Your Corbyn/Sultana Party - Discussion thread - Part 2

[fromorbit]

The YP starting conference is in the ACC in Liverpool between 29-30 November so only three weeks off. With competing factions involving Islamic conservatives, every variety of Marxist/Communist, former Labour members, trade union activists, entryists from SWP and SPEW, splitters from the Scottish Greens, trans activists and actual left wing feminists [not the nice kind] it is difficult to underplay how much controversy there is likely to be. So we will need a second thread in advance.

Thus far following the internal drama of the UKs newest left party has taken a whole thread. It has been a wild ride and the party still does not have a name.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5394557-your-corbynsultana-party-discussion-thread

Browning still has an X account [which makes money for Elon Musk ust by existing so that is huge hypocrisy] and has gone after Adnan.

Eryn Browning ⚢ ⚧︎

Adnan, you publicly claimed that trans women pose a threat to the safety and rights of cis women despite all evidence pointing otherwise. As for my history with the greens, I'm damn proud of everything I achieved, and the mistake I made when 16 will never change that.

https://nitter.net/Eryn__Browning/status/1994908434312171817

So you made a "mistake" because you were a horny boy in a dress who doesn't respect girls. Note there are countless millions of boys not wearing dresses who never did that. Yes obviously Twatty teenage sexist boys are a thing, BUT guess what most grow up and learn to control themselves. To do that they have to master themselves not deny who they are.

Browning you are sexist and also obviously a religious bigot. If you have an issue with Islam SAY it. Call the religion out. Like an adult.

Or maybe you think Islam is great except when it affects you. You are too scared to call out an entire sexist religion so you target a handful of Muslims who say openly what they think.

What a little twerp.

The Times review has a picture from the conference of the delegates. It looks like a pensioners day out! Almost all of them are White and over 70 I would say. Doesnt bode well for Sultana. They all look like Jezza fans.

I'm not sure that follows. My local YP group is full of old people who think Zarah is the best thing since sliced bread. Also bear in mind that there's something like 2-3 thousand members at conference, but 50,000 members stting at home who all get a vote on each motion. So both the makeup of the conference audience and any way they behave probably tells us very little about likely outcomes.

The sortition process was supposed to make the conference audience representative of the membership demographics but the organisation was so last minute that by the time they invited people, most people couldn't go. Pensioners were probably the only people who didn't have competing work and family commitments + could afford the travel and accommodation expenses.

I don't think that would work with one or two former candidates for the Greens. It'd probably motivate them.

Just in - YP members have voted 51.6% for collective leadership vs 48.4% for an individual leader. This means neither Corbyn nor Sultana can stand for leader (though presumably there would have to be an MP figurehead if an election happens)

I'm quite suspicious of what "collective leadership" means in practice, and it will depend heavily on which people get to be on the Politburo.

Fair enough. We'll just have to see what happens. My sudpicion is that the whole thing will not last out the year.

Also lovely to see @AyoubKhanMP @ShockatAdam and @zarahsultana together.

Accompanied by pictures of them speaking separately. So in the same room, but possibly not at the same time.

5 Pillars chap has been openly challenging the left groupsicles that YP don't actually need them, but do need the religious vote to effect change

Actually @Truckdriver youre right. The delegates don't seem to have listened to Corbyn at all. They have not voted for his preferred party name or his preferred structure.

They're not delegates, that's the thing. They haven't been delegated by their local branches to vote according to the branch's wishes, as happens at Labour conference. They're just a very small random selection of the membership, which as I said is in practice not that random. The votes have been by the entire membership, voting online.

How do you know they haven't voted for Corbyn's preferred name? The vote for the name doesn't close until 4.00 this afternoon.

The cursed 52:48 ratio again

There will be a central executive committee of 16, voted into position by the membership via one member one vote, plus positions for MPs, Scotland and Wales reps etc. Powers heavily weighted towards the ordinary members rather than MPs.

One thing I would point out with all these things - the sortition for conference, the leadership structure, the party structure itself etc. - is that they seem to have recognised that things will be learnt and matters arise unexpectedly as it beds in, and made provision in the constitution for them to be revised after the first year.

I voted for collective leadership, mainly because I couldn't face another four months of Corbyn and Sultana fighting like rabbits in a sack.

Members have voted that dual membership may be allowed for organisations specifically approved by the leading committee. So, not exactly Labour's proscribed list, but more of a whitelist.

I think this is a massive can of worms - almost all parties (Greens, SNP, Conservatives etc) disallow dual membership for good practical reasons.

Labour does have the Co-Operative Party as a relic of its baroque constitutional structure. But few people outside Labour have even heard of the Co-Op Party.

My immediate guess is - the Socialist Party (formerly Militant) will be allowed in because they're good boys and girls who can be trusted to behave, they tried to affiliate to Labour in 2015 after all, and they're ready to dissolve TUSC.

The CPB (Morning Star) will also be allowed in if they want. Counterfire might be tolerated because they aren't formally a party, they've got a key role in Stop The War, and John Rees and Lindsey German are personally close to Corbyn.

Zarah's new best mates in the SWP probably won't be allowed in, not least because the row over expelling them has incentivised people to google the SWP and find out more about them.

