Is the Party Over for ‘Your Party’?

Let’s check in on the British far Left. Last weekend, Your Party’s inaugural conference—billed as the launchpad for a new Left alternative—played out like a live-streamed group therapy session for every faction that’s ever fallen out on the Left. By the end of the weekend, the question wasn’t so much ‘can this party change the country?’ but ‘can it survive the year?’ 

Your Party was only founded this July, and hasn’t exactly had the best start in life. Announced by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana as a new socialist vehicle after their break with Labour, it was meant to turn a loose “Independence Alliance” of left-wing independents into a proper party. Back then, it boasted 800,000 early sign-ups to its website (although, given that this was free, many of these proved to be trolls) and pitched itself as the last hope for disillusioned leftists. The party had, therefore, high hopes for its first ever conference. It initially planned to bring 13,000 delegates to Liverpool, but this number was drastically revised to just 2,500, who rattled around the cavernous ACC conference centre like ball bearings in a tin can. 

Before events even had a chance to kick off, there was trouble in paradise. Two independent MPs, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed, withdrew their support for the party, citing infighting and factional clashes. Sultana herself boycotted the first day in protest against some of her supporters being barred for belonging to other left-wing parties—a perfectly reasonable condition for any party, it must be said—such as the Socialist Workers Party. There were hysterical cries about a “witch-hunt” as activists were excluded or, in some cases, physically removed from the event. When proceedings did get underway, it was farcical. Delegates weren’t fighting the Tories, Labour, or the establishment, but each other. Panels descended into ideological purity spiralling, and the mics were cut for anyone who challenged “those in positions of power” in a party that has existed for less than six months. One woman was physically removed for complaining about the “purge” of her comrades from other micro-parties.

The infighting reached hilarious new levels when it emerged that some Your Party members were revolting against Corbyn, who was kicked out of the Labour Party after a long-running row over antisemitism, for being a supposed Zionist. Outside the conference, activists were handing out leaflets demanding to know “Is Jeremy Corbyn really an anti-Zionist?”, which is a bit like asking if the Pope is Catholic. Inside, tensions were so high that the organisers were reportedly relieved that Corbyn’s speech was not drowned out by heckling audience members. 

Not that the rest of the speakers were any more successful. One particularly notable figure was Eryn Browning, a trans-identified man who had previously been suspended as a Scottish Greens candidate after allegations he sent sexual messages to underage girls and was reported to the police. On stage, he denounced Hussain and Mohamed as “openly transphobic,” and seemed shocked and horrified that the Muslims Your Party had gotten in bed with turned out to be a tad more socially conservative than socialists who put pronouns in their email signatures. At the end of the weekend, the party faced yet more criticism from Muslims, when it closed proceedings with a half-hearted rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which includes a line asking listeners to imagine a world in which there’s “no religion, too.” Roshan Salih, editor of Muslim news site 5Pillars, wrote on X that “If you’re a Muslim you shouldn’t be joining this lot.” The phrase “no sh*t, Sherlock” comes to mind. This was, after all, the same conference where a panel chair reportedly asked for a “female” speaker to come up in the name of diversity, and was promptly heckled by the crowd for not using gender-inclusive language. So not exactly the natural political home for British Muslims. 

One of the main reasons why Your Party seems to be eating itself alive is because it doesn’t really know what it wants or believes. It is pro-Palestine, sure, and broadly socialist. But it was born out of a general dissatisfaction with the current state of the Labour Party—both because Keir Starmer is seen as being too soft on Israel, and not woke enough. That means Your Party has attracted a motley crew of people who never grew out of their student politics, and literal Islamists. 

A PoliticsUK vox pop clip offers a fascinating insight into the mind of the average Your Party supporter. When asked by the interviewer, one lad proudly declares that he is “pro-Brexit, because I’m from the Commonwealth and basically I’m one of the Boriswavers,” or a migrant who came to the UK after Brexit made migration from the EU more difficult, but easier for those coming from former colonial territories. A woman wearing a Jeremy Corbyn t-shirt said in impeccably elocuted tones that she’d take Sultana over Corbyn, because “as a woman of colour, we’ve got to support each other.” Another man, asked if he would prefer the UK to place sanctions on Russia or Israel, explained he wanted “sanctions on the Israeli capitalist class, not the workers in Israel,” which at least gets points for being an impressively original take. 

In another revealing interview, Sultana explains to a slightly perplexed Owen Jones that she wants to “nationalise the entire economy” by introducing “workers cooperatives.” When asked what that would look like in practice, especially for small businesses, Sultana reiterates, “Workers cooperatives.” The party itself seems to be following in this vision, as members voted at the conference to adopt a “collective leadership” model, rather than a single leader. This is almost certainly not going to help smooth over the party’s internal differences. 

The farce that was this conference will be bad news for Your Party, but great news for almost everyone else. It serves as an undeniable sign that the Islamo-leftist alliance cannot hold. While these two groups may be united on Palestine, they are divided on literally everything else. Just four months after Your Party’s creation, its factions have already run out of common enemies to unite around. Now, they are turning on each other. Good. Let them. A Left this deranged doesn’t even need to be defeated—just left to its own devices.