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, thank you, TruckDriver. I had an idea it would include those. But surely not all working class people are so well-off? Esp those precariously employed that ArabellaSaurus mentioned.

Rightly those jobs are very well-paid due to their skill but more importantly in building the danger & health problems.

It's notable there all mainly male jobs which fewer women are strong enough to do. Female working class jobs tend to be lower-paid, esp elder care work, childcare, cleaning, retail & cooking. Obvs these are not physically dangerous in the same way, but have their own challenges : elder care takes a large mental & also physical toll, and as we know retail workers face a lot of verbal abuse. Childcare & elder care jobs certainly deserve better pay..

I mean just anecdotally, but due to supply and demand I would imagine people who work in trades are in high demand. They are also mostly self employed so have different tax arrangements from people on PAYE. However you could also say people who work in hospitality, caring retail etc are also working class but are not well paid, so it's a difficult one. People who work in hospitality and retail are dependent on Capitalism to quite a large extent though, so they wouldn't benefit from a society where people can't afford to buy luxuries.

Thank you, that makes sense, esp re capital.
I think more and more Marxism is becoming a blunt tool to analyse class, money etc It seems facile to say a wealthy builder will automatically have the same class interests as a poorly-paid hospitality worker, just as it would be odd to say the builder has the same interests as a police officer because both their jobs are dangerous, or as a corporate lawyer because both their jobs are stressful.

Though I suppose that was always the case to some degree, hence Stalin's persecution of the kulaks etc

Few years back, I knew a guy in Nottingham. He was a roofer, and he was paying people cash-in-hand, at below minimum wage, and was still struggling to make a living. It was just a vicious race to the bottom. And all that in a job where cutting corners can be fatal. So certainly one of Arabella's 'precarious' ones.

@TruckDiver "If the only thing separating people into classes is culture, and that can exist completely independently of a person's economic relation to others, then what relevance is the government in serving some classes and not others?"

To answer you question I would say there isn't a relevance. Because they simply cannot do that. Governments are meant to govern for the whole country and balance, as much as they can, the interests of the whole country. Not just the ' working class' or people who voted for them. That's the difference between a party in government and a pressure group. They actually have to take decisions that are in everyone's interests as much as they can. Part of the reason this country is such a shitshow is that the Tories made decisions that affected the whole country on the basis of what their elderly voters base wanted, and because they were running scared of UKIP. It's a poor way to govern.
It is impossible to govern for the ' working class' because what definition are you going to use? Marx's definition? Jeff Bezos has made money from his own labour. As has Bill Gates. Are they working class? How about a plumber who employs an apprentice? He's making money from someone else's labour too. Who's side of the struggle would they be on? Class struggle makes no modern sense either. What exactly do you want the proles to do? Who are they struggling against and how? And who even are they?

That's awful. Yes, I do think we should remember that even if a lot of builders etc are wealthy, plenty are surely not, not to mention the inherent danger of the job

Being self-employed does mean you pay lower taxes, but it also means that you don't get the same health benefits or as you say job security.

Interesting, thank you, TruckDriver. I had an idea it would include those. But surely not all working class people are so well-off? Esp those precariously employed that ArabellaSaurus mentioned.

Well no, I didn't say they were. I said "plenty" of WC people earn more than I do, not that all or even most do.

I also probably should have made clear that I don't actually earn very much. :)

Rightly those jobs are very well-paid due to their skill but more importantly in building the danger & health problems.

Not sure if you misunderstood my point but I wasn't suggested those people don't deserve to be well paid, or to be paid more than me. I was only pointing out that the income spread now of people that we call "working class" makes it impossible to sensibly apply the original class-based analysis of people like Marx to them. Obviously it still applied to poorly paid people in the gig economy, but then you'd need another term for it to only include some of the people we call working class, not all.

On this point, ikwym about job centre managers & petty council bureaucrats.

I think we should be careful not to tar them as a whole though. Job centre & council workers got significant amounts of verbal abuse from the public during the Cameron years, for one, for funding & economic difficulties they had no control over, and a not all are overpaid tyrants.

