Britain : “Your Party is Our Party – stop wrecking this opportunity!” Anti-Capitalist Resistance Statement
Britain badly needs a new mass left party. A new organisation temporarily called “Your Party” – headed by Westminaster MP’s Zarah Sultana and former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – looked promising. It has descended into chaos.
The article below by Anti-Capitalist Resistance suggests a way out. Let’s hope political sanity takes over.
Link :
Your party is Our Party – Stop Wrecking this Opportunity
AntiCapitalist Resistance welcomed the announcement by Zarah Sultana of a new left party involving herself and Jeremy Corbyn. When 800,000 people signed up to the mailing list it confirmed a huge appetite for a left voice at elections but also in our communities and workplaces.
The events of the last few days however have been chaotic and exposed deep splits in the organising group of Your Party. The regular leaks to the capitalist press had already shown there were divisions but the membership launch fiasco and the threats to call in lawyers and the Information Commissioners office is hugely damaging.
Whilst we appreciate Sultana’s concerns about the lack of transparency and democracy, launching an unofficial membership portal has caused confusion. We needed proper accountability and democracy so people can know what is going on and have more of a say.
But it is quite clear that there is a grouping at the heart of Your Party that is reluctant to have a properly democratic party and are instead focussing on the existing MPs, Corbyn, Sultana and the Independent Alliance, as well as a scattering of councillors to run things.
This entire approach is wrong and is only replicating the problems of Labourism when the Labour Party was set up in 1918 and MPs got a privileged position of power over the membership.
The two sides need a mediated meeting with someone from the movement that is neutral but commands some credibility. Corbyn must drop his threat of legal action.
We need a national conference based on delegates to decide these issues and launch the party properly on a firm, socialist basis. We must demand unity from the leadership, at least to get the party set up.
Importantly we need to keep building local groups – if the leadership cannot get their act together then we do this from the base, starting in the communities and workplaces.These meetings need to be advertised to all – not just those in our own address books – and in an inclusive way eg through hybrid meetings. The centre needs to advertise them to everyone who has signed up in that geographical areas.
This squabbling behind the scenes over who controls members’ data is pathetic when we are facing the dangerous threat of a Reform government, a mass, violent ‘patriotic’ movement and the continued collapse of the climate.
The self appointed leaders of Your Party are squandering a historic opportunity and future generations will not forgive us for wrecking the most credible chance we have at a mass left socialist party.
This is an interesting article published on the Cedar Lounge Revolution blog :
Duncan Chapel’s notes, published on his facebook page, are useful :
Some comrades abroad are interested in the public feud between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana over the launch of a new membership portal. The notes below might not be news for people in Britain. The open question is whether this marks the definitive unravelling of a New Left Movement.
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The Unraveling of a New Left Movement
The public feud between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana over the launch of a new membership portal marks the definitive unravelling of a New Left Movement. The conflict, which brings long-standing disagreements over control and process to the forefront, exposes a deep ideological and operational chasm between the two co-founders and their respective allies. Conceived in July 2025 as a new home for left-wing voters disillusioned with the Labour Party, the project instead enters a palpable crisis of trust, leading many online commentators and grassroots supporters to conclude that the movement is being “strangled at birth”. The project’s future viability is now highly uncertain.
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The Anatomy of the Public Feud
The most dramatic public split erupts over a disputed membership portal.
-> The Dueling Narratives The public dispute begins with two conflicting narratives presented simultaneously to supporters. Jeremy Corbyn and his allies issue an “urgent message” telling followers to ignore the new site. This statement is co-signed by all of the Independent Alliance MPs except Sultana. Corbyn’s camp asserts institutional authority, labeling the site a “false membership system” that is collecting money and data “without authorisation”. The matter is referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Zarah Sultana’s counter-narrative frames her unilateral action as a defensive necessity. She states that she is “sidelined” and “frozen out of the official accounts” by what she calls a “sexist boys’ club”. Sultana rejects Corbyn’s claims, arguing that her aim is to “safeguard grassroots involvement” and demands a public airing of the party’s agreed-upon structures and decision-making protocols.
