08.01.2026

Zarah Sultana: no unprincipled coalition

Left gets itself organised

Carla Roberts excoriates the ‘Christmas referendum’ and welcomes the positive role of Zarah Sultana in the formation of the Grassroots Left Slate. There is, though, the little question of our MPs and other elected representatives living on an average skilled workers’ wage

N ominations opened on January 5 for those who wish to stand for the central executive committee of Your Party. Despite what the launch ‘conference’ in Liverpool on November 29-30 ‘agreed’ (both terms are used very lightly), the process has not been overseen by a “members’ oversight committee”. Remember, five YP members were supposed to be chosen by sortition to temporarily “act as caretakers, executing the democratic wishes of the party, as voted on by members in the founding conference”. This committee was dreamed up by the Corbyn clique in response to an emergency motion proposed by the Socialist Unity Platform, which called on conference to elect a small group of ‘returning officers’ to take at least the CEC election out of the hands of Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s enforcer.

HQ came up with its alternative, which was never intended to be more than smoke and mirrors. A committee chosen by sortition - ie, made up of people who would have been entirely unprepared and inexperienced - would have left those really running things firmly in charge. HQ has decided to not even bother with the smoke and mirrors. After all, just because it has been agreed at ‘conference’ does not mean you actually have to implement it, right? Murphy and co are showing their political origins in the Labour and trade union bureaucracy, where the will of rank-and-file members is routinely sidelined or simply disregarded.

The same attitude was very much apparent in the surprise referendum that lucky Your Party members were invited to participate in on December 23 (two days before Christmas Day - the best time for this kind of thing!). In an effort to keep it light and amusing, we were told by email: “There are nine widely-accepted English regions. However, the constitution also says there will be 16 seats for ordinary members on the CEC. Nine into 16 doesn’t go! There is also a requirement for the ordinary member seats to be balanced by gender. The mathematically-minded will have already clocked that 2 x 9 = 18.”

Oh how we laughed. Those funny rascals at HQ clearly just made a minor error when presenting conference with the proposal of 16 ‘ordinary’ members of the CEC. That happens when you are busy. How could we not simply vote ‘yes’ to the harmless question: “Do you support expanding the number of ordinary-member CEC seats to 18, so each English region has two seats with gender balance?” It is just a technicality, right?

Wrong. On the most basic level, it is, of course, a minor issue. But the whole charade really does reveal everything that is wrong with the way HQ operates. The constitution - next to the programme the most important document a party has - has now been changed via online referendum, in the most nonchalant way imaginable. This might well set a precedent - well, now we’ve done it before, why can’t we do it on something more important? One could well imagine, for example, an online vote about which organisations and parties should be allowed onto the white list of those for whom ‘dual membership’ with YP is allowed. Green Party - tick. Left groups - ahem.

Also, many members will have been surprised to realise that conference had ‘voted’ to elect the CEC by regions - ie, federally. This was hidden in one of the ‘options’ members were actually allowed to vote on via their phone/laptop - the question was never even discussed in Liverpool. Option A stated: “The CEC shall elect ordinary members by English regions, with reserved elected member seats for Wales and Scotland likewise.” Option B read: “The CEC shall elect ordinary members from across England without regional differentiation, with reserved elected members for Wales and Scotland.”

The SUP quite rightly recommended a vote for option B,¹ but option A won with 58.6%. We suspect many members simply voted for A, because, frankly, it comes first in what looks like two boring technical options. This is, of course, one of the many tricks on how to manipulate online votes. Plus, there was no discussion, no context, no opposition. Now we are stuck with a federally elected CEC, in which two candidates per region are elected onto the national leadership. We would have much preferred a national election, which would have made it much easier to choose a CEC based on the candidates’ politics. It would have allowed for a proper clash of ideas.

To make matters worse, to have two seats per English region quite obviously creates a very skewed CEC: When the YP website accidentally showed where members live, we could see that there are over 8,000 members in London and just 1,800 in the North East - yet each region gets to elect two members.

