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

Interesting article. Whatever you think of Mason, he understands the machinations of the Left. Here's a great summing up by him, and shows the multiple ways Your Party is being dragged:

"The short summary of the contending forces is:

• Sultana wants to be co-leader and wants a membership-led launch, with “anti-Zionism” as part of the brand identity and youth/identitarian politics at the heart of the project. Jamie Driscoll and Feinstein are supporting this.

• The four Muslim MPs want to defend private schools and are in some cases negative on trans rights and even picket lines.

• The old tankies from Unite just want a lever they can use to pressure the Labour Party.

• Those former Momentum/Occupy/TWTW activists who have stuck with Corbyn instead of entering the Green Party want a networked/horizontalist approach and see the party only as one part of their long-term strategy.

• The Trotskyist groups (RCP, Counterfire, SWP), want a front they can enter, manipulate and recruit from.

• A group inspired by the “actionist” strategy of Roger Hallam, called Assemble, is pushing to build the party from below by calling regional people’s assembles. It has launched a drive to raise £150k to train ten “organisers” who will then convene regional assemblies to launch the new party from below

• The outright Russian, Iranian and PRC proxies are pressuring the party towards “anti-Zionism” and demanding the exclusion of Schneider and others whose political antennae and organisational competence would stand in the way of manipulating the party for hybrid warfare against the UK."

CRINK is a new term I'd not heard before (China Russia, Iran, North Korea).

Also the points that as an MP Corbyn (and Sultana) are duty bound to uphold the law. Expropriation from the Bourgeoisie without compensation would violate the 'Human Rights Act, the Trade Co-operation Agreement with the EU and the rules of the WTO'.

Mason is a bright guy, but in recent years he's developed a bad case of "everyone I don't like is a Russian asset" syndrome. And as a former long-term member of Workers Power, he's retained their bad habit of caricaturing everyone whose politics don't precisely align with his own.

Though he's not wrong about the multiple directions the New Party is being pulled in. Corbyn for all his faults - and maybe because of some of them (because he's vague and indecisive and has a kind of naive faith in all good people working together) - is probably the only figurehead who could work.

I don't think Mason understands the realignment. Nothing wrong with that. Very few people even in Labour understand the realignment, and I don't believe anyone in the New Party does. They're still partying like it's 2018.

The trouble is that Corbyn is essentially a weak man. For a while, as Labour leader, he was a vessel that people could poor whatever hopes and wishes they had into. Now he hasn't go the Labour party machine around him, and is just vacillating as per.

Apologies for linking to the Groomers' Gazette, but it seems Sultana is doubling down on everything.

Zarah Sultana says join Your Party, but fight to shape it

Ironically I think its his weak and dithering nature that made him an ideal vessel for people to pour all their dreams into. He avoided making difficult decisions so because he didn't say anything about anything important everyone could pretend he agreed with them.

'She [Sultana] thought that “red lines” should be drawn and that she is “not shy” in highlighting hers. “You cannot vote for austerity. You cannot be supportive of Zionism, genocide and you should be a trans ally,” she said.

Adnan Hussain, another Independence Alliance MP, says, “Women’s rights and safe spaces should not be encroached upon”—meaning trans women should be excluded from single-sex spaces.

He has voted against decriminalising abortion and argues there should be a place for “socially conservative” views in the new party.

Sultana has spoken out against that—and doubled down at the Sheffield meeting. She said, “Trans+ rights are human rights. We will always centre the most marginalised in the heart of what we do. That is uncompromisingly going to be the case. No ifs. No buts.

“I don’t think we can compromise on anything to do with trans+ rights. And some of the stuff over the past weeks, I have been vocal about. I’m sure there are people who would have liked me to just stay quiet on this for the sake of party unity.

“But what’s the point of having party unity if trans+ people or any other marginalised community feel like they can’t get involved.”'

What's the plus? What other minorities? Any minority at all?

The Socialist Worker style guide apparently requires them to add a plus to every mention of trans. Nobody seems to know what it means. But maybe worth mentioning that their gender expert Judy Cox had an article in their theoretical journal where she went on a detour of "there have been claims from bigots that furry culture is all about sexual fetishism, but the furry community denies this".

Some people might say the Tories are fairly marginalised today ...

Edited because I just got it! 😄

It's not Sultana so much as the experience of watching the rise of Momentum. And being excited at the thought of a return to the left after a decade and a half of Blairism, only to discover that, well, that isn't what was happening at all.

Your Party has a Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/yourparty/

The old Greek playwrights would have loved Jon Lansman. He spent 40 years plotting for the far left to take over Labour, then finally succeeded, and then remembered to his horror what the far left is actually like.

I think Alan Johnson nailed it rather well on Election Night:

God I remember that. Look at the cold fury on Johnson. "Couldn't lead the working class out of a paper bag".