-> The Struggle for Foundational Control The dispute is the visible manifestation of a pre-existing, behind-the-scenes power struggle over the movement’s core resources: member data and finances. A reported power-sharing arrangement stipulates that Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project Ltd holds mailing list data, while a “pro-democratic group” associated with Sultana and MoU Operations Ltd controls donor information. Sultana’s allies suggest she launched her portal as a deliberate tactical maneuver to challenge the centralized control she accuses Corbyn’s inner circle of asserting, specifically citing his former chief of staff, Karie Murphy. Corbyn’s immediate referral to the ICO is a strategic attempt to delegitimise her parallel financial and data stream.
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Reflecting Bureaucracy and Centralisation in Tradition
The conflict within Your Party, defined by accusations of centralized control, financial opacity, and the sidelining of members, strongly mirrors deep-seated historical tensions within both the Labour Party and the trade union movement.
The charge by Sultana and her allies that a “paranoid anti-democratic faction” or a “sexist boys’ club” is attempting to seize “complete control” over funds and data resonates with long-standing socialist critiques of centralized bureaucracy. Within the Labour Party, the left often faced a “top-down approach” and experienced centralization, member exclusion, and the sidelining of grassroots voices. Historical accounts frequently critique the use of the NEC and party bureaucracy to assert authority or purge the left, famously known as the “witch-hunt”. The very tactic of referring the rival system to the ICO parallels previous efforts by the established party leadership to assert institutional and legal control over political opposition. The issue of who controls the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracy is repeatedly raised in the sources.
Similarly, the trade union movement in Britain has historically been plagued by bureaucratic leaders. Socialist Outlook frequently criticised union officials for embracing “new realism”, maintaining “centralised control” and suppressing the efforts of militant or member-led movements. The failure of Your Party to establish provisional, mutually agreed-upon “structures, processes and decision-making protocols” at its launch demonstrates a continuation of organizational opacity often associated with these traditional institutions.
The crisis has, however, provoked a response in the form of the ‘Democratic Bloc’ faction. This group explicitly seeks to fight the “top-down approach” and ensure “genuine member control”, reflecting the traditional struggle of rank-and-file socialists against the entrenched bureaucratic leaderships that characterize the Labour Party left and the unions.
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Online Disillusionment and the Green Party
The public nature of the conflict damages the party’s credibility and reinforces the long-standing stereotype that the left is politically undisciplined and prone to self-destruction.
->> Crisis of Trust: Commentators express deep disillusionment, worrying that the party is “unable to make it out of the starting blocks airing out their at home dramas”. The financial confusion and legal ambiguities surrounding the membership fees lead to a loss of trust in the project’s legitimacy and professionalism. One commenter, ‘LadyCrumpsall’, reported spending 20 minutes on the phone to cancel their payment and learned that their bank had received many similar calls, which they stated “broke their trust”.
->> The Sultana Debate: Online commentary is sharply divided, with critics viewing Sultana as a “liability” and “not a team player” due to a history of “off piste announcements”, while supporters praise her action as necessary to “get this party started” and fight against the perceived undemocratic inner circle.
->> The Green Alternative: The internal chaos creates a clear political vacuum on the far left. Disaffected potential supporters are actively seeking a new political home and are considering voting for the Green Party instead. Journalist Owen Jones warns that if the split continues, people “will switch off and just bet everything on the Greens”, a sentiment echoed by the co-founder of the newly formed ‘Democratic Bloc’, who noted that many are now “looking at Zack Polanski and the Greens”. The Greens, who are led by a new leader, can present themselves as a united and functional alternative to the public drama of Your Party.
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The Grassroots Battle for Democracy
The feud reveals a fundamental ideological cleavage concerning the movement’s governance structure.
->> The Democratic Bloc: The organized grassroots faction, the ‘Democratic Bloc,’ launches on the day of the fallout. This group views the leadership dispute as validation of their fears that decisions are being made “behind closed doors by a small circle around Corbyn”.
->> A Call for Transparency: The Bloc’s mission is to ensure “genuine member control” and prevent the new party from replicating the historical failures of centralized control. This grassroots pressure echoes Sultana’s explicit demand for the leadership to “make public all agreed structures, processes and decision-making protocols”.
->> Ideological Cleavage: The conflict is fundamentally a battle between those who favour a disciplined, small-group-led party and those who envision a highly democratic, member-driven, grassroots-oriented organization.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 
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