I've also noticed on Substack that male dissident right essayists (mainly but not all US) constantly see bureaucracy as a female thing, and blame "feminisation' for problems with it. I know women are more cautious on average and thus female domination can mean less risk-taking and also sometimes a herd mentality (as with the trans issue) but at the same time their dismissal of female-dominated sectors often seems to have a misogynistic edge (I see similar aimed at female book editors, teachers, social workers & others) . I know this isn't what you meant here, it's just that I'm wary of dismissing whole sectors in that way.

Arguably, I was thinking, the trans issue needed more bureaucracy, not less. The whole GRA disaster was about eliminating 'red tape' which was actually valid safety precautions.

Sorry, TruckDriver, I can see you don't mean 'all'. I didn't think you meant those jobs shouldn't be paid well. That was more me thinking out loud that working class men tend to get higher paid jobs than working class women, and some of that makes sense, but in the case of childcare and elderly care seems wrong.

I see what you mean re the gig economy, but imo Marxist class analysis was never fully coherent. As I said in pp, it excluded wealthy farmers (kulaks) who were persecuted by Stalin as they didn't fit Marxist class ideas.

Exactly. You've answered my challenge to either make sense of representing the working class according to your definition of it or abandon the idea altogether, by abandoning it.

So why then did you say before:

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There is no room for socially conservative views in a socialist left wing party. Period
This is why the Hard Left has failed to break through with the working class, who they are meant to represent. They traditionally have been socially conservative.
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No. Im saying the Left needs to understand the people they claim to want to represent, why they might have wanted to buy their own houses, why they have concerns about immigration etc instead of hectoring them about their wrong choices and wrong opinions and give people an alternative to the Right.
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You attack the left for failing to represent the working class as they are "meant to" - and then when pressed on what that would actually mean, admit that it's impossible for any government to do, left or otherwise, because the working class is so indefinable and because governments have to rule for everybody anyway.

You really seem quite confused @TruckDiver- start by understanding that your definition of social class is ideological and most people don’t share it. It’s a powerful cultural signifier for most people, it doesn’t neatly map across to “capital” in a way you seem to think it should. Then as pp pointed out, you might understand why traditionally working class people keep disappointing you by voting for things you disapprove of.

No expert, but on r/UK discussions, I notice a lot of working class people define it by "we work with our hands'. Which seems are better descriptor than ones that focus on capital or low income etc

I think this is a key point.

And why I was impressed by Adnan Hussein myself.

There was an interview on the radio yesterday with a Labour MP who represents a County Durham constituency. A constituency with a very long history in the Labour movement and in voting Labour. But he says many of his constituents are now toying with idea of voting Reform.

The way he sees it, he, as a Labour MP, he is there to represent the interests and voice of his working class constituents, and therefore he needs to be receptive to what they are saying and respond accordingly. Not tell then that he knows best and that they are wrong -which is what quite a number of Labour MPs seem to be doing instead.

You don't ignore issues because you think they don't tally with your ideological concept of the world; you face them and offer solutions which are still in tune with your wider vision of how you would ideally like your world to be.

The Labour party needs to be receptive to what its natural core demographic is saying. I think Shabana Mahmood's speech yesterday was very strong. - although i suspect that the tide has now turned too far and it could well be too late.

Yes, manual labour or skilled manual work has traditionally been the definition of working class, and which has always tended to be very male in flavour and image.

I know of plenty of tradesmen who make a very good living. Their skills are always in demand and I imagine their incomes in many cases are far higher than that of many office based employees

I honestly love Shabana Mahmood : I wish she were the PM not Starmer. I hope it's not too late. Technically there are 2 years yet.

BTW is that Sam Rushworth? He does sound sensible.

Have you actually read my posts? I've accepted that others don't have the same definition of class and that their definition seems to be something to do with "culture" rather than economics.

My question is: if you define working class purely by culture, what does it mean to say that the left doesn't serve the interests of the working class, as they should?

@RainbowBagels at least admitted that the statement is largely meaningless, as no government can serve such interests.