As every candidate has to gather 75 “endorsements” from YP members living in their region (and every member can only endorse two candidates),² this is no small feat - especially as the membership data remains firmly in the hands of HQ. In this context, it is interesting to look at the number of members participating in the Christmas referendum (in which, unsurprisingly, ‘yes’ won with 89.15% of the vote): “Only active full members with verified identities could vote on this,” we read on our YP phone app. “The total number of members that fit these criteria was 24,459. Turnout was 41.07%, therefore 10,046 people.” Haven’t we been told elsewhere that Your Party is supposed to have “over 55,000 members”³? And even that is not a huge amount, considering that over 800,000 expressed an ‘interest’ in joining - but it is a lot better than 24,459 “active, full members”.

Finding 75 regional endorsements under these conditions will create difficulties for most candidates, especially outside of London - which is, of course, why HQ demands it: another bureaucratic hurdle that disenfranchises rank and file members. This has, however, increased the pressure on the left to come together and stand on a united slate.

Grassroots slate

Still, it almost did not happen. There were a number of false starts, including the rather drawn-out negotiations between the Democratic Socialists, the Democratic Bloc and a couple of smaller groups that had previously come together at The World Transformed conference to agree on a hotchpotch of a mini-programme. This was negotiated by consensus and therefore left out anything controversial. Weeks went by while these groups argued over whether there should be open or closed “primaries” to choose joint candidates - both entirely stupid ways to go about it, as we have argued previously. They are beauty contests which favour ‘celebrities’ and those with a big mouth, rather than candidates with, say, the most pertinent experience or solid political viewpoints. Those talks eventually imploded, when the Democratic Bloc walked out after the majority of groups finally came out against open primaries, in which basically anybody could have voted for their favourite left candidates - including members and supporters of Reform, presumably.

DSYP and the smaller groups continued and were just about to launch the closed primaries for their ‘Grassroots slate’ (in which only their members could have voted - though that would have opened up another can of worms, seeing as none of groups involved actually have proper membership structures!), when the Socialist Unity Platform made a more serious, last-ditch attempt to bring the whole of the active left together.

It approached Ken Loach’s Platform for a Democratic Party, which agreed to jointly reach out to organisations across the left - successfully so. A number of Zoom meetings were held over the Christmas period, with representatives from the Platform and SUP, Counterfire, the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Alternative, as well as the Democratic Bloc, DSYP and their small TWT groups (Trans Liberation Group, Eco-Socialist Horizon, Greater Manchester Left Caucus and Organising for Popular Power). Zarah Sultana also agreed to participate. The Socialist Party in England and Wales unfortunately did not engage, while the Revolutionary Communist Party (formerly Socialist Appeal) seems to have withdrawn from Your Party altogether.

The meetings, however, seriously struggled to agree on a joint political platform. The TWT comrades presented their very detailed, five-page programme, which they had prepared for their own campaign. While much of it is politically supportable, it is way too detailed, with plans to establish this and that commission (see below). It was simply inappropriate for the task at hand and all other groups opposed it.

After some back and forth, SUP presented a slightly extended version of the ‘Sheffield Demands’, which the TWT groups eventually accepted as basis for further negotiations, making a number of amendments. However, this was not acceptable to the comrades from the Platform for a Democratic Party (PFDP), who presented their own proposal. This was certainly short, but politically very conservative, with calls for the “rule of international law” and to “replace the failing United Nations with a democratic international organisation in which no state has a veto and with a peace-keeping force empowered to impose the judgements of its courts”. Still a “den of thieves” (Lenin) then, if such an organisation would be run by each country’s ruling class. There were no takers from among the participating organisations. Neither did any other group jump on Counterfire’s draft five points, which are similarly unambitious.

Programme

It really looked like things would fall apart - but then Zarah Sultana stepped in. She drafted a two-page political platform (with “input” from the DSYP’s Max Shanly).⁴ In my view, it is generally good. As time was running out, this was eagerly welcomed and quickly agreed by all participating organisations, without any opposition. Of course, we can quibble with this and that formulation (see below), but overall it really is a breath of fresh air politically and stands heads above the ‘lowest common denominator’ politics which that type of unity effort usually produces.

