12.02.2026
Red-baiting by HQ
Despite the expulsions and unhinged attacks, Grassroots Left is on course to win a majority. Fearing defeat, the embattled Corbyn clique has gone into panic mode, says Carla Roberts
Jeremy Corbyn’s slate, The Many, is clearly in big trouble. In the last few days, the modus operandi of the whole campaign has changed dramatically. Instead of pretending to want ‘unity’ and getting ‘the party back on track’, the Corbyn clique has now decided on a strategy of ‘scorched earth’. They have made it very clear: if they do not win in the current leadership elections, they will not just walk, but probably burn the house down too.
Why? We suspect they have done the maths. Like the Grassroots Left slate, supported by Zarah Sultana, the Jeremy Corbyn clique will have made projections based on the endorsements cast for various candidates. As there were over 11,000 members who endorsed candidates - roughly the same number who voted during the launch conference and in the Christmas online referendum - there is a good chance that the endorsements will indeed translate almost directly into votes. And, according to projections, the Grassroots Left would win a small majority of between one and four seats on the central executive committee. With many independent candidates failing to meet the undemocratic hurdle of 75 endorsements, there is, of course, a certain amount of guesswork involved. But the Corbyn clique are aware of how close things are.
Of course, there is also the added fact that those behind The Many slate are the same people running not just Your Party HQ, but also the current elections. No third party was brought in. HQ can see ‘live’ how the voting is going, and adjust their campaigning priorities. Karie Murphy is probably going to count the votes herself too. An utter outrage, needless to say - one of so many that it is almost impossible to list them all. What started off as a project of hope, supported by over 800,000 people, is in danger of turning into a tragic lost opportunity.
HQ clearly got spooked when seeing the number of endorsements. First, they extended by 36 hours the deadline by which new members were able to join Your Party and get a vote in the leadership elections. Then Corbyn gave a set of ‘exclusive’ quotes to that stalwart journal of the left, the New Statesman, in which readers were told that “Jeremy knows that the fate of Your Party rests on this election. It will determine whether it grows as a mass, community-based party that can speak to millions of ordinary people, or becomes a battleground for every splinter group under the sun. The Many simply has to win for the party to survive.”
Running with that theme, a number of The Many candidates let slip that, in their view, the hundreds of existing (proto) branches are a real problem. Hannah Hawkins (standing in the North East) took it furthest: “Anyone in office in a proto-branch should not be allowed to stand when it is constituted as an official branch”, she said to a Teesside meeting on February 5. A comment she repeated on Facebook. This would deny local members the right to decide their own officers.
It appears the Corbyn clique then decided that Hawkins was onto a winning formula. On February 8, the day before voting started, The Many published a ‘set of proposals’,1 which amounted to a declaration of war against the left … and active members and the branches themselves. The proposals, if implemented, would turn Your Party into another version of Momentum - with a powerful leadership, online referendums and entirely powerless members and branches.
Abolish branches
Point 1 is entitled “Set up official branches” (original emphasis) “with inaugural all-member meetings” as “per constitution”. Funnily enough, the text does not mention the ridiculous quorum of 20% of all local members who would be required to attend such a meeting in order to be allowed to found a branch. That was, remember, the least bad of the four options the Corbyn clique ‘allowed’ members to vote on at launch conference (the other options were 25%, 40% and 50%). Anybody who is a member of a trade union will know how difficult it is to meet such levels. This is a rule designed to stop branches from even being formed.
The point then goes into attack mode. It quite rightly points out that this is “very different from what the Grassroots Left slate is promising” - that much is true. The rest is a combination of scare tactics, half-truths and selective memory:
They want to overturn Your Party’s constitution, which was overwhelmingly endorsed by members at the founding conference, in order to immediately recognise existing proto-branches on day one. We think this is wrong. While many proto-branches have been doing great work in their communities, not all members have been able to take part in them. Many are run by the Socialist Workers Party and other sectarian groups which comprise the Grassroots Left slate. These groups are more organised than ordinary individual members, who are effectively excluded from equal participation. They are seeking to exert control of the party through control of the branches.
Wow, classic red-baiting stuff. First, we should stress that the Grassroots Left is not “committed to overturn Your Party’s constitution” - not that we would have a particular problem with that. After all, the launch conference was an absolute joke. Members were unable to submit motions, amendments or even properly discuss issues - the question of the branch quorum, for example, did not even come up! Members were only allowed to click ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the ‘options’.
The GL’s promise to “recognise proto branches on day 1” does not mean at all that it would not, in addition, constitute proper inaugural meetings to which all local members are invited. After all, this is what the GL candidates - as well as the members and branches - have been demanding for many months! It is the Corbyn clique running The Many that is withholding the data. That is the reason why “not all members have been able to take part” in the branches! There is certainly a question on how you would deal with the 20% quorum - a new CEC might have to organise a special emergency congress to overturn this and some other undemocratic rules.
