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

Oh my days that’s hilarious.

I have a lawyer friend who is convinced that there was a lot to be said for the days when lawyers were largely trained in law within a firm. My daughter is currently training as a legal assistant within a firm - they have had such poor luck with the ones coming out of training programs they rarely take them on now.
Agree. But its also a horrifyingly snobbish profession, coming from being able to pick and choose from huge amounts of law graduates and non law grads doing Law conversion courses. There is a solicitor apprenticeship and also a paralegal apprenticeship but they are so rare is just easier to get on a degree. The accountancy route through AAT is a very successful qualification route and is far easier to find because the profession is more open to it.

I know free speech and all that but he's such a twat I can only wish bad things on him! Luckily for him he'll be able to get acres of whining articles out of it!
"My granny the Little Match girl is spinning in her paupers grave!"

That was probably during the bit of Starmer's speech when he said that the "extreme Left like the extreme Right wanted to see Britain fail, and that they enjoyed division".

I would have loved to have witnessed LOJ being wrestled to the floor.😆

I see he was trying to vox pop people on the "genocide in Gaza".

Rivkah Brown also banned.

https://x.com/rivkahbrown/status/1973036587245330707

@MusettasWaltz

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.

OK fair enough, so there's a set of objections to immigration that are not about the economics of it but are also not about straight out racism? Questions about attitudes to sexual assault being an example.

What makes these any more about the (cultural) working class than any other class though? Is there a reason why working class people would object to those things more than anyone else? Or is it just about the geography - that traditionally working class areas are more likely to have attracted more immigrants because they're cheaper, and if middle class areas had been affected the same way then middle class people would have the same reactions?

@Shortshriftandlethal

The Labour party needs to be receptive to what its natural core demographic is saying.

What makes the (cultural) working class the Labour party's "natural core demographic" though?

There's nothing in the Labour party's statement of aims and values that ties it to any one particular cultural group. It was formed to protect and further the interests of labour against capital, and then with the revision of clause IV under Blair the "against capital" part was watered down to lean more towards the mixed economy rather than necessarily favouring nationalisation. But the point is these things have always been defined economically, not culturally.

So why shouldn't the Labour party simply carry on with its original mission of serving the interests of those who depend, primarily, on selling their labour for a living? Without giving a toss whether they are culturally working class or middle class? (there being, of course, a large number of culturally middle class people whose working conditions have deteriorated to the point where they are no long served at all by the Tories). This has clearly been in the air for a good 20 years now, as Labour politicians have moved to talking about "working people" rather than "the working class".

This would entail policies such as:

• The minimum wage (which a Labour government introduced, and Labour should work to protect and increase)
• Protecting workers' rights, opposing continued deregulation of the gig economy
• Nationalisation of public services, to allow them to (a) provide services at prices ordinary people can afford, (b) reinvest any surpluses for the public good rather than the enrichment of shareholders, and (c) give the government power of provision of some employment opportunities
• Protecting the welfare state, which is going to be needed more by those reliant on selling their labour than those living off the proceeds of capital
• Government investment in education and training
• Tax policy that prioritises taxing wealth and capital gains over income, and is progressive in how it taxes income.
• etc....

"Those who depend, primarily, on selling their labour for a living" are then a combination of the "traditional" working class trades, the gig economy precariat, the less-capitally-invested private sector middle class and the lower-paid public sector middle class (teachers etc.). This is easily a large enough group to elect a government of its choosing, if it unites and votes according to its economic interests.

This would be a Labour party true to the aims and values it has always existed for. Who cares if some of the people who were originally served by those aims and values (trademen who now own their own businesses and properties and are more reliant on capital than labour for their welfare) have decided it's more in their interest to be Tories now? That's their prerogative - people change and move across social divides.

Why shouldn't the people who still want a party rooted in the reality of economic relations to serve the interests of labour have one, and the people who want to enjoy their cultural nostalgia of how "working class" they are while not actually being served by that any more look elsewhere (as they are doing)? It's not the Labour party's responsibility to abandon its mission (which is actually still sorely needed, just by a different mix of people) to indulge them.

You seem to be putting the cart before the horse purely on order to stay true to the ideological blueprint?

Having your own business and contributing not only to your own family but also to the wider community by employing people and providing services in not to be "a Tory". ( Do you really think everyone needs to be employed by the state?) People who run businesses are also 'working people'. In fact they often work very hard, and long hours and take on lots of responsibility. They are not your enemy.

It is possible to be can be a considerate and responsible employer, you know, and to have a business that operates with strong values and ethics. In fact those that do tend to be more successful.

The thing about starting with an ideological blueprint and reasoning out from there is that it can lead you into some very strange places.

The late Ted Grant, founder and ideological guru of Militant, never wavered from his belief that the vehicle for social change was the Labour Party. This meant that, faced with young people protesting against the Vietnam War, Ted advised the bemused youth to get down to their Labour ward and pass resolutions calling on Harold Wilson to arm the Viet Cong.

I'm not convinced that the working class as such really is Labour's natural core demographic. It used to be, but that hasn't been true for some time. Recent polling shows that among C2DE voters, Reform is at 38% and Labour at 15%. Labour's position would be even more dire if you subtract London and Liverpool.

Labour's actual electoral coalition is: affluent left wing graduates; public sector workers; pensioners who have been tribal Labour voters for 50 or 60 years; and those ethnic minorities who are poor and not very upwardly mobile. That coalition is looking pretty wobbly right now. The actually existing Labour membership is a good deal more middle class and ideologically extreme than even the rump of Labour voters.

