YOUR PARTY? YOU’RE HAVING A LAUGH: HOW ZARAH SULTANA AND JEREMY CORBYN’S FEUD INDICATES A FRACTURED LEFT WING

With roughly 750,000 members, the new alternative left-wing party founded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, Your Party, recently fell into disarray as its leaders publicly clashed over membership fees and strategies.

Amidst the eruption of headlines and social media storms, the actual series of events became muddled, leaving the public to ponder what actually happened.

To make things easier, here is a compiled timeline of the events that led up to the party’s premature implosion:

–        On the 18th September, Zarah Sultana posted a link encouraging members to pay for a Your Party membership, with a standard rate of £55 per year to join, or a concessionary rate of £25 if you could not afford to do so.

–        By 13:15pm, Sultana posted that 20,000 members had signed up, which could have earned the party at least £500,000 of funding (assuming the members paid the concessionary rate).

–        However, almost an hour later, Jeremy Corbyn, alongside the other members of Your Party (Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan, and Iqbal Mohamed, also known as the Independent Alliance), also released an “urgent” statement to supporters that the membership link had been “unauthorised” and was not approved by them. The Independent Alliance also detailed that legal advice was being taken.

–        Sultana then responded, labelling the party a “sexist boys club” and highlighting that she has been “treated appallingly” and “excluded completely” by the other members. She stated that it was this “sidelining” that encouraged her to release the membership link, irrespective of the other party members. In addition to this, she emphasised that all membership payments have been received and ringfenced appropriately by MOU Operations, a company created to manage party finances. She criticised former Corbyn ally Karie Murphy for “having sole financial control of members’ money”, stating that “This – to be clear – is members’ money, and our members must decide how it is spent”. Sultana would call on Corbyn to meet with her and agree to make public all agreed structures, processes, and decision-making protocols.

–        On 19th September, Zarah Sultana released another statement explaining that she had hired specialist defamation lawyers due to the amount of “[false and defamatory statements released about her concerning the launch of the Your Party membership].”

–        Come 21st September, Sultana issued her final statement, highlighting renewed discussions with Corbyn, “for whom, like many socialists of my generation, [she has] nothing but respect for” and amplifying the importance of “collective strength of our movement”. She would also detail the importance of “build[ing] the genuinely democratic conference and socialist party we so desperately need”.

To publicly argue over the logistics and membership of the party massively undermines its strength, especially as Your Party is in its early stages of formation (the naming conference having been scheduled for November). To stage inter-party conflicts so openly portrays Corbyn and Sultana’s leadership to be unstable, and undoubtedly deters prospective members.

The UK political climate has become increasingly more hostile: the consequences of poverty and austerity have only increased both political polarisation and apathy. We can see this demonstrated in recent ‘Unite the Kingdom’ marches, in which ‘patriotism’ is arguably weaponised against the country’s most vulnerable.

As Sultana and Corbyn’s brief feud suggests, this polarisation is not contained to just ‘left versus right’, but has infiltrated each side of the political spectrum. Considering this, it is foolish for Your Party leadership to air out their grievances so publicly, providing their right-wing opposition ample opportunity to smear an upcoming socialist party, spreading more hatred unchecked. 

However, the party’s issues are seemingly not confined to pricing and spreadsheets. Members of the Independent Alliance seemingly hold conservative views that conflict with the party’s social progressiveness. While all members have pro-Palestinian views, member Adnan Hussain has parroted transphobic talking points, suggesting that transgender women are a threat to cisgender women’s spaces. He has also voted against the decriminalisation of abortion.

Whilst you cannot guarantee party members’ views to be monolithic, these two particular issues are perhaps far too important to acquiesce. Transphobic hate crimes in the UK have risen 16% in the last year, and women in the US are facing prison for exercising their right to choose. Having a member of a socialist party hold conservative views on these topics seems not only short-sighted but also rather ironic; perhaps this is indicative of the UK’s cultural shift to the right. Sultana herself said that “there is no room for socially conservative views” in the party, which opens the door for further disputes later on.

Therefore, my support right now belongs to the Green Party, the only truly progressive party in the UK with representation in Parliament, an advantage that Your Party are currently lacking. Whilst the Labour Party continues to bend to Reform’s will, the Green Party seems intent on focusing on the pressing issues: reduction in NHS waiting lists, abolition of the two-child benefit cap, increased school funding, and the ending of the genocide in Palestine.  Both the Greens and Your Party agree on this and are willing to ally themselves with each other in order to solve these issues.

As fascism knocks on our door, it is important now more than ever that the Left works together to do whatever we can to fight it and make this country the best it possibly can be.

Editor: Tillie Bowness