003-rees-lays-it-on-the-line); ‘No respect for principles’ Weekly Worker February 19 2004 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/516/no-respect-for-principles); ‘The modern Janus’ Weekly Worker November 17 2005 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/601/the-modern-janus).↩︎

  14. J Conrad ‘No compromise on sexism and homophobia’ Weekly Worker July 10 2003 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/488/no-compromise-on-sexism-and-homophobia).↩︎

  15. J Conrad ‘Respect and opportunism’ Weekly Worker January 22 2004 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/512/respect-and-opportunism).↩︎

  16. P Manson ‘Gay rights “shibboleth”’ Weekly Worker November 24 2005 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/602/gay-rights-shibboleth).↩︎

  17. My emphasis - A Callinicos Socialist Worker September 24 2025.↩︎

  18. Novara Media July 28 2025.↩︎

  19. A Seldon and D Kavanagh (eds) The Blair effect 2001-05 Cambridge 2005, p115.↩︎

  20. Le Monde August 4 2025.↩︎

  21. ‘Interview with Rob Griffiths’ Unity September 2025, p11.↩︎

  22. This is what he wrote to witch-finder general, Iain McNicol: “Should you or your staff have any evidence that Communist Party members have joined the Labour Party without renouncing their CP membership, or engaged in any similar subterfuge, please inform me, so that action can be taken against them for bringing our party into disrepute” … Griffiths signed it with “comradely regards” (21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/communist-infiltration-of-labour).↩︎

  23. My emphasis - ‘Interview with Rob Griffiths’ Unity September 2025, p11.↩︎

  24. Party Notes September 29 2025.↩︎

  25. Sidecar interview, August 17 2025.↩︎

  26. See CPGB Draft programme London 2025.↩︎