21.05.2026
Behind members’ backs
The first couple of official Your Party branches are being set up in the most hesitant, most fearful, most controlled way imaginable. Carla Roberts reports
Out of all the possible constituencies in the country, the Corbyn clique has picked the Isle of Wight and Ceredigion Preseli in Wales to launch the first two official Your Party branches. What looks like a very odd decision indeed is, of course, no accident at all - it shows Jeremy Corbyn’s right-hand woman, Karie Murphy, at her ‘finest’.
At the time of the data glitch on November 10 2025, when for a few short hours the YP member portal exposed branch membership numbers and profile pages to any logged-in member, there were 55 YP members registered on the Isle of Wight West (another 50 in IoW East), making the two areas number 491st and 440th respectively out of 651 constituencies in terms of membership density; Ceredigion Preseli was number 53 with 152 members.1 The Isle of Wight will hold its “branch formation meeting” on June 6 at 5.30pm in the Quay Arts Centre, 15 Sea Street, Newport. Ceredigion Preseli follows on June 7 at 2pm at Aberystwyth University.
Although members on the IoW were first notified by email on May 9, none of this was discussed at the central executive committee meeting a day later. In fact, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, who represents the south of England on the CEC (and thereby the IoW), only found out about the meeting a few days ago. The Grassroots Left supporters on the CEC have been kept entirely out of the loop, all the way through. They are there to make things look democratic, nothing more. CEC chair Jenn Forbes, part of Corbyn’s leadership faction The Many, does not even bother any more to tell the hybrid meeting the results of the anonymous online votes - it is clear that everything The Many puts forward passes, while most of the motions and amendments proposed by GL supporters fall (unless it is something entirely apolitical, like organising a YP presence at the Notting Hill Carnival - why on earth GL comrades bothered with that one is anybody’s guess).
Membership officer
At the said CEC meeting on May 10, membership officer Cassie Bellingham merely announced that there was a timetable for branch formation, but refused to give any details. We suspect that things will continue in the current vein: pick some small and medium-sized branches first and leave the big ones right until the end. That is classic Karie Murphy. She really is very good at what she does: manipulate, micro-manage and bureaucratically stifle any inkling of democracy. The smaller the branch, the less likely it is that its members will successfully rebel - though you do need a certain ‘critical mass’ to make sure you can hold a meeting. There are around 200 branches with 50 or fewer members - they will struggle to organise. A branch with between 100 and 150 members (of which maybe a fifth ever show up to anything) is perfect, from her point of view.
As an aside, we suspect membership figures are a bit down from that data breach in November 2025, but perhaps not as dramatically as some believe. While many people have certainly left (among them former SPEW member Darren Galpin, who was effectively running the proto-branch on the IoW), we also know that in the run-up to the CEC elections in March, HQ managed to attract some new members. Heaven forbid that the Corbyn clique would publish the official membership figures or, for that matter, a clear plan on how branches in the rest of the country will be set up and when.
Picking the Isle of Wight as the first branch in England has the added advantage that the organised left is almost non-existent and neither the Socialist Workers Party nor SPEW have a branch there. If there are any local SWP or SPEW members in YP, they have not identified themselves as such or openly sold their paper at the monthly meetings of the proto-branch (attendance figures at the hybrid meetings have gone down from a high of 67 to about 15-20).
In small branches, it is also easier to meet the ridiculous quorum of 20% required for inaugural meetings (the lowest percentage that members at launch conference were able to choose out of a number of ‘options’ presented by HQ). This self-enforced rule could well bite the Corbyn clique in the bum - unless they do what they did with other things they did not like much, like ‘collective leadership’ and ‘dual membership’: they entirely ignored what was agreed and simply overturned it at the CEC. They will probably see how things go on the IoW and in Wales and then change the rules as and when it suits them.
No consistency
There is at least one glaring discrepancy between the two first branch formation meetings: while in Wales members will “hear from members standing for officer positions”, the election of officers for the Isle of Wight branch will have already concluded - and members are invited to “meet your newly-elected branch officers”. HQ has organised the election of “chair, treasurer, secretary, organiser and workplace liaison” entirely online. Members were able to self-nominate between May 12 and 17, with the “candidates announced” on May 20 and an “online hustings” taking place on May 30. Voting takes place between May 31 and June 5 - ie, the election finishes the day before the actual “branch formation meeting”.