Lansman convinced this was only BC Boris was capitalising on Brexit that Labour lost. Otherwise they would have done so much better than hated Blairite /centrist/ milibandite Labour. Alan Johnson astutely noting the stab in the back mythology was already starting that because of X, y and not enough unconditional support from Z did they lose. I think this was the manifesto drafted by Novara/ Owen Jones aligned policy wonks?

Yep. That utter dick Lansman arguing that Corbyn and the programme were popular, but the electorate delivered a Tory landslide because reasons... Brexit! That's it!

I miss Alan Johnson. Wish he'd stayed in politics. He'd have been a much better PM.

Barely a month after that, he was on Masked Singer as a Pharaoh

I think this maybe speaks to the distinction that's sometimes made between "somewheres" and "anywheres".
I'm still interested to see if a political / social movement can be formed by self interested working class people.
If you - and like minded political class - think that you can see a way clear to freeing people from oppression then of course you're going to pursue that. I'm trying to say that in a way that doesnt's sound cynical, I'm not trying to cast shade I just think, after your words have been rolling about in my head for several hours, I think it does highlight why there's a connection for me between the focus on Gaza and the harmful excesses of identitarianism.
I'm old enough to have seen the wheels turn a few times, but I'm too young to have seen working class solidarity (based on self-interestedness shared by working class people) exist as anything other than an idea in the heads of posh students with grand ideas of liberating the oppressed. If the sense of shared interests between different WC groups that @SionnachRuadh described about above does form into something politically effective I believe that would be a good thing.
I also think that ethno-nationalism is as toxic as full throttle identitarianism, and I'd prefer the sort of soul-leeching liberalism that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing to either. But always on the lookout for something more heartening.
(Edit is that crossed out bit)

I agree right now we can't be sure how the internal politics of YP will play out.

The only certain thing is there are a lot of factions as Mason, and others point out. Sultana as her recent announcements in last few days have indicated still definitely wants the new party to be identity focused. Yet she is clearly not in complete control. She can count on a significant cohort of people for sure. Yet her antics rather than strengthening her position have weakened it.

From what I see online I agree there is a lot of debate inside the local meetings of the new party and it is not all going the idpol/Sultana way. Realistically if the Sultana side wins the new party will implode. The party is going to need the Muslim vote represented by 4 MPs to get anywhere. So that will push a bunch of people looking at the big picture to focus on the more class based approach. Alongside them there are many who naturally have that focus many of them surrounding Corbyn.

One thing which may undermine those who are trans focused is their own bigotry. Already I see many discounting the new party in favour of the Greens because there are actually people in it saying biology is a thing without being silenced. So they may not even join to turn up to fight it out. The TAs find it difficult to form alliances - those opposing them in the new party will include Muslims, Christians, class based leftists, Terfs and basic pragmatists who really want a large effective party, along with those recently alienated by Sultana's showboating. That adds up to a lot of people from different perspectives who would be able to ally. The TAs will toss anyone overboard with the slightest doubt in their aims and that doesn't aid in coalition building. Also those on the TA side will include SWP types who while they have long experience in leftist infighting also have a long record of not winning the fights they pick and generally making their opponents look good.

So I think there is a solid chance the more realistic side could win out, it is likely to be a very nasty fight though which will badly damage the party. In the wider struggle to defeat gender thinking that could be helpful. It will show once again the deep intolerance of the genderists.

Well first up I'm flattered that my humble words were able to roll around in your head for several hours. 😄

I'm not working class (in the traditional sense) so I can't speak for what a self-formed, self-interested working class political movement might look like. The closest thing we seem to have is Working Class conservatism / Brexit / Reform. But it's not generally possible for people like me to comment on the various fallacies involved in believing that's actually in the working class's interests without being accused of pontificating from above, so all I can do is let those who want to follow that path get on with it.

TBH I'm not sure how useful a conception the "working class" is politically now anyway. If it's defined by manual labour, then there's no escaping that changes to society have meant there are simply far fewer of them than there were in the 40s to vote for Attlee or even in the 60s for Wilson. Lots of people who call themselves working class make far more money than I do and vote on the right because they want to keep it, making it hard to make any sense out of the traditional Marxist conception of them being oppressed by the bourgeoisie. Still others are paradoxically defined as working class by not working - by multi-generational unemployment - and rely for their livelihood on the very welfare state that middle class do-gooders like me fight to preserve against (among others) the working class right.

More and more I feel that the distinction between working and middle class is just a useful tool for the ruling class to divide people, like so much of what passes for political analysis.

I take your point about Gaza, but even that is based on a conception of the working class that is limited by national borders and cultures, while capital now is unprecedentedly international and unregulated. The working class can't possibly win that battle (which may be why the ruling class is so keen to encourage it them to keep fighting it).

