Four months is a long time in the history of the British left. When Your Party – now its official name – was launched at the end of July, 800,000 people registered their interest. That qualified as a political phenomenon, and spoke to an unprecedented opportunity for the left. Thanks to an economic model no longer able to offer a sustained rise in living standards or properly functioning public services, and a foreign policy defined by murderous calamities – culminating in Israel’s Gaza genocide – the radical left has its biggest ever receptive audience.
But by the time of its founding conference in Liverpool at the weekend, Your Party had offered a masterclass in how the left can never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Members repelled by a Labour devoid of answers to Britain’s multiple crises were ready to listen to a credible, inspiring alternative. Instead, they have been subjected to a bitter public schism between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, its two leading founders, as well as threats of legal action, public denunciations, unsavoury anonymous briefings to rightwing newspapers and an obsession with internal process. The politically disillusioned have accordingly transferred their attention to Zack Polanski’s Green party, which has clearly repositioned itself on the unapologetic left and been rewarded with a membership of 170,000 and some polling that is ahead of Labour.
Given all that, 55,000 people signing up to a new party – nearly as many as the membership of the Liberal Democrats – is impressive. Two and a half thousand conference delegates represented a dramatic scaling down of ambitions, but a sizeable number for an initial gathering. Attenders brimmed with idealism, positivity – and fear of the stakes. “This is the last throw of the dice, we know that,” one delegate told me. “We’ve heard for years, ‘it’s socialism or barbarism’ – and it is socialism or barbarism.” Given the surge of the far right, and questions over the survival of US democracy, Rosa Luxemburg’s famous maxim can no longer be so easily dismissed as hyperbole.
But our present danger does not seem to have provoked a general concentrating of minds. Sultana unilaterally announced first the party’s launch, without the agreement of Corbyn, then a portal for people to sign up as members. This was disavowed by her Your Party colleagues, but not before hundreds of thousands of pounds was raised, leading to mutual legal threats. Only some of this has been transferred to Your Party, with Sultana promising to transfer the rest as long as the liabilities of the company that holds the money are settled. Corbyn tells me, “We were worried that we’d be able to even pay for the conference two weeks ago.” Sultana’s camp feel they have been frozen out, that Corbyn’s longtime aides are control freaks and that there was too much dithering. But this unseemly drama has repelled most of those who are receptive to radical politics but who aren’t activists and who are allergic to those traditional leftwing blights: in-fighting, posturing, sectarianism and an obsession with meetings.
Those hoping the launch conference would end the drama were bitterly disappointed. When a few delegates – mostly belonging to the Socialist Workers party (SWP) – were banned from attending, Sultana boycotted the first day. Was this conference not an opportunity to move on from toxic drama, I put it to her? “That’s what I thought until people were being expelled and there was a witch-hunt that took place. I think pretending that hasn’t happened is just not being honest.” The expulsions certainly did not go down well with other delegates. “If people wanted a central dictatorship, they’d join the Labour party and people don’t want that,” one young doctor told me. Conference voted decisively to reject a ban on dual membership, though which parties are allowed will be determined by an elected central executive committee.
But watching the SWP pose as democratic tribunes sticks in the craw. This highly centralised sect bans permanent internal factions. It seems to me to have been ostracised by much of the wider left over a scandal involving alleged rape more than a decade ago. Like other Trotskyist sects, it can be effective at organising – or indeed dominating – single-issue campaigns, but is incapable of securing mass support even in times of crisis and turmoil. It is not genuinely invested in Your Party’s success: it simply spies an opportunity to attract new recruits, most of whom it will burn out.
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Sultana has made common cause with a faction called Democratic Socialists, which argued for maximum democratisation. Its demand for collective leadership – a ruling body of 20 – narrowly passed. Its leading figure, an always thought-provoking activist called Max Shanly, argued that traditional parties reflect the evils of existing society “in their structures, practices and modes of behaviour”. A party seeking to democratise society must reflect on ultra-democratic principles. An experiment now beckons: will Your Party become the acorn of a newly liberated society, or a battleground dominated by revolutionary sects thanks to their organisational capacity, stamina and obsessive behaviour?
Corbyn himself remains to represent the “spirit of 2017”: the year a Labour party led by him secured 40% of the vote, depriving the Tories of a majority, after offering a leftwing policy platform. His conference speech was infused with the from-the-heart, non-dogmatic, unpolished socialism that, at its best, attracted so much enthusiasm.
But the diminished number remaining in Your Party are more attracted to the much more militant and overtly ideological tack taken by Sultana. She has sought “wedge” issues to distinguish the party from the Greens. She criticises them for not demanding immediate withdrawal from Nato (Polanski favours seeking alternative security alliances first) and not committing to ending all diplomatic relations with Israel (the Greens support the demands of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and proscribing the Israel Defence Forces as a terrorist organisation). She emphasises the “need to nationalise the entire economy”.
With the Greens thriving with a radical message and a new viral social-media strategy reminiscent of New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s quirky, sunny optimism, there is a question about how many voters this approach will appeal to. Some delegates put it to me that this will be a decades-long struggle, and that there are no short cuts to socialism. But in an age of resurgent fascism, economic and social turmoil, and looming climate catastrophe, some might ask if the left really has the luxury of time.
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Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