From our perspective, this is entirely the wrong way around. Members should be able to meet the candidates in an actual, real-life meeting. Everybody should be able to ask questions, hear the candidates’ answers, and then also see the reactions of the other members in the room - and only then cast their vote. Online hustings and votes are not only a very poor substitute: they depoliticise and demobilise members. Why bother coming to a meeting if you can just click a button at home? That is, of course, exactly what the Corbyn clique wants: a quiet and pliant membership that does not propose motions (which might, for example, criticise the lack of democracy in YP). Of course, some comrades cannot travel and arrangements should be made for them to attend online - but that is usually a small number.
In the run-up to the CEC election, executive member Hannah Hawkins had announced that she would campaign for a rule barring “anyone in office in a proto-branch” from becoming an officer in an official branch. This does not seem to have been taken up by HQ (yet) - perhaps they know that there are not that many local active members to choose from.
On the Isle of Wight, for example, six members have put themselves forward for the five positions - and almost all of those have been leading the proto-branch. In fact, it looks like a very smooth transition there. The only newcomer is Verity Bird, who writes in her candidate statement for the position of chair: “I consider it important that whoever we elect is able to connect with people very broadly, and, for example, referring to members as ‘comrades’, while comfortable for established communists/socialists, is likely to alienate more people than it attracts.” She sounds like somebody who would get on very well with Karie Murphy - and will hopefully be roundly defeated by Christopher White, who served as de facto secretary of the proto-branch after the departure of Darren Galpin and is also standing for chair this time.
Talking shops
According to the agenda of both meetings, “official Your Party branches will be hubs for community organising, supporting the campaigns and struggles already happening on the ground. Whether that’s industrial action, housing campaigns, Palestine solidarity or fighting the far right - our branches should exist to amplify and support that work.”
In the minds of the Corbyn clique, Your Party branches are not actually supposed to take any initiatives, but simply get behind local stuff that is already happening. A real party of the working class, on the other hand, would, yes, get involved in any useful local campaigns - but not to simply “amplify” and “support”, but also to develop, to change, to educate ourselves … and to recruit more members.
It would also launch its own national and international initiatives and campaigns, in the knowledge that single-issue campaigns - especially local ones - have their limits. They quickly come up against the real reason that inequality, war and the far right exist - ie, global capitalism. None of these issues can be solved without the working class being organised in an effective and principled working class party that actually presents a viable alternative to the rotten system.
Such a party requires autonomous branches, transparency and democracy. But that is not what Your Party branches are supposed to look like. YP chair Jenn Forbes explained in her CEC report that branches will be “set up as hubs for campaigning in the community, rather than talking shops” (my emphasis).2 This has been pushed by the Corbyn clique in the CEC elections, too - by “talking shops” they mean the proto-branches of course, which were organising democratically and from the ground up, allowing members to discuss, debate and vote. The Corbyn clique, on the other hand, is pushing for non-voting “assemblies”, “listening exercises” and backing this and that campaign. Now which one of those two ways of organising sounds more like a “talking shop”, we wonder?
Better organised
It remains to be seen if local members will simply swallow what they are being served up by the Corbyn clique. What might work relatively smoothly in small branches could be much harder to enforce in better organised areas like London, Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield, where enough local members could show up and simply vote to overturn any diktat by HQ. We suspect that is why those areas will be last on the list. No doubt HQ is also counting on the likelihood that, in the meantime, some of the biggest local ‘trouble-makers’ get frustrated and leave YP.
And perhaps some in HQ are expecting that the problem might resolve itself in a different manner altogether: John McDonnell MP and others on the Labour left have been calling on Andy Burnham, if he becomes Labour leader, to allow Jeremy Corbyn back into the Labour Party.3 There can be no doubt that this would certainly be to Corbyn’s liking. He has always been and remains a left Labourite - currently in exile. He has no interest in building a viable, effective working class party, let alone a revolutionary one. He believes that socialism could be introduced through parliament. At best, he wants to build a Labour Party mark two … and even that he does very, very badly.
Burnham has told the Jewish Chronicle that he “does not back calls to allow the former Labour leader to return to the Labour benches” - well, what else would you expect him to say to that rag. The prospect does indeed currently seem unlikely, but not at all impossible - especially with the prospect of a Reform government looming large.