Your Corbyn/Sultana Party - Discussion thread

[fromorbit]

The new left party is going to have significant implications for gender and sex discussions on the left in the UK and in wider political debate as well. Lets talk about it.

Four of its prospective MPs are Gaza independents whose votes and comments in the Commons indicate a social conservative background . One of them Adnan Hussain has already got into a row on X with prospective members over his social conservatism.

The hilarious breakdown of the Islamo-left alliance
The progressive left has suddenly noticed that most British Muslims are not exactly woke.
This uneasy marriage got a reality check last week when a Green Party councillor and practising Muslim, Mothin Ali, appeared reluctant to sign a set of ‘pledges’ on behalf of the LGBTQIA+ Greens, Feminist Greens and other similar groups. The MP for Blackburn, ‘Gaza Independent’ Adnan Hussain, then waded into the debate. ‘It’s no secret that Muslims tend to be socially conservative’, Hussain said. ‘Is there a space on the left to create a broad enough church to allow Muslims an authentic space, just as it does other minority groups?’
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/04/the-hilarious-breakdown-of-the-islamo-left-alliance/

The initial statement for Your Party focuses on poverty, fighting the system and Gaza, but makes no mention of progressive social issues, . This already signals something significant.
https://www.yourparty.uk/statement

Zarah Sultana on the other hand has already signaled out trans rights as a key principal in a recent interview which has received push back from others. Discussion here:

The Elephant in the Room for Zara Sultana’s “Your Party”
https://labourheartlands.com/the-elephant-in-the-room/
But here’s the rub. Sultana also pledged to “resolutely” advocate for a pro-trans socialist programme. She insists these discussions must happen openly and democratically.

That sounds fine in theory. In practice, the left has already shown itself utterly incapable of having this conversation without collapsing into authoritarian cancel culture.

Can the Left Have an Honest Trans Debate Without Cancelling Women?

For years, women who raise legitimate questions about the impact of gender self-ID on female-only spaces, or about the safeguarding implications highlighted by the Cass Review, have been branded as bigots and driven out of the movement. “Demonising trans people” is often code for “asking difficult but necessary questions.” If Your Party repeats this mistake, it will bleed support from countless socialist women before it even begins.

The truth is, many women will not get involved in this project precisely because of the Corbyn–Sultana line on trans issues. Others may hope the problem quietly goes away. It won’t. Nor is this a side issue: women’s rights are not negotiable add-ons to socialism; they are foundational. To ignore them is to build on sand.

TAs online and who are planning to join are already girding up for war, it is looking messy.

I can see a number of factions inside the new party who are going to make things complicated:

Muslim social conservatives - as mentioned they will be a major part of the party's voting bloc.

Old school Marxists who regard gender ideology as neo liberal capitalist identity politics and a distraction from class.

Realists who will see gender stuff as a marginal issue which needs to be sidelined because it is so toxic and unpopular with the general public.

Last but certainly not least actual left wing feminists who see through gender nonsense and are not going to be quiet about it !!

I expect fireworks over gender at the the party's initial conference supposedly to be held in November. TAs will attempt to make genderism a key principal of the party and will face resistance. Whether it happens or not it will be another nail in the TAs attempt to pretend the left inherently back neoliberal capitalist ideas like genderism. The big terfy mother elephant is going to be at the conference because women keep doing awkward things like existing and saying things.

Corbyn's position is going to be a focus in this because for all his occasional signalling on trans issues like stating pronouns and saying mantras it is not a core issue for him, and moreover he doesn't believe in it narrowly . His circles have long contained gender critical people who he has refused to cancel, because Corbyn for all his faults believes in open debate. So I think this could be a wedge issue between those around Sultana and Corbyn. There are already signs of disagreements between them over other issues like antisemitism:
Sultana: Corbyn 'capitulated' on antisemitism definition
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79lr40rqelo

I think Sultana is out. She may as well join by the Greens. She's talking absolute fantasy nonsense compared to Hussein. Corbyn won't hesitate to ditch her and her supporters if they don't fall into line.

Meanwhile the clock is ticking. Still no announcement for the date of the launch conference.

Earlier on that urban 75 thread is a mention that the conference, which was slated for November, might be pushed back to next year. The earlier article (comparing the pace of formation to the Heat Death of The Universe 😜) said somehow it seems unlikely they'll be able to leap forward and have a coherent set of policies that would provide a red wave at local elections next May.