Not only is it good in terms of its commitment to socialism and democracy in Your Party, but also because it talks about the need to fight for the democratisation of wider society and includes the demand for the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords. It crucially also spells out that Your Party should focus on being an opposition party that “only participates in national government alone or in coalition on the basis of a socialist programme actively supported by a majority of the population” (point 8).

This is an important formulation that tries to stop Your Party falling into the trap that many socialist organisations across Europe have continuously stepped into over the decades: in the hope of ‘harm reduction’ or making things ‘a little bit better’, they are lured into taking government positions - and end up managing capitalism and shafting the working class in the process. Syriza in Greece, Rifondazione Comunista in Italy and Podemos in Spain are just some of the more prominent recent examples.

This is also becoming a very pertinent and ‘live’ question in Britain, considering that there is a real possibility of Reform UK becoming the strongest party at the next general election. Zack Polanski has already indicated that he would be happy for the Greens to go into an anti-Reform coalition government with a Labour Party run by Andy Burnham - the same Andy Burnham incidentally who famously used his final speech as MP in 2016 to attack the then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn over his refusal to support tougher immigration controls.⁵ We presume Polanski would have no great trouble compromising with Burnham over issues like that, for ‘the greater good’. Now what if that coalition was missing a couple of MPs for a working majority - and what if YP MPs sought to further their careers by accepting a couple of governmental appointments? Should they?

Point 8 in the Grassroots Left Slate platform says ‘no, they should not’. Quite right too. Our party should only agree to participate in any government coalition if that coalition agrees to a implement a full socialist programme - and only under conditions where a majority of the population supports it. Socialism, after all, cannot be implemented by an act of parliament: it has to result from the active will of the organised majority.

As a rather amusing aside, at an SUP organising meeting on January 3 which endorsed the platform, comrade Richard Brenner (formerly of Workers Power) started off by strongly criticising it - and particularly point 8 - as being “full of weird Weekly Worker obsessions”. He was thinking of running for the CEC, he said, but could not possibly stand on such a dumb platform. He had obviously missed the bit about Zarah Sultana having drafted it. Once that was pointed out to him, he quickly backtracked, explaining how he must have gotten out of bed on the wrong side. It was rather entertaining.

We suspect a number of groups who voted in favour of the platform have, deep down, similar feelings about it. Now that Zarah Sultana has proposed it, they have to agree, even if they do not really get it. Of course, we do not believe that either Sultana or Max Shanly have a “weird Weekly Worker obsession”. The platform is pretty much a reflection of the orthodox Marxism of the Second International, including its opposition and open criticism of the participation of socialist leader Alexandre Millerand in Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau’s cabinet of “republican defence”. Unfortunately, this tradition, which included Lenin and the Bolsheviks, has been entirely dismissed by much of the left in Britain in favour of their particular (and often rather skewed) version of ‘Trotskyism’, which downplays or entirely ignores the fight for democracy and, indeed, the entire minimum-maximum programme.

This platform therefore represents a small step forward - not just organisationally, in terms of bringing the left together, but also politically for the left in Britain.

No commissions

Concretely, the platform incorporates pretty much all of the ‘Sheffield Demands’⁶ and many of the good bits from the TWT platform, while leaving out some of their more wacky proposals. There is no mention of the TWT demand to set up elected local “socialist in-office committees”, which are supposed to keep local councillors in check, with an elected “council convenor” who would act as “public spokesperson, registered leader, and whip for the council group”. That does not exactly translate as ‘party republic’ to us.

In our view, there is no need for such extra layers of bureaucracy that could easily be stuffed and manipulated by said councillors, for example. No, elected office holders, including MPs, should be held accountable (and should be recallable) by branches, regions, executive committee, etc.