I think this is a massive can of worms - almost all parties (Greens, SNP, Conservatives etc) disallow dual membership for good practical reasons.

That's true but the situation is a bit different. For example even now, in the earliest stages of the party forming, people have been talking a lot about the necessity of an electoral alliance with the Greens. Any chance of taking on Reform is going to need that kind of cooperation across the left, so allowing dual membership within specific careful limits seems a natural consequence of that. And as it's a whitelist rather than blacklist, anything that causes problems can easily enough be revoked by the CEC.

Then there's the whole question of what exactly makes something a political party. It's been pointed out that the SWP for example is not actually a registered political entity, and the banning of its members seems to have been based purely on it having "party" in its name.

Having said that, enough people seem to hate the SWP that you're right it will probably be proscribed.

Anyone listen to the R4 to one of the male YP MPs being interviewed a few days ago? I just caught the end of it and didn’t hear who it was but he was discussing who the party stood for and gave a long list of ‘vulnerable’ people, including trans. But I don’t think he mentioned women being killed and abused as one such vulnerable group?

Think it might have been Shockat Adam?

Having said that, enough people seem to hate the SWP that you're right it will probably be proscribed.

It's not a question of "hate". It's a question of their record of behaviour.

And it's not only the multiple rape cover-ups, which might be relevant if YP is to have a safeguarding policy. It's their consistent destructive, parasitic behaviour in any movement that lets them join.

Everyone with experience of them has one story, maybe many stories, at the micro level. Recently one of their bigwigs, Colm Bryce, died of cancer, and Socialist Worker ran a tribute page appealing for stories of what a lovely man he was. I personally witnessed Colm Bryce bullying a vulnerable person into a nervous breakdown, because that's what he thought "leadership" meant. He wasn't a particular outlier in their officer class.

That's the kind of people who Zarah Sultana, Andrew Feinstein, Max Shanly etc are bigging up as great activists who are building the left and have a constructive contribution to make. That's the company they choose to keep.

Trivialising this as subjective "hate" really won't do.

The decision to go with a politburo instead of a single, identifiable leader is a recipe for yet more chaos & constant, endless factional infighting. Nobody who knows the first thing about the history of the British Left should be surprised by this, of course.

The decision to allow ‘dual membership’ is politically suicidal. It will inevitably result in mass infiltration by groups of Trots who will see YP & its supporter database as a vehicle to be exploited for their own ends. Equally inevitably, they will all fall out with one another, because that’s just what they do, and the whole thing will collapse amid factionalism & splits.

Anyone with any sense whose politics is to the left of Labour will give up on this farcical shitshow now & join the Greens.

Even little Owen is annoyed at the SWP

https://nitter.net/owenjonesjourno/status/1994883358225006994#m

He's sounding quite squeaky in this interview. Is he on helium

https://nitter.net/TheCanaryUK/status/1994809595236421828#m

Trivialising this as subjective "hate" really won't do.

Get over yourself, I wasn't trivialising anything. I don't have any personal experience of the SWP or individuals within it, so can't give you the validation you so crave, sorry.

I was just relaying what I see from people's reactions to them at conference. I wasn't there and don't know the background so I add no personal judgment about whether those reactions are fair or not.

The decision to go with a politburo instead of a single, identifiable leader is a recipe for yet more chaos & constant, endless factional infighting. Nobody who knows the first thing about the history of the British Left should be surprised by this, of course.

Can we get one thing clear before this takes off - "Politburo" is a stupid analogy because the whole point of a politburo as the name and image has been popularised from the USSR etc, is that it is unelected and governs as an unaccountable dictatorship.

This committee is to be elected by all members for a fixed term, to be replaced regularly by new representatives elected by all members for a fixed term. It's as much a politburo as the governors of your local school.

I know we all love the whole Everything Left Is Stalinist schtick, but sometimes it's just nonsense.

Get over yourself

Perhaps you'd like to say that to the rape victims.

What's not clear about my post? I'm not under any obligation to provide support for anything you say. FFS I didn't even disagree with you. I just admit that I don't know anything about the subject so don't have an opinion to offer. It's bizarre that you seem to take that as some kind of offensive slight against your view or, now, against rape victims.

Is this new rule that everybody has to explicitly signal their support for everything you say or be a rape apologist site-wide, or just for this thread?

Wild that Amy Leather was allowed into the hall to speak.

Not only is Amy someone with a long history of summarily expelling dissidents from her own organisation - which makes her an enormous hypocrite on that count alone - but in 2013 she was generally reckoned to be the most gung-ho supporter of the rapist Martin Smith.

You can't respond to me without dripping with sarcasm along the lines of "sorry I can't validate your wild accusations"

And, for someone who doesn't have an agenda of defending the SWP, you're very keen to trivialise objections to them.

If you don't know about the subject, you could read up on it before making your pronouncements. Or, you know, ask someone who does know. If I don't have enough status in your world to be listened to, there are others.

I was just talking about the 'sticker' thing. I was disproving my own comment that the people who seemed to have turned up to conference were more likely to favour Corbyn and admitting I was wrong, because they seem to have voted against his preferences.