Can Corbyn and Sultana's Your Party move on from its troubled beginnings?

Splits, rows and even legal threats have dogged the first few months of what was supposed to be a new start for the left in Britain. Left-wing veteran David Renton dives into just what went wrong.

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana Pic: UK Parliament/Flickr

Your Party is, in principle, the most exciting development on the British left in the five years since Jeremy Corbyn was forced to give up his leadership of Labour. In Parliament, it brings together three groups of people, Corbyn himself, his Independent Alliance with four pro-Gaza Muslim MPs who were elected to Parliament in autumn 2024 (Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohamed), and Zarah Sultana, the MP for Coventry South since 2019, who was elected as Labour but suspended for opposing the two-child benefit cap.

Since 2020, there have been multiple attempts at launching some kind of project – a party or a proto-party – that would reflect both Corbyn’s popularity and the manoeuvres by Keir Starmer to marginalise him and the left. By mid-June 2025, as Archie Woodrow has described in Novara’s detailed narrative of Your Party’s genesis, an “organising committee” was meeting composed of the MPs, Corbyn’s allies, former union activists, and various movement names.

Messy debates

The group was divided over a series of political questions – what kind of party did they believe in, how left-wing would it be, what position would it take in relation to employers and landlords? Those messy debates shaped a further question of who would lead the party: Corbyn is 76 years old, Sultana 31. For all his kindness, and his popularity among people who hate conventional politics, Corbyn is unsuited to be a leader. He is indecisive, and allergic to conflict. When he loses faith in an ally, he’ll ghost them than hear their criticisms (even when the latter are merited). Sultana also has a better ear for the policies likely to inspire young voters.

Over the summer, Sultana who remained suspended by Labour, had decided to join the Independents. The members of Corbyn’s organising committee agreed to the obvious next step: a joint leadership. Unfortunately, that decision was not unanimous – and, after it was taken, the minority insisted there was no consensus behind it. Nor was its logic recorded in any document. We may infer that the majority intended for Corbyn to play the role which would suit him best: touring round the country, addressing large public allies and receiving the acclaim of an audience. While Sultana would do the practical work, attend meetings, and would take the day-to-day decisions. If so, the committee never stated that rationale clearly.

The organisation was announced on 3 July by Sultana on Twitter (“We’re not an island of strangers; we’re an island that’s suffering. We need homes and lives we can actually afford”). Corbyn was angry with her for announcing that decision when, as he saw it, there was insufficient support for the move. From then on, he seems to have regarded her as unreliable. Three weeks later, their differences briefly covered up, Corbyn and Sultana jointly announced the new party. By mid-August, around 800,000 people had added their names to a sign-up list.

If this was the high-point of the organisation, tensions had already emerged. From the moment Sultana launched it, and declared she would be joint leader, Corbyn and his allies pushed back against her – the latter sensing their positions depended on him taking sole charge of the new group. At the end of August, Adnan Hussain MP went on Twitter to back the campaign to exclude trans women from women’s toilets in workplaces and, in effect, from those workplaces themselves, saying, “I agree, women’s rights and safe spaces should not be encroached upon.” Trans activists and their supporters called on Sultana to intervene, which she did, saying “Trans rights are human rights. Your Party will defend them.” Fewer than 500 people liked Hussain’s tweet, more than 22,000 liked Sultana’s. His critics began asking tough questions, what a landlord was doing near the leadership of a left-wing party?

In the weeks following their dispute, effectively, the organising committee split. The opponents of joint leadership in Your Party were now bolstered by the Independent Alliance MPs, who in the wake of this online spat also appear to have formed the view that Sultana was their antagonist.

Murphy’s law

Corbyn tasked Karie Murphy, previously a full-timer for the UNITE union, with drawing up plans for the party’s launch conference. He also authorised plans to launch a membership system over which he and his allies would have sole control.

