Barely two months after Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s July 24 joint announcement of “a new kind of politics”, under the temporary banner of ‘Your Party’, simmering tensions between their two camps erupted into the open on September 18.
Eager to knock down the possibility of a new alternative developing to the capitalist parties even before it is properly formed, the establishment media jumped in. The Guardian, the tame house-journal of Keir Starmer’s New Labour Mark II party, relished in the ‘terminal feel’ of an “early split” which leaves, “it would seem”, the hundreds of thousands who signed up “still politically homeless”. (19 September)
The underlying differences on how to proceed to a new party are real and significant, going beyond the surface dispute over membership data administration. They reflect an embryonic class divide, albeit obliquely and not directly or consciously expressed by all the actors involved, and with cross-currents and shifting positions in both camps – as, indeed, all social forces are never ‘pure’ in form or content.
But whatever is the immediate outcome of this Your Party crisis, the process towards the formation of a new, mass vehicle of socialist working-class political representation does not end here. The unfolding crisis of British capitalism, facing its own problems of representation as the Starmer government flounders and Britain’s perilous position in the world economic and geopolitical system becomes ever more acute, is pushing forward the conditions for its realisation.
However, the organised workers’ movement now needs to assert itself forcefully to ensure that the current opportunities for a new party to come into being are fully seized.
Triggers and trends
The immediate trigger for the public clash on September 18 was the appearance of an e-mail in the in-boxes of the 800,000 or so people who had signed up to the July Your Party call, stating that “our membership portal is now open”, with the annual or monthly fees requested to be paid into an account managed by MOU Operations Ltd. This company’s directors are the former North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll, the ex-Labour MP Beth Winter, and the former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein – who initiated the contested move to appoint Zarah Sultana as ‘co-leader’ of the new party in early July. It is listed in the legally required Your Party data privacy statement as being responsible for “donation processing”. But not for membership fees, which are a different category payment under the General Data Protection Regulations, without the agreement of the legal owners of the Your Party signees’ data, Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project.
In response Jeremy Corbyn, and the four other MPs aside from Zarah Sultana forming the Independent Alliance Group – who all six together are the ‘leadership team’ for the new party up to the founding conference – issued a second e-mail saying that the membership portal had not been authorised, that “if any direct debits have been set up, they should be immediately cancelled”, and that the matter had been self-referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the data protection watchdog.
Within eleven minutes Zarah Sultana reacted with a public statement. She admitted that the membership launch had not been agreed with the other MPs but argued that her “sole motivation” had been to safeguard “members’ money, data and voices” from being “centralised under the control of one individual” – who she identified as Karie Murphy, from 2016 to 2020 the chief of staff of Jeremy Corbyn’s office during his time as Labour leader.
Leaving aside other issues – why the haste to act alone? what advice had been sought on whether this could legally compromise Jeremy Corbyn and Your Party? – this is the wrong way to take up the real questions of democracy and accountability that exist about how the move from the Your Party sign-ups to an actual new party is being organised. Not least, where is the confidence in the members of the future party to assert their rights if they perceive that their organisation was falling “under the control of one individual”? The activists in the trade union movement, for example – who, if what is established is a genuine working-class party, will be at its core – who fight the ‘control of the boss’ in the workplace every day and know how to do so.
The programme and practice of the Socialist Party, as that of all Marxists should be, is always aimed to help develop the self-confidence of the working class that it is an alternative power to the capitalist class who rule our society. And that it has the capacity to create and build its own democratic mass workers’ party to realise that power politically. But unfortunately, that has not been the approach of some of the key figures of both camps in the September schism and it is this which is at the root of the current crisis.
How to deal with differences
The clash between the two camps, which had been simmering for some time, first burst out on July 3 at a meeting of an ‘organising committee for a new party’ – now disbanded but whose select membership is still not clear to this day. A vote was pushed through to appoint Zarah Sultana as co-leader, who then announced her resignation from the Labour Party and her co-founding of a new party without informing Jeremy Corbyn. It was this peremptory action which prompted the Independent Alliance Group of MPs – which in a post-July 3 reconciliation with Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana agreed to join – to take responsibility for stewarding the foundation process of the new party.
The July 3 meeting did reveal different conceptions of what the new party should be. Andrew Feinstein’s motion to “invite Zarah Sultana to leave Labour” – she was still a member at that point – “and join as an interim co-leader” was not a worked-out political statement. But its stress was on a party that is “a vehicle for community power”, that would be “accountable to, and removable by, the people”. It is, however, not a classless ‘people’ who lack their own party following the transformation of Labour into a thoroughly capitalist party but the working class, and those sections of the middle class hit by capitalist crises. An alternative statement arguing that “Jeremy Corbyn is the only person that at this time has the political capital to unite and lead the left” was also not a fully-developed political document, but did however speak of “working-class communities” and call for “a party of the working class, a party of socialism” and “rooted in working-class power”.