Meanwhile, who exactly are Revolutionary Socialism and how are they helping (or hindering) the Very Important Grassroots Organising that seems to be going on independently of The Great Jeremy

https://revsoc21.uk/2025/09/08/after-party-your-party-glasgow-initial-public-meeting/

It would be bad if every single left wing political party was unable to function because they can’t agree on cross dressing men.

RS21 are the main group that broke away from the SWP following the 2013 rape coverup scandal. I know some of them and, though some are nice enough lads, I'm unimpressed by them as a group. They have a very high concentration of graduates. Their politics is basically indistinguishable from their former group, only with a larger helping of Queer Theory.

The breakdown of the SWP and its offshoots is as follows:

Rump SWP: TWAW, Free Gaza, one struggle!!!
RS21: TWAW but with more postmodern jargon
Counterfire: Lindsey German has been very cautiously dipping her toe into GC waters

CF are the smallest of the three groups but the one closest to Corbyn. I don't particularly like Lindsey but she is an experienced coalition builder and maybe remembers some of the second wave feminism she grew up with.

I suppose it's testament to TRAs in pushing their agenda to get this taken so seriously as a sacrosanct now across The Left, bearing in mind German's "not a shibboleth" stance 20 years ago.

The aim of progressives if it's to mean anything is to stand for the most oppressed, and their advocacy has successfully placed them alongside Migrants and Palestine as the 3 devout principles to adhere to. They are almost certainly aware that it's likely the migrants they support are unlikely to also believe TWAW but that's for another day, comrades, once the revolution has happened .

Last month Piers Corbyn was lurking round the Epping anti migration protests and was claiming he'd be joining his brothers party to discuss reducing immigration, which would make for Absolute Scenes if he did

exciting developments

An announcement has been made

https://nitter.net/PolitlcsUK/status/1967686337961554196#m

NEW: Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's "Your Party" has confirmed their launch timetable

September:

• Membership opens
• First draft document published
• Regional assemblies start

October:

• Regional assemblies continue
• Draft documents revised
• Members vote on the party name

November:

• Delegates selected
• Amendments submitted
• Founding conference takes place

--
This then got corrected a few hours later with details of the assemblies

"sortition lottery appointed "delegates" will discuss & then online vote to presumably then "endorse" documents. Question then is will large minority amendments be put to online vote?"

https://nitter.net/wearecollectiv_/status/1967695625178456491#m

"Your Party founding process is now underway 🚨 ✔️

Membership opens in September → yourparty.uk/

✔️ Draft documents (Political Statement, Constitution, Rules, Org Strategy) published for members to amend

✔️ Regional assemblies across the country

✔️ October → online vote on party name

✔️ November → delegates chosen by lottery → Founding Conference
→ final docs & amendments, decided by one member, one vote More detail in the screenshot of today’s email below.

This is history in the making. ✊"

Voting on a name reminds me of a documentary I saw years ago about the old CPGB voting to change its name to Democratic Left, promptly splitting in two afterwards.

September - Draft documents (Political Statement, Constitution, Rules, Org Strategy) published for members to amend

✔️ Regional assemblies across the country

✔️ October → online vote on party name

✔️ November → delegates chosen by lottery → Founding Conference
→ final docs & amendments, decided by one member, one vote More detail in the screenshot of today’s email below.

The timetable is out looking at the structure of it makes something clear.

"Your Party" is going to be heading into a HUGE conflict over sex and gender and beyond that to freedom of religion.

The TWAW types are going to go all in making that a CORE element of the party.

The Biology knowers and religious types will try to stop them.

Whether this conflict occurs in the draft constitution or amendments to it it will be happening and there will be a vote.

The debate between Adnan and Sultana we have already seen is only a prelude.

This is going to be very important and positive because open debate is crucial. The party will either commit to say that biology is real or it will deny it. It is possible there will be fudge amendments that wins out which will say TWAW but Muslims get an opt out or something. Who knows. One thing is certain. This kind of open debate with people having to vote on it will be unprecedented on the left. Remember TWAW hate talking and voting on this stuff. They want to be able to dictate to people about how gender and sex work.

