05.02.2026
Our politics needs light
Corbyn’s clique does not recognise branches, refuses to release membership data, holds fake consultations, insists on secret meetings, demands confidentiality and is unable to issue a clear, unambiguous political statement on Gorton and Denton - all reasons why socialists should support the Grassroots Left, says Carla Roberts
Current Your Party leadership elections, and the coming by-election in Manchester, sadly show the deep trouble Your Party is in - and how the Corbyn clique continues to treat the organisation as their own fiefdom.
Jeremy Corbyn and Karie Murphy invited “representatives” from the various Manchester YP branches to discuss putting up an electoral challenge. Also there was the newly formed ‘members oversight committee’ - which has suddenly come into existence (more on that below).
Alas, it turns out that most of these “representatives” were at the meeting without the knowledge of their branch. Why? In the run-up to the meeting, Karie Murphy had approached the ‘Greater Manchester branches network’, invited one delegate from each branch - and swore them to absolute secrecy. Incredibly, most of them seem to have agreed to that outrageous demand. Why shouldn’t members know about this meeting and its outcome? Such demands for ‘confidentiality’ serve the bureaucracy, not the membership.
Some of ‘delegates’ tried to square that particular circle by asking their branch, via WhatsApp, what the members’ position would be on standing a candidate - but without explaining that they would take the view to a meeting with Corbyn himself. Other branches, who hadn’t yet sent a delegate to that ‘branches network’, only heard about the meeting afterwards. Needless to say, the majority of YP members in Manchester are absolutely fuming, and understandably so.
The decision not to stand a YP candidate is hardly surprising. Despite inviting ‘representatives’ from branches, officially HQ maintains that these don’t really exist. This is blatantly untrue, of course. Hundreds of branches have been meeting up and down the country - but they have no way of influencing what HQ is doing. The Corbyn clique has entirely sidelined them ever since the launch conference. They get no funds, no access to the data, no organisational support and certainly no response to emails. Branches were not allowed to elect delegates to the launch conference or even submit motions or send amendments. HQ has been running the show entirely top-down, without democratic norms, let alone transparency.
Stop fascism?
Having said that, there are over 1,200 YP members in Manchester (we know this from the temporary data breach) and we understand that many of the most active members across Manchester were keen to stand a socialist candidate, in the hope of using the election to turn things around. Some wanted YP to support Counterfire member Tony Wilson, who is currently leading a strike at Transport for Greater Manchester. He had been musing about standing.
A majority at a YP meeting of members in Gorton and Denton, however, decided that they do not have the capacity to stand (understandable, given the current condition of YP). However, they also came out in favour of supporting the Green candidate, Hannah Spencer. The branch had not met for many months - and there was a grand total of nine people present. Seven voted in favour of offering “tactical support for the Greens”.
Supporting the Greens is a mistake in our view - but it certainly reflects the widespread view that the Green Party is some sort of semi-socialist organisation, thanks to the left talking Zack Polanski. The official YP statement is pretty mealy-mouthed about what it wants members to do - but manages to go against the views of the members in Gorton and Denton, as well as those in wider Manchester:
The single greatest threat to this country right now is a far-right Reform government. This danger is being actively facilitated by a failing Labour government which is prioritising the interests of the rich and powerful over ordinary people struggling to make ends meet. Your Party is currently holding our first leadership elections, after which the work of formally constituting branches will begin.
In this context, after consultation with local members, we do not believe that a Your Party candidacy would serve our collective goals in this by-election. It is imperative that Reform is defeated in Gorton and Denton and the far-right tide is beaten back. To that end, we will actively mobilise against the far-right, even as we continue to build a mass party that can elect socialist and anti-war candidates across the country.1
The statement is as ambiguous as it is lame - it emphasises how impotent the party really is under its current, unelected, leadership. We much prefer the statement put out by the Grassroots Left:
Gorton and Denton by-election should have had a principled socialist candidate on the ballot. Your Party members should have been allowed to democratically elect a candidate and branches should have been recognised months ago. Grassroots Left members on the CEC [central executive committee] will fight to immediately recognise Your Party branches and hand over local data and resources, so that such situations cannot be repeated. Grassroots Left will not lend unconditional support to the Green Party candidate, because the Greens are a pro-capitalist, pro-Nato party and have been enforcing cuts in councils all over the country.