The TWT programme also proposed that a “democracy commission appointed by the CEC in order to review the founding process and suggest improvements to the party structures” should “include sortitioned members”. Why on earth would socialists fight for sortition, on any level? We have been told by DSYP comrades that this was only included because the constitution agreed after the Liverpool conference includes, under point 3b: “In the party’s first year, the CEC shall establish two working groups - one aimed at thoroughly establishing all the party’s structures, especially its regional structures, and the other at finalising all its core documents. These working groups shall consist of members selected by sortition who shall report to the CEC.”⁷

Apparently, the TWT formulation that the commission should “include sortitioned members” is supposed to be a clever trick to allow at least some members to be appointed by the CEC too. No, it is not clever, comrades: it is pretty daft - and entirely unnecessary.

We all know how undemocratic ‘conference’ was, with members and branches having absolutely no meaningful opportunity to move motions or amendments - only those that HQ was happy with were allowed to go through. We did not even have the chance to discuss this particular section of the constitution, let alone move amendments to it. Our CEC members are under absolutely no obligation to implement any of this nonsense - in fact, we should very much demand that they do not.

Generally, we also do not think that is a good idea to ‘outsource’ democracy to a particular commission. That all sounds very much like Momentum and the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn to us. Remember his ‘Democracy Review’? Many motions to Labour Party conference were ruled out of order, because the issues were supposed to be dealt with by the said ‘review’ - which, of course, never happened.

No, it is the members and branches who should be able to present proposals on how to democratise the party - at its highest, sovereign event: the party’s conference, which should solely be made up of democratically elected delegates. Genuine socialists on the CEC should do all they can to facilitate this, not circumvent it with this or that commission. The democracy commission is unfortunately still in the programme of the Grassroots Left Slate, but at least the ‘sortition’ bit has gone. These are, though, minor quibbles with what is generally a good platform.

Workers’ wage

But there is one serious problem, and it concerns an omission. Both the ‘Sheffield Demands’ and the TWT programme featured prominently the demand for MPs to receive the equivalent of a skilled workers’ wage. Obviously, we do not want those who view being an MP as a career choice and who want to make a mint. Current MPs do not just enjoy a healthy salary of £93,904 - they can claim accommodation costs and other expenses on pretty much anything vaguely relating to their role.

The workers’ wage formulation did not make it into the platform, however. Zarah Sultana, unlike Labour MP Nadia Whittome, for example, does not take a workers’ wage. When she was re-elected in 2025, Whittome adjusted her pay from £35,000 to £41,000 per annum, in line with rising wages. There is a lot to be criticised about Whittome, particularly her backing for the risible Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, which has recently become too noxious even for the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty - but she has that point right. Dave Nellist too only took a workers’ wage when he represented the constituency of Coventry South in the 80s - the same constituency that is now represented by Zarah Sultana.

We should certainly raise the issue with her. The Socialist Unity Platform has decided to ask all CEC candidates three questions, including this pertinent one: “Will you campaign for all MPs and all public officeholders to receive no more than the average wage of a skilled worker, with the rest being donated to the party?”⁸

Candidates

A fair amount of horse trading went on in the run up to the January 4 meeting, which decided on a list of candidates for the Grassroots Left Slate - see below. Salma Yaqoob and Andrew Feinstein were both linked with the slate until literally the day of the meeting, when they both confirmed they would not run after all, both for personal reasons. A shame, but they both remain in support, we understand. Most organisations involved got at least one of their members or supporters on the slate, with the DSYP and Zarah Sultana each having five of their chosen candidates/members elected.

While Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi was chosen as a candidate for the South East, the second candidate from the Platform for a Democratic Party, Mike Forster, lost out in Yorkshire to Chris Saltmarsh - whose campaign, Eco-Socialist Horizon, is part of the TWT group - by one vote. All other votes were pretty decisive and close to unanimous, thanks to said horse trading. We are particularly pleased about the inclusion of Ian Spencer, a regular contributor to the Weekly Worker, who is standing in the North East and who was proposed by the Socialist Unity Platform. The full list of names will be published at the campaign’s launch on Sunday January 11.