Mumsnet Lefties who like a scrap with sexists take note. It may be worth joining the party just to take part in the debate. Pessimists might think the TWAW faction are going to win, but nothing is set here. Outside the major cities they might find themselves in trouble. Remember these people have no grasp on material reality and just listen to corporate academic group thinking. They want to stop Muslims and Catholics being religious, not by openly arguing against their religion as atheist socialists and feminists have long done but by some kind of weird back door.

If you have a problem with religion SAY it. Stop using gender nonsense as an excuse.

If you think some religions are too conservative and outdated to be allowed that is a valid argument Sultana. Don't hide behind a bunch of nonsense because you are scared men might tell you off.

I might join 😂

Me too. I don't think I could ever bring myself to actually vote for Corbyn - a silly vain old fool and shit leader - but I'd love the 'progressive' new party to embrace reality. And it would be vastly amusing to see Violet Elizabeth Sultana's tantrum afterwards.

I would bet a large sum of money that they aren't selecting delegates by sortition - they seem to be using it as some sort of progressive buzzword (or else they just don't know what it means). Sloppy language all round in fact, since they certainly won't be selecting delegates via a lottery. They could raffle delegate places at the conference: the more you contribute to the new party's coffers, lthe likelier you are to have a say...

To use sortition they would have to have recorded some demographic data about members, decided which demographic variables should be relevant to the policymaking process and then used them to stratify the membership in order to select a representative sample. Call me cynical, but I doubt they are sufficiently organised to do this.

New Statesman article is a pretty good summary. Insider quote particularly important.

Your Party’s existential spat over trans rights
The public split between Zarah Sultana and Adnan Hussain cuts deeper than a single social issue

But things are getting serious. Other senior figures on the fringes of the movement have begun to pick sides. The split is deepening. Laura Pidcock, the former Labour MP for North West Durham, who was in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet said on Sunday, “The idea that there won’t be social conservatism in a movement which is aiming to be a mass movement is a fallacy.”
Others have backed Sultana’s no-tolerance approach. One insider speculated that the logical conclusion of this argument could be the bringing of a kind of trans solidarity motion at the party’s founding conference (currently expected in November) which could divide not only the party’s potential membership – which includes the progressive left and a large part of the Muslim voters who turned against Labour last July – but its leadership in parliament. “That would be a disaster,” they said. Many within the movement hope Hussain and Sultana do the “responsible thing” and stop these tensions from developing further. Corbyn has so far remained silent on this issue, but its clear those around him are concerned at the damage this divide could do to the party’s chances.

https://archive.is/tbAyy

However the idea of papering over this stuff up is absurd. If your political party doesn't believe women are real you should make it clear to the public. Zack Polanski certainly is doing that. Of course he also has a Muslim deputy Mothin Ali who clearly does think women exist and that is why his wife has to to wear a head covering. Unlike Adnan Mothin just pretends to not to believe that women are real to fit in.

The idea of an open debate within this party is a good thing. On Terf island in fact it should be socially obligatory. In fact as there is a possibility of legal action if you try to exclude people on grounds of religion or belief it is kind of important to get it right.

Right now in the UK legally there are two sexes.

A comment from earlier in that urban 75 thread

https://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/new-left-party-2025-your-party-to-be-led-by-corbyn-and-sultana-discussion.388032/post-19180360

"The problem isnt Zara but the fact that Corbyn and all MPs are in control of the party name: her allies have the data though. It is a shitshow granted but I root for team Zarah.."

So this might be team Z taking the initiative. Also re: mentions of sortition and fairness to be representative suggests they'll be using sensitive demographic data to decide who gets selected.

All this is a GDPR relevant area where they will need to be extremely careful that they aren't storing stuff insecurely and inadvertently allowing access to rogue members who may say decide anyone listing hetero sexual orientation or with a European sounding name is overrepresented. Or someone with a Muslim sounding surname might be a transphobe. Or it gets hacked by more tech savvy right wingers.

Remember Liam Madigan boasting about “all the pretty data” he had access to?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3091663-lily-madigan-tim-elected-labour-women-s-officer

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3199889-Lily-Madigan-Blocklist?flipped=1&page=5

Adnan's latest after Sultana has talked about fascists once again.

