The public launch of Your Party by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana appeared to hit a roadblock following its public launch on 18 September
Mike Forster, Socialist Alternative (ISA in England, Wales & Scotland)
(This article was first published on 6 October 2025)
The public launch of Your Party by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana appeared to hit a roadblock following its public launch on 18 September. The announcement was quickly rebuked by Independent Alliance MPs, led by Jeremy Corbyn. Legal threats followed and the whole project seemed to be going up in smoke.
So it was a positive step when Sultana released a tweet on 22 September relinquishing her threat of legal action and the membership portal was relaunched by Corbyn two days later. A national conference is taking place on 29-30 November in Liverpool, at which documents will be voted on and a leadership will be elected. At that stage, we are told the MPs will stand back and allow the membership to take the party forward.
This will come as a welcome relief to the thousands up and down the country who had gone into despair when the MPs publicly and damagingly fell out with each other. The fact that the show is seemingly back on the road is a result of the massive outpouring of pressure from below to avoid a major split in the party at this crucial early stage.
Your Party’s (YP) launch cannot come soon enough! Nigel Farage and the far right are on the rise and the “Tommy Robinson” march through the streets of London last month has sent a chill through the spine of millions of people. Farage has accelerated his attacks by threatening mass deportations – including those who live here legally!
Since the London march, the far right has been emboldened, with racist attacks on the rise. Yet Starmer continues to peddle the same nonsense by threatening those who travel here in ‘small boats’ with his ‘one in, one out’ policies and pledging to shut down all the asylum hotels, using army barracks instead.
It is clear that only a mass united and socialist opposition to the far right, led by the trade unions, community groups and spearheaded by Your Party can push them back, making this announcement doubly important.
However, following the debacles in recent weeks, important lessons must be drawn in order to truly recapture the massive enthusiasm the party’s initial announcement was met with.
How did we get to this point?
Activists have rightly been asking: how did this launch go so badly wrong and how can we help reshape Your Party to ensure it is built into a mass democratic working-class party? Socialist Alternative has been participating in the party since its launch in July and beforehand in pre-launch discussions and formation of local alliances. It is therefore possible for us to trace back these mistakes to the beginning of the process.
When YP was launched in July, initially by Zarah Sultana, and then later by her and Jeremy Corbyn, it was as a result of intense debates and discussions between activists nationally. Over the months leading up to the launch, local assemblies and groups had been formed in a number of towns and cities in anticipation of the announcement of a new national formation.
This included the People’s Alliance for Change and Equality (PACE) in Kirklees, whose May’s “Conference of Resistance” was addressed by Corbyn and made a powerful call for a new left party.
But discussions at the top revealed tensions over who was to run the party and how it would be built. Following the mess surrounding the public announcement of YP, a compromise arrangement was made: all decision making was concentrated in a ‘working group’ based on the six Independent Alliance MPs. But within this alliance, there are important political differences.
On the one hand, Zarah Sultana has pushed for the party to be formed urgently and defended some key socialist policies. Other figures in the Alliance represent an eclectic mix of ideas. For example, Independent Blackburn MP Adnan Hussein is pro-Palestine, but is also a landlord who has faced criticism for his transphobic comments, whereas Sultana has called for MPs to be banned from being landlords, and staunchly defended the rights of LGBTQ+ people.
Unfortunately, Corbyn’s efforts to maintain an abstract ‘unity’ has meant finding himself at odds with Sultana, the most outspokenly socialist of the group. But the paralysis and the opaque nature of discussions at the top left many supporters frustrated and confused as things ‘went quiet’ all through the summer.
Despite this, YP groups were rapidly established all over the country, with very little national guidance and no access to information about who had signed up to the party in their areas.
In the context of this impasse, several leading activists created a Platform for Party Democracy including Ken Loach, Ian Hodson of the Bakers Union, Audrey White, Ben Sellers, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Eric Barnes and myself. We have launched a national petition calling for a democratically convened conference, establishment of member-led local branches, a bold socialist programme and a democratic constitution, including mandatory reselection of all MPs.
Alongside this, networks of activists representing local YP groups have developed, including ‘Your Party Connections’, which now meets every week for participants to swap experiences and develop collaborative ways of working. Sadly all this has so far been lacking in the YP structures.
For YP to properly grow and become a mass force of activists in every community, area and workplace, it will need to embrace the kind of approach advocated by the Platform.