More expulsions
The attack on left groups is continued in point 2, ‘Defend Omov’:
Key groups and candidates within the Grassroots Left are deeply hostile to Omov [one member, one vote]. They don’t want members to take decisions for themselves; they want power to be in the hands of delegates from branches, because the sectarian groups who make up the Grassroots Left believe they have more chance of controlling a branch than controlling the whole membership. It’s a way for them to have an influence bigger than their numbers warrant.
This point also comes with a neat graphic which explains: “The Many will defend ‘one member, one vote’, so that the members call the shots, not sects.”
So there we have it: members of organised groups (“sects”) are not real members. There can be no doubt that the list of “national parties” that would be approved for “dual membership” by a CEC dominated by The Many would be, to put it mildly, very, very short.
As if to stress the point that the Corbyn clique will start with a purge, we have now seen the first expulsion post-conference. Readers will remember that on the eve of the Liverpool launch conference, HQ very symbolically expelled a number of leading members of the Socialist Workers Party - including, for good measure, some who had never joined Your Party! Rationality is the first victim in a witch-hunt.
In an equally worrying move, HQ has now decided to expel a CEC candidate. While a number were barred (and some then unbarred) from running because of their (alleged) membership of this or that group, Rob Rooney in the South West was not challenged. He made it onto the ballot paper, with 86 endorsements, despite the fact that he is quite open about his Socialist Party in England and Wales (SPEW) membership.
But on the evening of Tuesday February 10, 24 hours after voting had opened, he was informed by email that he is “not eligible to be a member of Your Party and stand as a candidate in the CEC 2026 elections”. No other SPEW members have been expelled, to our knowledge. To make matters worse, as we go to press, Rooney is still on the ballot paper! Any votes cast for him are clearly lost. Then there is the fact that, for the first 15 minutes, the election was ‘accidently’ run under the wrong system (first-past-the-post instead of single-transferable-vote). What a mess.
As an important aside, HQ is running the election under the STV system ‘imperiali’, which is the least democratic form possible. Ranking more than two people is almost pointless, as votes are not really transferred to other candidates (unlike in the more democratic ‘Scottish’ version of STV). It favours big voting blocks and slates - another sign which shows how desperate the Corbyn clique is. This may well bite them in the bum, however, as it does not just favour The Many, but also the Grassroots Left. For example, this system could get candidates like Max Shanly in the South West onto the CEC, despite the fact that he had far fewer endorsements than some of the independent candidates. But members supporting independents are more likely to rank different people first, whereas all supporters of GL are putting Max at No 1 - and only those first preference votes really count.
Anyway, The Many’s claims about Omov are entirely dishonest. Communists, socialists - hell, anybody with a democratic bone in their body - are, of course, in favour of Omov voting in our branches. Needless to say, this should include members who cannot be there in person, perhaps because of health reasons or caring responsibilities - we should always make provisions for meetings to be conducted in a hybrid format and many proto-branches are already doing exactly that.
But members can only make informed decisions when they can hear the arguments, are able to ask questions and propose amendments. Our launch conference should have been run with Omov, too, instead of voting via mobile phone many hours, sometimes even days, after a particular issue had been discussed (if it was discussed).
Real Omov
The Corbyn clique does not want real Omov. They want the sort of atomised voting, at home, that Margaret Thatcher introduced with her anti-union legislation: she took away the right of workers to make important decisions in the workplace, when they could, for example, decide with a show of hands if they wanted to go on strike. Just as Thatcher accused union militants of hijacking the membership, so the Corbyn clique now claims that left groups defend the right of branches to elect delegates, because “they have more chance of controlling a branch than controlling the whole membership”. This really is a new, shameful low for Corbyn.
No, socialists and communists defend representative democracy, with members in the branches electing delegates, because this is the only way to get organised collectively. After all, we believe that the liberation of the working class can only be achieved by the working class itself - collectively. We therefore need to empower and strengthen the branches, not sideline or even abolish them, which is what the Corbyn clique clearly wants to do. Under a Corbyn-led CEC, sortition will become the standard way to choose who goes to a powerless conference. Not the most thoughtful or the most active, but randomly chosen members.
Point 3 in The Many’s proposals promises that the Corbyn clique will not allow policy-making by the members and branches - but outsource this to ‘policy commissions’. This is exactly what Tony Blair introduced into the Labour Party with the National Policy Forum. He thereby successfully gutted conference. We cannot allow this to happen in Your Party. Our conference must be the highest, sovereign body, where elected and accountable delegates collectively debate and decide policy, tactics and strategy - which our elected representatives (Councillors, MPs, etc) must then implement.
Online voting and email referendums, on the other hand, really are nothing more than a facade. Members are essentially passive. The Leader and their clique decide the question, do the messaging and, unless something goes badly wrong, always get the result that they want.
We deserve something better, much better. Vote for the GL slate.