So what would appealling to this "cultural" working class look like? Abolishing VAT on flat caps? Starting work in public sector jobs by watching reruns of Steptoe and Son? Making "My Old Man's A Dustman" the national anthem?

I'm being facetious, in case that isn't obvious enough. But what is it? It is just about the cultural aspect of immigration - pandering to the fact that some individuals in working class communities happen to be racist?

After all, restricting immigration doesn't and can't serve the economic interests of the working class if that class is not defined economically. Eg those WC that own and operate capital will have an interest in the cheap supply of labour that immigration provides.

Of course a lot of people now employed in the gig economy are not your traditional working class people; often they are university educated, young and single and doing this sort of work in order to get by in between other things.
Sometimes older people who are returning to work P/T and want something flexible, or who have a specific financial goal in mind.

That makes sense.

. I think the definition has to include women's work too though : otherwise what are women in the above-mentioned care work, childcare, hospitality etc ? I get some of those are less strenuous but elder care does often take a heavy physical toll. And catering, childcare & elder care are all skilled jobs when done as they should be.

And in previous times, equivalents like nursemaids, domestics etc would all have been classed as working class.

Not all objection to immigration is “racist” and there are plenty of racists in the middle and upper classes, as well as between racial groups other than white Britons.

Yes I do understand what you are saying and I probably didnt explain properly what I meant. I mean the people who define themselves as working class have moved on. Their priorities are no longer that of ' class struggle against evil mill owners. They could be owners of capital or quite happily working for the owners of Capital or have their own properties, but culturally define themselves as ' working class'. A culture which is traditionally socially conservative so not aligned to the fights of the largely middle class Hard Left. Many also dont care who owns the means of production because they just want jobs and opportunities for themselves and their children to get on. In order to represent the 'working class' you need not to have ' class conflict' but balance the needs of all sections of society, because that means jobs as well as providing the conditions for job creation. It's the Middle class Leftist types with their obsession with ' class conflict' who claim to represent the working class when they never have and have not moved on from their romanticised view of the poor downtrodden working class just waiting to be led to revolution by their intellectual superiors. What Im saying is I dont understand what the Left want in terms of class struggle. There's no point saying it and defining it as a struggle between the working class against the elites but then not saying how that works in practice. Fantasies like ' global revolution' are just that. What exactly is your ideal society and how can that be achieved realistically? And taking into account that there has been a ' global revolution' caused by globalism and Capitalism that has pulled more people out of absolute poverty globally than anything else. Even Communist China's wealth depends on selling things to Capitalist countries.

Come on, if you just see cultural immigration worries as racist you won't get far. Unluckily some cultures like Afghanistan have high rates of sexual assault. We don't want that here. It would be better to take only female refugees from such countries imo.

Similar for terrorist risk from some.

Finally, my area has a strong Asian community and a long-established Polish community (which included my grandpa) . Not to be all Kumbaya but we all mainly rub along fine. I love it the way it is.

The problem is in areas like Bradford & Leceister where Muslims are not integrating en masse, fights in the street between Hindus & Muslims etc

Mass immigration changes local character in a way gradual doesn't. See the exodus of white working class from the East End.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07czw5k

For many of the people that have moved towards Reform it is not really down to migration issues or even Brexit type issues. Where I live a lot of people have become very tired of government /( of any stripe) promises and pronouncements. They don't trust them anymore. When you live in a doggedly Labour voting city or region and this doesn't serve up the nirvana promised, and instead your council is riddled with corruption and self interest, you soon become cynical.

A lot people became radicalised during Covid and the lockdown; they did not like the moralising and authoritarianism that was coming out of politicians ( and Labour was worse for this...it was they that wanted longer and harder lockdowns, including for schools, and so on). So for some, it has now become more an issue of distrust of big government over-control than it has of illegal migration.

No, I personally don't think Reform is a realistic, long term solution to anything ( they are more of a pressure group in my view)...but the point is you have to listen to the voters and not dismiss their voices. Applying a ready made ideological construct to every issue makes one rigid and unresponsive to changing conditions. If you want a stable society...you need to shift to where the centre is. The centre is not in a fixed location.