The experience of the last month highlights that the only safeguard for the party is the mass membership, which is determined to build a united left alternative to Labour and the far right. But what will this mean in practice?
Building a democratic party
Genuine working-class democracy requires the active participation of all members organised through locally convened branches. This means the membership data has to be shared and used by locally elected branch officers, not just centrally controlled. Branches would need to meet regularly to establish their own campaign plans, elect officers, identify election candidates, sort out local finances and social media profiles.
Socialist Alternative has long argued that YP branches have to base themselves on local struggles such as community-led campaigns, Palestine solidarity and anti-racist marches, youth campaigns, including those fighting for trans rights and against climate catastrophe, as well as the trade union movement.
In that way, the branches could become a welcoming beacon to all those fighting for equality, justice and socialist change. These branches would be the cornerstone of YP’’s active membership and would need support and resources from the national centre.
Branches should be the units which elect delegates to YP events, including the national conference. Currently the Alliance of MPs is proposing that delegates to the conference will be selected by ‘sortition’. This is just a form of lottery which will mean branches will have no say over who goes or can speak for them, and which severely undermines the wider participation of members in decision-making.
Along the same lines, conference documents will be drafted nationally (by whom, we have not been told) and circulated through a membership portal to which members can suggest amendments. Of course, meaningful discussion of every amendment by potentially tens of thousands of members at the conference would be completely impossible. It remains unclear how these documents will be finalised or how they can be ratified by conference.
Unfortunately, these proposals would actually reinforce the undemocratic trends in YP. In practice, it will be YP HQ which will determine what goes to the conference. The current plan is for a 13,000-strong conference with a different 6,500 people each day, to finalise the launch, elect the leadership, agree the documents, the constitution, and the name of YP.
Socialist Alternative is advocating instead regional conferences made up of elected delegates from branches which are invited to submit their proposals. At those conferences, a regional leadership could be elected to assist in the process of conference preparation.
When YP HQ delegated a renters’ union activist, Josh Virasami, to prepare plans for regional assemblies, he sent out national emails asking for volunteer facilitators and received 12,000 sign ups. Such is the enthusiasm to participate in the structures of YP amongst the rank and file!
YP has to mobilise and harness this energy through open and democratic structures rather than backroom agreements and top-down proposals. Without the democratic participation of the whole membership, YP will not be able to speak for or represent its working-class aspirations.
YP needs to also urgently address the issue of working-class representation. Quite rightly, the Platform for Party Democracy advocates for a fully accountable system of elected representatives, starting with all MPs.
This would mean mandatory selection of all candidates (including sitting MPs), to ensure our elected representatives truly represent the will of the working-class party membership. This would also mean that branches could recall their MPs if they are not happy with them and if necessary remove them.
MPs should also be workers’ representatives, only taking the average pay of the workers they represent. The rest of the inflated parliamentary salaries used to buy off establishment politicians should be donated back to the movement.
Such measures would be met with huge enthusiasm by the wider working class who equate all politicians with corruption and nepotism. YP can only overcome these sentiments through democracy, transparency and accountability.
Socialist policies
Finally, Socialist Alternative is arguing for YP to adopt a bold socialist programme. The working class and young people are crying out for a more radical approach to inequality, the cost of living crisis, poor public services, cuts, privatisation and war.
A party which advocates for the renationalisation of all privatised utilities, a living wage of £20 per hour, free education, and a properly-funded, publicly-owned NHS would receive huge support. We need to tax the rich for massive investment into a welfare system which doesn’t penalise the disabled and unemployed, but which guarantees work or a living income.
In order to end the housing crisis, we need a mass programme of council house building and strong rent controls. Labour have shown that waiting for the private housing developers to build new houses won’t get us anywhere. To build the housing we need to nationalise the building companies. And to fight for rent controls, we must build a party that clearly represents renters – not the landlords!
Such an approach would attract huge public support and provide a basis to challenge Reform UK, as well as terrifying the establishment and the rich. It would appeal to the millions of young people who are turned off by capitalist politicians and re-engage them in helping to shape their own futures.
But winning these demands will also require a direct confrontation with the billionaire class, who will fight tooth and nail to defend their right to make a profit at the expense of the vast majority.
We need to build Your Party as a vehicle for democratically-organised mass mobilisation and struggle in order to win the change we desperately need. Socialist Alternative will continue to use all its weight and resources to make this a reality.
