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

Good christ.

The problem with this is that a large number of - I would say most - women don't care either. Of the women I know involved in what will become this movement most are either positively TWAW or just fairly neutral and uninformed and happy to go along with it. In my area I know precisely two women who I've heard voice any concerns about the infringement on womens' rights.

There's probably more who are afraid to speak up, but still there are plenty who speak up for trans rights, and have obviously never experienced the consequences or have and don't care. Mumsnet is a notorious echo chamber for this stuff (to which I subscribe) and it can be hard for people here to realise they don't necessarily reflect the views of everybody IRL.

I don't get how you can then expect men to push the boat out to enforce a line on womens' rights against the will of women themselves (particularly when it risks opening up a potential area of conflict and difficulty for the party, which God knows is struggling hard enough to stay united already). That would surely the epitome of misogyny and mansplaining.

I think this is a fair and unfair analysis.

The fact is that a good majority of women do not believe the GI stuff, neither do men.

But there are a good number who do, or who believe some of it. And among middle class professions who see themselves as progressive, it might be a majority. Or if not a majority, a goodly number are afraid to speak up against it.

I was just describing the majority in my particular local proto-Your Party group. I don't know how representative it is of others. But where that's the case - that TWAW has the support of most women - you can't then blame the men (as previous posters were doing) for not insisting on what THEY say is the correct application of "women's right" AGAINST the will of the women themselves!

I think some people are assuming that this all breaks down neatly along sex lines, with the women wanting sex-based rights over TWAW and the men wanting the opposite. But it's nothing of the sort, here at least.

It may be different elsewhere, and it will be interesting to see what happens at the national conference.

"there's been some hiccups"

https://www.thenational.scot/news/25489893.jeremy-corbyn-addresses-party-rift-zarah-sultana/

Reported that Corbyn and Sultana were due to appear together at an event today but Sultana cancelled at the last minute

Apparently the Gaza Flotilla people are having similar fallouts from LGBTQ+ inclusion and messaging.

Sir Humphrey: No, last week was the party membership launch. This is the relaunch.
Hacker: What's the difference?
Bernard: Well, membership launch means "we haven't formed a policy agenda"; relaunch means "We haven't, yet, decided we need one".

I probably shouldn't ask, but why are the Gaza people needing to say anything about LGBTQ+ things?

Apparently that's the very thing some of the Muslim members of the flotilla have been asking themselves. There has been at least one resignation and several objections raised due to the presence of LGBTQ+ activists in the flotilla. The objectors think a progressive agenda is diluting their message and is at odds with the Palestinian cause. I guess it could end up like Your Party but with walking the plank and keel hauling.

Looking around the world, whilst the Left fiddles as Rome burns, is not a pretty sight.

Totally 💯

Polling suggests women lean more TWAW, and Labour supporting women most strongly. TWAW is also stronger among the generation currently moving into their thirties (although not necessarily the younger gen coming up behind, iirc). Zarah's precise demographic.

I'd imagine that goes extra for the Your Party supporters.

'Speaking at a press conference to promote the Against the War peace conference in Paris in October, Corbyn insisted that the founding of Your Party was “going very well”.'

🤔

🙈

I think we're more than aware on MN that most people have very little understanding and perspective on the issue; apart from what they pick up on social media and in their cliquey activist tribes. For years, this was literally the only place where this issue to could be discussed. It is still the most informed and educative place, too.

For me, the issue is that the Left has generally been hijacked by American style Identity politics and the politics of Intersectionality - to the extent that it has pushed out old fashioned economic redistribution as the main ideological framework through which to view the world. A sort of american Marxism but without the economic imperatives.

This lens of intersectionality with it oppresssor/oppressed narrative is what young graduates have been brought up on, and that includes women too, naturally. It also appeals to the 'kind' narratives that females may be more receptive too; plus it also stems from elements of feminist thought in which 'gender' ( Sex) is wholly socially constructed. Queer Theory arose out of both feminism and gay liberation narratives.

Younger, educated, middle class women have been brought up with established equal rights and representation, and are used to seeing women in every conceiveable role in society. Getting married and or having children is being put off, sometimes indefinitely or permanently and younger women have tended to see having children as a trap to be escaped from or avoided for as long as possible.

