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

The only group Your Party are resisting are themselves. It's very daft.

A great big sucking giant vortex of a purity spiral. It's very enjoyable, isn't it?

I mean I'm sad enough to have paid attention when Militant had a big faction fight over the falling rate of profit, but it wasn't half as much fun as this.

It obviously depends how it's done. The new party could choose to only run candidates in constituencies where the Labour candidate is unlikely to win, or where the Labour candidate is so far to the right the benefit of possibly replacing them outweighs the risk. We don't know.

But I find all this stuff about splitting the left vote curious. Nobody apparently felt that was a problem when Starmer chose to expel most of the left from his own party and destroy its longstanding identity as a "broad church" in favour of narrow top-down factionalism.

Yet those who were shut out of the democratic process by him are now somehow duty bound to go crawl under a rock and shut up, or THEY'RE the ones responsible for "splitting". It makes no sense.

And then there's the fact that it's only Starmer's opposition to electoral reform - against the will of 80% of his own party members - that makes "splitting the vote" an issue in the first place.

So Labour cling to an undemocratic electoral system that, conveniently, only allows two choices - Labour or Reform. Labour ruthlessly purge their own ranks of both MPs and members so that the "Labour" choice can't possibly entail any voice for the left. And Labour then respond to the Reform challenge by allowing them to set the agenda, pretending they're right and failing to challenge the blatant falsehoods underpinning their agenda.

But sure, if Reform win it will be everybody else's fault.

There are genuinely people in or around this party who are convinced a) Corbyn has "pandered too much to the right wing" (?!???)
b) he's possibly also a pro Israel Zionist plant

You won’t find me lecturing you on who you choose to vote for, but I guess I’ve been told too many times that I am letting in the Tories/Reform etc by not voting Labour, which is why I’m asking about it, as it seems to be your main concern here.

Sultana is now backing the Our Party faction...

https://x.com/zarahsultana/status/1969109981728272600

who are literally calling for all MPs like her to resign

The thing is that the rhetoric gets more inflated every election cycle, but the basic logic is the same. At this point I'm pretty immune to being guilted into supporting things I don't actually agree with.

I suppose it makes sense for people who genuinely believe Britain is facing a threat of fascism in 2029. There are people who do think that. I don't. I think it's a mad position. Nigel Farage is many things, but he's not the second coming of Andrew Brons.

And I suppose I'm also old enough to remember the Polly Toynbees and Owen Joneses warning us in 2010 that David Cameron (!) was going to lead this incredibly reactionary hard-right government.

The great thing about the left is that there's never any need to revisit your old position and say "maybe I was a bit alarmist there". Just move on to the next thing.

Sultana posted late last night. She has instructed solicitors.

x.com/zarahsultana/status/1969166145849586026?t=hbqmCUMpp9OQaSgSW1IHzQ&s=19

Specialist defamation solicitors. Amazing. What will today bring?!

Its hilarious for us and manufacturers of popcorn but not so great for the people of Coventry South who would probably like their MP to concentrate on the job she was elected to do. I wonder what the constituents of all these MPs feel about it all.

I agree. And the problem with alarmist rhetoric like that is that it minimises the horrors of what the far Right actually is. So when they say David Cameron was 'far Right' and Tommy Robinson 'far Right' then it doesn't make David Cameron worse it makes Tommy Robinson something that we've had before and something not that bad in peoples minds.

Yes I've heard the 'Corbyn is a zionist plant' from some too!

Yep. Its pointless telling us such-and-such is a fascist, when we've all been called fascists for believing that women have rights.

Interestingly you can identify into joining the Jewish race. The Law of Return gives those who have converted to Judaism the same right to immigrate to Israel as those born of a Jewish mother.

As an aside, some of the usual TRAs have realised that Mark Serwotka is involved in the Welsh Your Party contingent.

And its going as expected, because of who his wife is.

Its not quite that straightforward, not wanting to derail so people can look it up. Also Jews are an ethnic group but there is ethnic diversity because of the complexity of their history and the issue of conversion.

While I disagree with you about kindly Uncle Nige, that's not the only point or even the main one.

The far right is in the ascendancy across the world because people are pissed off at falling or stagnant living standards and rising inequality, and have lost faith in mainstream politics to provide solutions. In the UK as in some other places, the far right's playbook on this is to blame the entire problem on immigration and particularly on a small number of asylum seekers. They stand a good chance of being elected because many people believe them.

We already have protests at asylum hotels spilling over into arson, and Elon Musk pandering to people's worst instincts by confidently telling them that "violence is coming". I see unsolicited items on my Facebook feed to that effect practically every other day.

So if Reform win government in 2029 there are basically two possibilities. The first is that stopping a statistically tiny number of asylum seekers from coming to the UK by boat, and reducing immigration (which is already on the way down) generally, will reverse the last 14 years of falling living standards, decimation of public services and snowballing inequality, and lead most of the population into a golden new dawn of prosperity and opportunity. Everyone will heave a collective sigh of relief and thank Nige for finally sorting it out.

The other is that it will make little difference to any of the economic factors actually affecting people's material lives, or actively make them worse, while at the same time Reform's policies on further defunding public services, tax cuts for the rich and further deregulation of the economy will make most people poorer and a small number of the rich even richer. And that the popular ire and fury will then only get worse as it's directed towards the next scapegoat.

We'll each have to judge for ourselves which of these scenarios is more likely. Sure, there's a question about at what exact point it's technically accurate to use the F word. I don't think that's the question that matters though.

Every time I need cheering up I come and look for updates on the Jez v Z thread. It just can't get any better. By lunchtime they will have blamed Mossad.
It helps that I'm a Labour Party member and I know some of the types that have been lured over. They will not be missed.

I think immigration is a red herring.

People vote Reform as a fuck-you. They are sick of being lied to and treated like shit. Its about power dynamics, not specific issues.

Same energy as self harming. Anger.

It's all just hilarious.

As someone somewhere else said, at least The Independence Group/Change UK managed to get together for a Nando's before they imploded 😆

Who is she sueing? Corbyn?

Meanwhile I'm seeing lots of New Party enthusiasts saying that Zarah's unauthorised membership portal would have been just fine if Corbyn had agreed to authorise it after the fact.

I'm guessing none of these geniuses know about the legalities involved. I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan of Karie Murphy, but she's an experienced union official who I would trust to get the formalities right.

Someone once neatly described Corbyn as the accidental antisemite. Which I think was fair - his problem was not really subjective hostility to Jews, more an incredible tin ear (not helped by having Tony Greenstein and David Rosenberg as his experts in Jewish affairs) and an arrogant doubling down when challenged. Maybe, in the same way, Zarah is the accidental fraudster. I see what people find attractive about her - she's all about being bold and energetic and doing all the things immediately - but there's a fine line between being daring and being stupid.

My conclusion is that Corbyn's main issue is his perennial anti Israel position and to succeed with that he needs the muslim constituency to get behind him...hence his fellow male running mates who tend towards the socially conservative.

Sultanah's probably torn between her pro-Gaza stance and her commitments to TWAW (along with her secular and liberal ideas around progress) - which will alienate much of the muslim vote.

Corbyn's stance is more likley to bring on board some of the older, male hard leftists - because apart ftom Gaza it will be focused on economic redistribution, which is their bread and butter; whereas Sultanah will most likely more appeal to a younger, progressive crowd......but then they could also get their needs met and reflected by the Green party.