I assume Morgan McSweeney knows this because he sees the internal polling. I don't like McSweeney, but he's one of the very few people in Labour who wants to appeal to the median voter. I don't think he knows how to do it, but most of them don't even want to do it.

Maybe. But it seems to me that with so many more students in the last 50 years or so, many have massively increased the number of staff and the physical infrastructure.

Which is part of the reason international students become more and more important, and not high achieving scholarship students, but simply ones with a lot of cash in their pockets.

It's all devalued university education as well and I think a lot of universities have become such insipid shadows of what they were it will be difficult for them to regroup. There is a real purpose for universities which is of civilisational important, and it isn't job training.

I don't know where the idea comes that anyone here is saying Labour should represent the "cultural" working class.

It would nice if they represented the actual working class, or it would be just as good if they own up to the fact that they represent the professional middle classes, and stop trying to claim the voice of the working classes and be all on their high horse about it.

I also really dislike the tendency to meld issues around cultural incompatibility or integration into "racism". It tends to end with unhelpful and confused comments about how "racists" hate "black and brown" people. Sometimes even when the supposed racists are black and brown themselves. Cultural incompatibility, desire to integrate, these are important things. I have a cousin who live in a city, outside the UK, that is now 50% new arrivals, mostly from India. It is a shit show in so many ways. Some seem frivolous - issues with driving and road accidents - but they do affect people's lives in a way it wouldn't with trying to integrate a smaller number of people. More seriously, they are seeing sectarian violence in the street, which is unheard of since the Victorian period when there was the odd Catholic/Protestant scrap, and people hiring or accepting tenants on the basis of their ethnic affiliation - that is to say, being from the same town, religion, caste, back home.

Objecting to that stuff isn't racism and I am a bit shocked anyone would claim that.

As for why it's more of a problem in working class communities. It is because when people like my boss immigrate - family highly educated for generations, from a big city, wealthy, speaks 6 languages including English to a high standard - those people generally integrate into te middle class communities they move into with little or no problem.

Actually I would go farther than that.

Not all leftism is socialism. where the state is supposed to be some kind of mediator for the will of the people.

There is a very strong strand of leftism which is precisely about empowering people to directly own their own means of production, through self employment, cooperative enterprise, localism, credit unions, and local agriculture and land use.

I don't know where the idea comes that anyone here is saying Labour should represent the "cultural" working class.
It would nice if they represented the actual working class...

So how do you define working class?

The traditional economic definition is solid, that would be people who are employed, with little in the way of benefits or pensions, often these days no union representation though that's more variable, often do not own their own home or other significant assets, don't have enough savings to invest in their future and are unlikely to save enough in most cases.

I think these days I would also say that many self-employed people would probably fit well into this category. Some of these may manage to save more if they are successful so at a certain point they may not fit that category so well - often by that point they aren't doing the main work of the business themselves either. So, a barber with a small shop in a neighbourhood, making a modest living, might still count as wc, my hairdresser who is probably bringing in considerably more than most GPs I would say could not easily pass as wc. It's not a hard line though, lots of edge cases.

A major divide is often between the university educated and those who aren't, it's not perfect but it does often map on to the difference pretty well. Especially of look at whether the parents went to university.

The Labour Party doesn't represent any of those people, or even the lower/working middle classes in a lot of cases. They represent the economic interests and cultural values of the university educated, urban, professional middle classes.

Well that's much more like my definition, which is apparently "ideological", so it's a whole different discussion from those who insist on defining WC by culture and heritage, regardless of their economic situation, as others here have.

If Labour doesn't represent the economic interests of these people, is there another party who you believe represents them better?

“Regardless of their economic situation” many/most working class people either grew up in poverty or lived through periods when money was not easily come by. Having your own business is often precarious, especially if you have no safety net to fall back on.

Good, Starmer is getting some gusto at last. I too would've loved to see that 🤣

So it's like a kind of generational hangover - "Working class" originally meant (among other things) that you were among the poorest class of society. Now we still call people working class even when they're quite wealthy, if they grew up poor because their parents were working class in the original sense.

What would you say is the policy implication of what you've written here? If a party wants to appeal to or serve the interests of the working class, what does the fact of that class having experienced poverty, even if they're not poor now, mean that party should do?

Exactly. People in my area aren't mainly bosses but similar situation to what pp described. It's very different in working class areas.

Besides, I would argue a LOT of middleclass people are also worried about those issues. It's going to be key to getting back lots of voters, not only WC ones. Mahmood & Starmer are hopefully seeing the writing on the wall & will fix this unless they want a Reform gov.

Arguably aren't quite a lot of public sector workers working class : tradespeople, care workers, transport, cleaners etc? I agree it's majority middle class though.

What's happening in Gaza is horrific and Netanyahu has done several at least questionable things. But falsely labelling it genocide & ignoring that Hamas is forcing Israel's hand in a lot of this does no one sny favours. How can OJ be so dense after a supposedly good education?

Well it's not heavy manual labour, it's very hard in other ways. Plus requires a degree, traditional working class jobs can be learnt on the job.

Yes,,maybe he is coming into himself as a leader. The best case scenario is that the snapping dogs of Reform get the PM scared enough to bring the changes we've needed for years.

Yes, journalists often used to have more life experience and it showed.