We could quibble about some of the formulations in what is clearly a statement written by a committee, but in general it sums up the correct approach. The fact that there is no socialist on the ballot and that some think they have to support the Greens is down to the failure of the Corbyn clique to build the party and allow the branches to flourish.
Zarah Sultana has produced an additional, personal statement, in which she calls for “critical support” to Hannah Spencer “and the Green Party”.2 Contrary to what some leftist train-spotters believe, Sultana does not disagree with the GL statement, but wanted to go further. As the majority of members of both GL’s CEC slate committee (which comprises all organisations involved in agreeing the slate’s programme and its candidates) and our CEC campaign team disagreed with coming out for a vote for the Greens, she put out her own statement.
That is, of course, her right: the Grassroots Left is, after all, an alliance, not a sect. Though we must say, we much prefer the Zarah Sultana who stresses why we should not go soft on the Greens: “We are a class-based party”, she has said, and, unlike the Greens, Your Party should be an “explicitly socialist party: on many questions - when it comes to Nato, when it comes to our relationship with Israel, when we’re talking about not overseeing austerity in local governments - we have different positions.”3
Green Party
Quite right. Yes, there are many thousands of people who think of themselves as socialists who have joined the Green Party, mainly because they are fed up with the dithering Corbyn and they like Polanski’s slick social media campaigns. But they are deluding themselves. The Greens remain a thoroughly pro-capitalist party, based politically on the petty bourgeoisie. We should point that out over and over again, especially as the Greens have been sucking in tens of thousands of people who would have joined Your Party, if it were not dysfunctional.
At the end of her statement, Sultana explains why she thinks a vote for the Greens is justified: “Ultimately, defeating fascism has to be our number one priority.” We think this suffers from the same anti-Reform panic as the YP statement. The next general election is scheduled for August 2029. Even if Matthew Goodwin wins the seat for Reform, it is highly unlikely that Starmer would either resign or call for a snap election.
In fact, logically, it would make most sense for YP to call for a vote for Labour in Gorton and Denton, if the main imperative is to “defeat Reform”. According to the latest polls, Reform are at about 36%, Labour at 33% and the Greens at between 17% and 20% - though all that might change.
We would also seriously dispute Sultana’s implication that Reform constitutes a fascist party. Rightwing, populist, nasty, dangerous - all true. As shown by the 1920s, 30s and 40s, fascism is something rather different. Today fascism is not knocking on the door. Our priority should not be to ‘defeat Reform’, but to build a serious working class party that can present a real alternative to this rotten system.
Members oversight
Readers might remember that the ‘members oversight committee’ was dreamed up by the Corbyn clique in response to the Socialist Unity Platform preparing an emergency motion for the launch conference, which would have seen the election of a group of returning officers to oversee the leadership elections. Instead, Murphy and co slipped into the final draft of their One year strategy guide this little paragraph, which, like most other rules, could not be amended or challenged:
For the short period between the founding conference and the election of the first CEC in February, a new members oversight committee, consisting of five ordinary members selected by sortition from the whole membership, is in the process of being established.4
Well, it took them about seven weeks to get it set up, but it now exists. Who are those five? Nobody knows. We do know somebody, however, who is not on that committee. Let’s call her Elsie. She got a phone call from a certain Karie Murphy a few weeks ago, congratulating her on having been picked by sortition. Would she want to take up the job? So far, so acceptable - just.
They had a nice conversation in which Elsie asked a few, quite possibly too awkward, questions about what kind of powers that committee would have. She also let slip that she is a member of a small Trotskyist group called Workers Power. Karie didn’t seem to mind that at all and the two carried on having a nice chat, after which Karie promised to send Elsie all the relevant details about her appointment.
Readers can probably guess the end of that story by now. Karie never called again. Elsie texted Karie, but got no reply. She even tried calling, but Karie would not pick up. Elsie has clearly been de-sortitioned because of her political views.
What about the committee members who have been deemed safe enough? How can we contact them to find out if they think things are being done ‘properly’ at HQ? Where are their reports? Do they agree with the YP statement on the by-election, for example? Perhaps they thought, like others in Manchester, that Your Party should stand a candidate? Where are the minutes of their meeting?
There aren’t any, of course. It is an entirely secret body. And who oversees the overseers? Certainly not Your Party members.