And international working class solidarity is hardly a new idea.

Spot on analysis @fromorbit 👏

" Working class solidarity" is only an idea, though, whether it is national or International - predicated on a view of the world that is divvied up between over-lords & peasants; bosses and workers; imperialists and the oppressed...alll bound together by a shared or common interest and identity.

My father used to be a shop steward in an engineering union - in the 1970s - when the trade unions were really flexing their collective muscles and there were continual strikes in virtually every sector.. My father was never a militant, always a coalition builder, seeing himself as a bridge between the men ( and it was all men) and the management. Just because you share a common occupation or workplace it doesn't necessarily follow you perceive your life through the same lens - of an over-arching political ideology.

He and many others found themselves out on strike when they really didn't want to be because of the pressure and bullying that was common when it came to strike votes. Most didn't view their situation through the lens of class politics at all but through a lens of needing to make a living and support their families. Whilst others were continually agitating and pushing 'work to rule' ( This has been my experience, as a teacher, of the NUT/NEU in schools - and even more so in recent years now that the unions seem to have been hijacked by extremist agitators). Anyway the company ended up shutting down, moving the jobs to Spain and making my father and everyone else redundant ( "Long live the revolution").

There have always been 'working class'people who view life through the lens of personal responsibility, hard work and of improving the conditions for themselves and their family, and who view slackers, piss takers, rabble rousers and all the rest negatively; and this is not because they have 'false class consciousness'..but because they are grounded in reality and have some sense that they have responsibility for their own life and the choices they make.

The overwhelming Gaza focus of this new party, which has been suggested, is based upon a rejection of imperialism and its supposed main backers ( The U.S.A and Israel), seems to totally over-look the nature of the clan based structure of Arab society - which far from being collective and united - is pedicated on hierarchies of status depending on which clan you belong to.

Which has meant, in practice, that privileged clans and Hamas cream off most of the international aid and funding, including the food deliveries.....and then sell it on to their own people in the markets at inflated prices....which many obviously cannot afford. There is absolutely no solidarity at all. And that is before you even consider the leaders who don't live in Gaza, but in luxury in Quatar, Turkey and elsewhere.

international working class solidarity is hardly a new idea.

Slight crossover with the environment/ green concept of think global act local here . That story about the engineering firm shutting down and moving to Spain. This is why Trump has been able to capitalise (not pardoning the pun) on tariffs bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. Will Your Party propose tariffs also? There's a question in the YP Reddit about rejoining the EU incidentally where the suggestion gets cold shouldered as a neo liberal project.

Viewed on a global level the working class would and should address the ppl in factories across the developing world who are toiling to produce the consumer goods that we use. They should have fair working conditions and pay. The kicker is though, that this would make goods more expensive, adding to the cost of living crisis in the UK.

Ask one of those workers in say China or Vietnam if they had any solidarity with the struggles of the workers of Britain and they'd think most of us were distinctly Bourgeoisie. The green party did at least emphasize global equality with a focus on reducing consumption. That's consistent.

Lots of people who call themselves working class make far more money than I do and vote on the right because they want to keep it, making it hard to make any sense out of the traditional Marxist conception of them being oppressed by the bourgeoisie. Still others are paradoxically defined as working class by not working - by multi-generational unemployment - and rely for their livelihood on the very welfare state that middle class do-gooders like me fight to preserve against (among others) the working class right
I agree with this and also @Shortshriftandlethal especially regarding the Activist unions. I have always been a trade unionist until the last few years when I just can't support aspects of their activism.
But then what's the point of Your Party and the other Socialist revolutionaries? They are not fighting for the ' working class' because by definition the working class are working. The traditional working class of blue collar trades are wealthier than the middle class public sector for example. If you're fighting for the protection of the Welfare State for the non working that needs to be balanced with protecting the people who are paying for it by working - the working class- by definition people who only make money through selling their labour- people on PAYE, the self employed etc. So it becomes a situation where you say the ultra rich and corporations have to pay ( I agree that large multinationals need to be oroperly held to account and taxed) for the welfare state but in reality these people have options- to move away and take their business and money elsewhere making the working class unemployed, not enough jobs for the children of the working class who may be the first people to have gone to University and resentment of the non workers who the working class are expected to work to pay for. Socialism has always had a somewhat somewhat patronising fetishisation of the working class, desperately wanting them to be so downtrodden that eventually they will do their dirty work for them and stage a revolution so they can step into the breach and reshape society into their fantasy utopia. We can see this on a small scale in Gaza, supporting Hamas who are stealing aid and the Houthis for disrupting trade routes, not considering that disrupting trade routes will cause shortages of goods and higher prices for the working class.