Those moves then inspired the events of 18 September when in one day, Sultana launched a membership platform for Your Party, was then denounced by Corbyn and switched off the platform. He reported her to the Information Commissioner, presumably with the intention that that body should punish her with a heavy financial fine for having taken control over a membership list Corbyn insists was never hers to use. Sultana hit back, complaining of “false and defamatory statements” against her, criticising a “sexist boy’s club” (the Independent MPs) and Karie Murphy for having organised covertly against her.

Of all Corbyn’s many controversial friendships, the one which has the potential to cause most damage to his legacy is Murphy. During Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, Murphy controlled his diary. She decided who he met, and what decisions he took. Five years ago, witnesses to a House of Lords – former and current Labour staff – made a series of bullying allegations against Murphy. She denied them.

While Murphy’s partner Len McCluskey was General Secretary of the UNITE union, he signed off on a deal under which a Liverpool company the Flanagan Group built a hotel in Birmingham for UNITE. In July 2024, long-term McCluskey ally and former head of legal at UNITE, Howard Beckett, lost an unfair dismissal claim in the Employment Tribunal. The union explained Beckett was under investigation by South Wales Police, who were investigating him for suspected bribery, money laundering and fraud. Part of Beckett’s case was that the union had wrongly suspended him. How could he work normally, the Tribunal replied, “where there were ongoing police investigations into very serious matters”?

In July of this year, UNITE published a series of documents, “Project Clean Up”. for the union estimated the hotel’s value (£35 million) and cost (more than £110 million). They alleged that Murphy had received a gift from the contractor: in 2019 both tickets and a booking on a private jet so that she and McCluskey could attend the UEFA Champions League Final in Madrid. The same allegations have been to be reported in the national press.

Murphy has not been charged and is entitled to an assumption of innocence. Yet, true or false as the claims may turn out to be, a threshold has been crossed beyond which the allegation makes it bad politics to rely on her. What could be more destructive to the prospects of Your Party than if the police were to attend that organisation’s conference, and arrest her there?

What is to be done?

After Corbyn’s moves against Sultana, various open letters were launched and petitions calling on Corbyn and Sultana to stand back. Yanis Varoufakis and Ken Loach called for unity.

More than 6,000 people signed a letter, subsequently backed by Sultana, calling for the party’s conference to be handed over to independents with no links to either side in the party spat. Corbyn’s response, on 24 September, was to launch a membership portal controlled by his supporters, and to announce a launch conference. Murphy will run that event, in Liverpool at the end of November. Sultana continues to back the project, no longer as its joint leader but as “a member” and a “fierce advocate for the grassroots”.

Corbyn’s moves have found some limited support online. David Jamieson editor of the Scottish socialist website Conter, and advocate of a socially conservative but redistributive socialism, praised Corbyn for having orchestrated a “parting of the ways” and telling an audience of young pro-trans and voters to join the Greens instead, “we aren’t on the same path”. That is the logic of Corbyn’s recent moves, to split Your Party’s audience, to be no longer the movements’ kindly uncle, but just another politician who disciplines and excludes.

While the previous launches in July and August were met with significant take up – with hundreds of thousands of people supporting Sultana’s sign up list and tens of thousands signing up to her first, withdrawn, membership portal – no figures have been published of recruits coming in through the latest system and the fear is that recruits will be fewer in consequence of the divisions. Beyond a certain level of toxicity, asking who is to blame is beside the point. Division prevents a new party from making the breakthroughs it and its audience need.

Your Party does not operate in a vacuum; other forces might benefit from its leaders’ failings. The Labour soft left contingent is growing and taking greater form in Parliament, with critical MPs accusing Starmer of governing too far to the right. Membership of the Green Party has surged past 80,000, with new people signing up just as the Your Party spat worsened.

Corbynism will survive; it has deep roots among renters, recent ex-students and antiwar voters. He remains much more effective articulator of left populism than Green leader Zack Polanski; the ceiling for the new party is still higher than any rival on the left – and potential members understand this. The next Labour scandal will eventually overwhelm the bad memories of Your Party’s launch. But progress will be slower and harder than it should have been.■

About the author: David Renton is a barrister, historian, and member of Your Party living in London.