It’s Your Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To

The breakdown of British politics that has come from the collapse of the Conservative and Labour parties has opened up opportunities for new populist forces on both the left and the right. Into this space stepped, or stumbled, the provisionally named ‘Your Party’, which, after months of open division and sectarian warfare, promised a mass convening conference that would heal these wounds, choose a name and launch.

Camel Politics

At stake, on one level, was two competing visions of what the party would be. From the Corbyn faction was the vision of organising around a singular leader with a very old-fashioned, Old Labour view of building from the existing independent MPs and creating structures and politics that have their roots in the 1980s (and before). This was Continuity Corbyn aimed at building on the relative success of the Corbyn project, but without, seemingly any self-reflection of audit on that projects many flaws, not least of which was and is: Jeremy Corbyn.

The other faction and vision was that of Zarah Sultana’s idea of a more contemporary and collective party. It looks like Sultana’s vision has (narrowly) won out. Your Party members today voted for a collective leadership model. This means there will not be a head-to-head leadership contest in January next year, and none of the party’s MPs will be allowed to stand for the CEC positions. This may be a victory of sorts but it also means that the danger of there being a muddled leadership with no real figurehead is a live one. The idea of a Camel being a Horse designed by a committee comes to mind.

In a statement, Zarah Sultana said: “From the very start, I have been fighting for maximum member democracy. Seeing members choose collective leadership is truly exciting. Together, we’re building a new socialist party – radically democratic and powered by a mass movement. This party will be led by its members not MPs. This is only the beginning.”

This may also mean a victory for the more progressive forces within Your Party against the more socially conservative MPs who were often centred around pro-Palestine politics but were more regressive about issues of sex, gender and sexuality.

What a Way to Run a Revolution

At times the whole project has seemed like a vast, badly scripted caricature of the worst of left politics, embroiled in ideology, sectarianism, entryism and an inability to speak to ‘the outside world’. As one person put it: ‘We had six MPs and four factions’.

At stake at this convening conference was the thorny issue of dual-membership, basically whether you could retain membership of your current left grouping (the Communist Party of Great Britain and the SWP among them) and be a member of Your Party. You could argue that those arguing against dual-membership were advocating for a more disciplined new party, having witnessed decades of entryism among the left, most famously by Militant in the Labour Party in the 1980s.

But the process was handled so badly by the clique trying to manage the whole thing together that it backfired. So the conference voted for dual-membership.

As Richard Seymour, editor of Salvage and author of Disaster Nationalism put it:

“At this stage, the idea that Your Party will be a major electoral force any time soon is hubris. The Greens have occupied that space. The best case scenario now is that Your Party settles down and works patiently on some key campaigning issues for a while, builds respect rather than contempt.”

Sultana’s vision was for Your Party to learn from how La France Insoumise built a New Popular Front, but the French Left are far more mature, powerful and thoughtful. The remnants of the British Left are consumed by sectarianism, addicted to ideological purity and incapable of organising. 

If the party has failed spectacularly in its attempts to publicly heal, it has had some resolution of its internal divisions. Sultana won, basically, but the issue remains what the consequences of that victory will be:

Zarah Sultana concludes her speech with chants to “ohh Zarah Sultana” pic.twitter.com/ym8T73wXtQ

— Turn Left Media (@TurnLeftMediaUK) November 30, 2025

Today was a big loss for the Corbyn faction. Corbyn is acting as interim leader and made clear he intended to run for sole leader. The membership has rejected that entirely.

Sultana is articulate and inspiring in a way that Corbyn just isn’t and can’t be. A better outcome might have been just to have a Sultana coronation and build a brand and a project around her. But that would have been too smart.

In the weeks and months that Your Party has been embroiled in endless brutal in-fighting, the Green Party has built a mass membership, risen in the polls beyond anything they had previously experienced and amassed a war-chest of donations for the coming elections. Asked by pollsters which party you would vote for 29% say they would vote for the Greens, while only 12% say they’d vote for Your Party.

It will be seen in hindsight as a historic mistake that those organising around Your Party did not do a better job in seizing the moment to build something that clearly had huge potential and support in England after the collapse of the Labour party and the failures of the Starmer government.