Who wants to be 'a woman' when that means being restricted or inhibited or being seen as weaker or less strong or less capable than men. Women for whom feminism means mainly 'equality' ( and something about 'the patriarchy'). All of these narratives feed into trans ideology and the idea that we ( women) are not biologically determined and are "free to be whoever they are" etc

That's my take on it, anyway.

Yes, it mainly amongst younger middle class and/or university educated women.
Working class women, in general, are not having it, nor are most older people who are non party politically aligned.

The irony of being an 'anti war' pacifist when your own political tribe is wracked by infighting and acrimony.

For me, the issue is that the Left has generally been hijacked by American style Identity politics and the politics of Intersectionality - to the extent that it has pushed out old fashioned economic redistribution as the main ideological framework through which to view the world. A sort of american Marxism but without the economic imperatives.

This lens of intersectionality with it oppresssor/oppressed narrative is what young graduates have been brought up on, and that includes women too, naturally. It also appeals to the 'kind' narratives that females may be more receptive too; plus it also stems from elements of feminist thought in which 'gender' ( Sex) is wholly socially constructed. Queer Theory arose out of both feminism and gay liberation narratives.

Absolutely this ☝️ @Shortshriftandlethal intersectionality completely obscures class as a lens and splinters everything into X thousand permutations of oppressed yet also sometimes a bit Privelidged but cannot measure to quantify where and what. I remember that passage someone quoted elsewhere on MN from the Ash Sarkar book (she describes herself as Literally A Communist) where she's sneering at the flags at some run down town somewhere in northern England and mentions stuff about white privelidge and possibly male heteronormativity but doesn't in the extract use the term Working Class

Omg it's so hard not to laugh.

Yes because they think they will never end up in prison or a women's shelter because their money and class cushions them against it. It just isn't their reality so they can't see the harm in just 'being kind'. It's why, once middle class girls in the US started having their sports scholarships compromised that the tide started to turn.

I think it's fascinating that people who learned Marxism at university come out with all this intersectionalist bollocks that's got very little to do with classical Marxism and is really just bastardised Foucault and Butler.

Meanwhile Adnan Hussain who isn't a Marxist seems to be discovering class politics from first principles.

I think Adnan's reasoning goes like this:

• I only have a tiny majority over Labour and I'd quite like to be re-elected
• That means I have to be really good at serving my constituents
• I can't be the MP for Muslims alone because Muslims aren't a majority in Blackburn
• There are lots of working class white people in Blackburn who have many interests in common with working class Muslims
• Left wing politics based on those interests could bring people together, but much of the left regard Muslims as NPCs and have open contempt for working class whites

I can't say I disagree with him, and he's arrived at a sort of Old Left position that's antithetical to Sultana's student union politics (Corbyn being a sort of elderly student politician himself, but with a more easygoing personality that makes him a good coalition builder)

Yes you'd think it would teach them something about human nature!
Or at least give them a chance to practice alternatives to out and out war (that presumably doesn't involve globalism or capitalism)

Yes, once the differences between the sexes start to assert themselves into your life more forcefully or impactfully then the gretaer the likelihood of you being more understanding and compassionate towards the situation of women more generally.

I wonder how much longer it will take Sultanah to realise that there are some real,practical and experiential differences between males and females that explain the reason why we have 'Sex' as a protected characteristic in the equality act.

She was very quick out of the blocks with " boys club" accusations against Corbyn and the Muslim candidates - because her ego driven career path has hit an unexpected bump in the road - and come across the fact that for men on the Left women's 'equality' is just a nice add on and not a central organising principle.

I think if that's what he's saying he's absolutely spot on. It's all very well the disgruntled ' your party' supporters throwing their toys out of the pram about elected MP's not doing everything they say but they have a duty to their constituents.

and come across the fact that for men on the Left women's 'equality' is just a nice add on and not a central organising principle
To be fair as @TruckDiver pointed out, it doesn't much matter to many women on the Left either ( including Sultana until it came to smack her in the face) The Labour Party knows that faced with 100 women to be in positions of power and one man, the membership ( more Left usually than the electorate or the government) will choose a man.