It is obvious Adnan has the right approach. Whether Reform's rise can be stopped who knows. One thing is certain Sultana's approach with random name calling will FAIL utterly and will in fact only make Reform more more successful.

'Fight back or die': How Elon Musk is weaponising Britain's working-class grievances
Adnan Hussain

And there is a grim truth at the heart of this claim: many white working-class communities have been neglected - by the market, by neoliberalism, and most damningly, by the contemporary left.

If the left wants to win that war, it must remember its roots - not in Twitter threads or metropolitan think-tanks, but in the lived realities of working-class people of all colours and creeds

In post-industrial Britain, once-proud towns have been hollowed out by decades of austerity, under-investment and wage stagnation. The social infrastructure that held working-class life together - union halls, council housing, reliable public services - has been dismantled. In its place, populist demagogues offer pride, purpose and identity.

But their solution is not redistribution or empowerment. It is scapegoating. It is division. It is false redemption that puts the blame on Muslims, migrants and current democratic structures, while quietly advancing a corporate agenda of deregulation, privatisation and digital monopolies.

The irony is brutal: the white working class, in its search for power and its fight-back against the “elite”, is being led by the hand into the service of power itself.

And where, one might ask, is the Labour Party in all of this? Under Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cautious centrism, the party has embraced a platform of technocratic stability; what critics now call “reform-lite”. It offers modest adjustments, not moral vision or conviction. It is a politics designed not to inspire hope, but to remain stranded in the grey pond of stagnation and dismay.

In a country where entire regions feel abandoned - economically, culturally and politically - a managerial left cannot compete with an insurgent right promising transformation, however illusionary.

Speaking across divisions
Even those to the left of Labour - the Greens, independents and democratic socialists - have too often failed to address the white working class directly. Many feel that doing so may entail cultural compromise. Others have simply misread the terrain. The result is a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum.

The way out is neither to ignore white working-class grievances, nor to pander to extreme far-right sentiment. It is to reconstruct a universal, democratic class politics that speaks across divisions, while confronting hate without compromise.

This will require the left to do things differently, and to shatter the stagnant status quo. Firstly, it must re-engage economically abandoned areas - not just through policy, but with a physical presence, including local campaigns, unions and cooperative initiatives.

Secondly, the left must acknowledge grievances specific to the white working-class identity, without sanctifying it. Cultural recognition is not racial essentialism; it is the first step towards rebuilding political trust.

Thirdly, the left must build bridges between communities, not walls - a process that should emphasise the shared material interests among working-class people of all backgrounds. It must confront the far right directly, naming their rhetoric for what it is: dangerous, manipulative and deeply anti-working class.

Finally, the left needs to reclaim the language of nation and belonging - not by exclusion, but by rooting it in solidarity, mutual aid and democratic participation.
The left must understand that if it does not offer belonging, meaning and material hope - if it does not listen in order to understand - others will, and on far more dangerous terms.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/fight-back-or-die-how-elon-musk-weaponising-britains-working-class-grievances

I am increasingly impressed by him.

This Hussain bloke sounds far too sensible to be hanging around with nutters like Sultana.

I've given up hope for the British left long ago, but if you could get Adnan Hussain, Rosie Duffield and Ash Regan in a party together, I might have to reconsider.

Wow. He's not wrong, is he? This is exactly the acknowledgement that's been frustratingly missing from the contemporary left for YEARS now (and it's frustrating because it should have been obvious and so many chances have been missed to the point it may now be too late - at least to stop Reform this time around.)

He's spot-on. I couldn't agree with him more.

Isn't that article by Adnan Hussain just yet another variant on the well-worn theme of the working classes being too thick / poorly educated / easily deceived to recognise where their interests really lie?

Wow he does sound sensible! I think the problem with the Left is that this is not what they want to hear. They love identity politics because so many of them have inherited wealth themselves and benefit from the inequality they are apparently fighting against. If they campaign against injustices like Palestine ( and engage in the fantasy of setting up a secular ' progressive utopia in a different country) or trans issues or ' The most vulnerable people in society' whoever they are- they don't have to look at themselves and their own privilege.
The Muslim community, particularly the ones living in communities like the one Hussein represents have more problems in common with the White working class than they do with TRA'S and middle class progressives- particularly with regards to socisl conservatism- which is why Hussein can see something they just can't.

Wtf