In a strange turn of events, the Democratic Bloc of Mish Rahman has ended up without a single candidate on the slate. Only a month ago, it was DemBloc member Andrew Hedges who had convinced Zarah Sultana to back ‘open primaries’ to choose a set of candidates as part of the TWT process, presenting her and others with detailed plans on how this should be done. The Democratic Bloc has spent a lot of money, time and effort producing snazzy leaflets at numerous party events up and down the country, including the many regional assemblies. It made quite a splash at launch conference too. It has collated a database and has run an enviable social media campaign. But it looks like that has now all gone up in smoke.

Rahman himself has just decided not to stand for the CEC - there are rumours that he has given up on YP altogether and is looking at the Green Party instead. It is fair to say that DemBloc has not made any friends when trying to negotiate a joint left slate, with its insistence on consensus decision-making, political opportunism and huffily walking out whenever it did not get its way. It walked out of the TWT negotiations, then the SUP meetings and now the Grassroots Left Slate.

The official reason its representative gave is that the slate was not “neutral” enough and too closely associated with Zarah Sultana. That seems odd, seeing as the DemBloc very much courted her until very recently, and even described itself as “the Zarah Sultana faction”. It also tried to get some candidates elected to the Grassroots Left Slate, but failed rather decisively. We suspect that is the real reason for its departure.

Another group that walked out, just after the programme was agreed, is ‘Organising for Popular Power’, which used to take part in the TWT talks. Its leading member is Josh Virasami, who (like Mish Rahman) was a member of Karie Murphy’s secretive Organising Group, before it was closed down last year. He was put in charge of running regional assemblies, but was apparently ‘let go’ rather abruptly for reasons unknown. He then launched the ill-fated campaign, ‘Our Party’, which wanted to take the organisation of the launch conference out of HQ’s hands - but run it on exactly the same basis - ie, with participants chosen by sortition. An entirely dumb idea that was also executed rather badly and secretively - no wonder it never got more than a few thousand people to sign up to it. We do not think the departure of either group will leave a particularly big gap.

There have been more serious problems, which we hope will be temporary. They are chiefly down to the different political programmatic outlooks of the groups involved, which we described above. But this comes with something of a cultural clash too: On the one side, there are the more well-established organisations and individuals who have been around the left for decades and, on the other side, the relative newcomers, DSYP and Zarah Sultana. It would be too easy to put this down simply to a generational clash, but there are certainly different methods and styles on display, when it comes to negotiation and organisation.

We will have to guard against the slate taking on board too much of the kind of managerialism seen in Momentum. We need to make sure that this slate actually does what it preaches: organise democratically, openly and transparently: calls for confidentiality and secrecy, when it comes to the negotiations, for example, have to be firmly rejected. Otherwise we are creating something that is, in reality, rather different to the ideal of a ‘party republic of equals’ we claim to want to build.

We hope that all these problems (which come with a fair amount of mutual suspicion) can be overcome and we are sure that joint campaigning will play some role in positively resolving these. The stakes are just too high. Should this slate fall apart, there is a good chance that hardly any left wingers will make it on to the CEC. Which in turn would jeopardise the whole of Your Party. Unless it is seriously and radically democratised and adopts a radical socialist programme, it has absolutely no chance of becoming the political alternative the working class in Britain so desperately needs.

CEC elections

P olitical platform agreed by Democratic Socialists, Platform for a Democratic Party, Socialist Unity Platform, SWP, Counterfire, Democratic Bloc, Socialist Alternative, Trans Liberation Group, Greater Manchester Left Caucus, Eco-Socialist Horizon and Zarah Sultana

1. For a central executive committee dedicated to building a mass, democratic, socialist, working class party, rooted in independent, community-based branch organisations that can fight fascism and the far right. Our goal is to bring an end to capitalism - a socially and ecologically destructive system driven by the profit motive and private ownership of the means of production - and replace it with a socialist society organised to meet people’s needs, not generate profit.