These, certainly, are not by any measure crystalised tendencies. But, even if they were, they should be able to be incorporated into a mass workers’ party with a broad commitment to socialism. Such differences will be inevitable in fact, as they were with the early 20th century formation of the Labour Party, for example, which also involved forces who had not broken with cross-class liberalism. But, again unfortunately, this approach has not been that of some of the key figures of both camps, who reject the idea of organised tendencies in the new party. And, in particular, the formal participation of existing socialist parties in a federal structure of representative democracy that could harness the energy and enthusiastic work for the new party of activists from disparate organisations.
“Of course, there will always be some small groups – sects – who do not follow the dictum of Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto to ‘have no interests separate and apart from those of the working class as a whole’ and who might well play an irritating, disruptive role”, we wrote in an editorial from last autumn. (Socialism Today No.280, September 2024) “But restricting the clash of ideas in the name of ‘unity’ will not achieve unity” we continued, in a prophetic warning. “Instead, what will be needed, certainly at least in the initial stages, is an organisational recognition of the inevitable plurality of ideas that exist and the validity of different parties and groups who express them – a democratic federal structure”.
Key figures in both camps, however, seem to have taken no heed. The proposed ‘road map’ to a new party, published just days before the September 18 rift, plans for “huge regional deliberative meetings” of thousands to “debate” – how will that be democratically organised? – four “founding documents” on political principles, the constitution, rules and organisational strategy. Before a founding conference with “delegates” – delegated by whom? reporting back to whom? – “chosen by lottery to ensure a fair balance of gender, region and background” – the so-called ‘sortition’ method – and a final online all-members ballot.
This is a model based on parties such as Podemos in Spain, or the Five Star movement in Italy, the limitations of which is examined in an article by Christine Thomas, and not on the traditions of the workers’ movement. For a reason. Would any fighting trade unionist think to choose representatives to lead their union in their workplace or nationally by random lottery, and not by open debate and democratic elections? How strong a defence of workers’ interests against the organised pressure of the capitalists, including from their supporters within the workers’ movement, can a Strictly Come Dancing method – Strictly Come Politics? – of online plebiscites provide?
Synthetic unity based on a fiction that there are no groupings reflecting different ideas and interests actually distorts debate and restricts genuine party democracy – and doesn’t achieve unity anyway, as the September events show.
It is now even more urgent to step up the campaign in the workers’ movement for trade union organisations to make their own proposals to ensure that the phenomenal response to the initial Your Party call is not dissipated, but turned into a stepping stone to the new, mass workers’ party that we need.
Time for trade unionists to lead
Some union leaders have appeared on platforms organised by Your Party supporters since the July 24 announcement, but the need is not for cheerleaders for ‘somebody else’ to organise a new party but for trade unionists and trade union organisations to take responsibility for establishing a working-class political alternative.
A first immediate demand to fight for in the unions is for the Independent Alliance MPs to be invited to discuss the political alternative in front of union national executive committees. At this point the ‘founding documents’ have not been published, including on the constitution and rules, and unions must insist on a new party structure that includes their representation in its governance arrangements at national level and locally too, for example at the level of constituency and local authority district parties.
Several union national executives have before them resolutions calling for an audit of their parliamentary groups, or to establish one as a campaign group in parliament, and this demand must also be pursued. The Independent Alliance MPs should be included in them and campaign issues discussed, including around the forthcoming November budget.
And then there is the May 2026 elections and the vital role of the unions in cutting off the advance of racist reaction, including the rise of Reform UK at the ballot box. Control of both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd will be at stake, regional and city mayors elected, and at least 4,249 councillors in 71 local authorities, including every London borough.
The possibilities are enormous. A new workers’ party could win councillors in almost every authority. In some it could expect to hold the balance of power. And even, in some of the particular councils that are up for election in this four-yearly cycle, win majorities and form administrations, potentially transforming the political situation in Britain.
At the Peace and Justice Project conference on September 20 Jeremy Corbyn re-confirmed his commitment to establishing a new party, ‘after recent difficulties’, but it is not clear at this point whether registration with the Electoral Commission will be completed in time to contest the May polls. Two weeks earlier a conference of the registered Majority party, with Jamie Driscoll as leader, discussed plans to “take control of Newcastle city council next year with a progressive alliance that he hopes will include independents and Greens” (The Guardian, 8 September), an event at which Zarah Sultana was a guest speaker. And there are other registered locally based parties too.
To ensure a clear working class and socialist common electoral banner is in place will once again require workers and their organisations to take the lead.