2. For a party that will empower members to create grassroots structures in every town, city, region and nation, providing data, finance and technical support to get them established. Members and thus branches must be well funded, receiving at least 50% of all membership fees, with autonomy over branch spending and political activity. Elected branch committees will have access to full membership data for their area. We must execute a mass recruitment drive to become a mass socialist party of the left this country so desperately needs.

3. For a party open to all who share our socialist goals - an equal, fair, just and ecologically sustainable society, organised around the needs of the majority, not for the profit of the few; key sections of the economy owned and democratically controlled by the people who work in them and depend upon them; a society in which everyone, regardless of race, faith, ethnicity, family background, gender, sexual orientation or disability, can lead healthy lives of dignity and fulfilment.

4. For a clear programme of anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism and pro-peace. We oppose militarism and stand with the oppressed against the oppressors. We support the Palestinian people and reject successive British governments’ collusion with Israel. We support immediate withdrawal from Nato that only offers profits to the merchants of death and makes the world less safe, when this money should be spent on schools, hospitals and wider society.

5. For a party that opposes the far right and exposes every attempt by the ruling class to divide and rule the working class against itself. We stand with all communities and liberation for all people: Muslims, migrants, refugees, trans and queer people, women, disabled people. We stand against all forms of oppression and attacks on marginalised communities by political elites.

6. For defence of freedom of speech and freedom of expression; opposition to laws restricting protest and trade union activity; opposition to state censorship and surveillance; support for pro-Palestine political prisoners that are on hunger strike.

7. For a democratic party that will fight in the May 2026 elections, but is not defined by electoralism; all elected representatives and party officials to be accountable to the membership, subject to mandatory reselection and open to recall at any time. We must support candidates that do not vote for cuts, but fight them.

8. For a party that only participates in national government alone or in coalition on the basis of a socialist programme actively supported by a majority of the population. The monarchy, House of Lords and ‘first past the post’ voting system must be abolished.

9. For a truly democratic socialist party, a democracy commission and democratic sovereign conference will take place: Over the first six months after their election, the CEC will appoint a democracy commission, to review the founding process and suggest improvements to the party structures. The first annual conference will be held within six months, with structures to enable it to be sovereign over the party’s future direction.

10. For a member-led CEC: All members of the CEC shall operate as political equals. This slate commits to not permitting any councillors or MPs to hold positions in the elected officers group. The CEC will elect a parliamentary convenor to be the public spokesperson and whip of the parliamentary group of MPs, intending to formalise this role by amendment in the 2026 conference. The CEC must commit to meet at least monthly, to ensure the body remains able to provide effective political leadership.

11. For bottom-up organised sections and a rank-and-file movement that is the engine of the party. Grassroots members will be supported to build oppression-based organised sections from the bottom up. This includes facilitating a youth and student conference to establish meaningfully democratic and autonomous structures for a youth and student section and make constitutional recommendations (eg, a youth place on the CEC) and appoint a rank-and-file workers’ movement commission to develop the party’s relationship with the trade union movement. All elected members of this slate will sit on an advisory committee with representatives of all the grassroots factions supporting this platform. The committee will meet monthly to hold elected members to account.

12. For a party of the whole left: We stand for a party of the whole left with freedom for members to organise into factions, tendencies and platforms. This means opposing any ban on dual membership or proscriptions against members based on political views or affiliations.

13. For a party that does not see Scotland and Wales as afterthoughts, but respects their autonomy to self-organise: The CEC will rebuild broken relationships with members in Wales and Scotland, giving them access to funding, data and resources, to enable them to choose how they want to engage in the 2026 elections. They will have sufficient resources and access to data to hold democratic conferences to decide their local structures and level of autonomy from the party.

14. For an open and transparent party. Decisions of all party bodies, from local branch to national executive, to be open to scrutiny by the members; for an independent audit of party finances; for a disciplinary process based on natural justice, with an appeals procedure agreed by the membership.

15. For a party that is led by its members, not MPs, and to deliver the next stage of maximum member democracy.