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

RainbowBagels, I would actually question, though, whether Hindus initially voted Tory more. I thought there was a shift towards Tories in the 80s but the bigger shift was later on in the 2000s-early 2010s.

https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/news/general-election-2024-the-hindu-vote/

I think you can argue similar about Jewish votes. Part of the reason is the shift away from being poorer immigrants, but another major issue is Labour's shift towards highly questionable stances on Palestine etc. This has been of course a bigger issue for Jews due to the linked rise in anti Semitism and blanket hostility towards Israel.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean.

Ah OK I get. So Reform (which was the actual subject being discussed in regard to Clacton, that I was responding to) DO have a plan. It's called "hiring a better image consultant than the hipster socialists". 😂

The Left tolerated many intolerant practices (mainly practiced by the second group of immigrants)'- I'm assuming you mean stuff to do with women, as you've mentioned. Any other practices, in particular?
Again just from my own experience on the outside, yes, mainly re women. For example, I was brought up near East London, in a large Asian community. In East London the street signs were in English and Bengali. Leaflets, medical information, everything in dual languages. Great and very inclusive you could say, but it meant that for women, if their husband didn't want them to learn English they could not say ' but I need to be able to go to the doctors/ read road signs/ go to English classes' because everything was in Bengali, so they ended up trapped in the home, only speaking Bengali, being unable to really leave. Children, again often girls were pulled out of school to translate if needed for mothers who had lived in the UK for decades, a stones throw from one of the wealthiest areas of the country but living a parralel life. Lutfer Rahman was convicted in the same area of vote rigging. I doubt he was stealing mens votes. Largely those same women or their daughters were having their postal votes stolen. And then in the North ( and suspected also London) , the grooming gangs. These practices andxattitudes are not acceptable in many Muslim cou tries and communities but are seen as ' cultural practices' that cannot be interfered with by the Left. They listen to male leaders but never to women in these communities- the ones who suffer abuse, forced marriage, cousin marriage, fgm, religious marriages that few legal rights etc.

RainbowBagels, I would actually question, though, whether Hindus initially voted Tory more. I thought there was a shift towards Tories in the 80s but the bigger shift was later on in the 2000s-early 2010s.
Possibly. As I said its only my observations, and as a child growing up in the Asian community in London in the 70s and 80s thats what it looked like. It could just have been my experience. My uncles and aunts and all their friends etc ( all Asian, though not all Hindu and all East African Indians) are all dyed in the wool Tories. My family were massive outsiders because my dad was a socialist ( although also a small business owner/ landlord!)

I agree totally, it's disgusting

Thanks for explaining that re languages. I remember that was a key issue in the Tower Hamlets fiasco but the impact on women was something I hadn't fully comprehended.

Interesting, thank you.

The articles I read after goggling suggested Hindus initially voted Labour more esp throughout 70s due to racism concerns. Maybe this was more pronounced in non-central urban areas where Indian families might have felt more isolated? Obviously racism existed in major urban areas too, of course..

could not say ' but I need to be able to go to the doctors/ read road signs/ go to English classes' because everything was in Bengali, so they ended up trapped in the home, only speaking Bengali, being unable to really leave. Children, again often girls were pulled out of school to translate if needed for mothers who had lived in the UK for decades, a stones throw from one of the wealthiest areas of the country but living a parralel life. Lutfer Rahman was convicted in the same area of vote rigging. I doubt he was stealing mens votes.

Back in the 90s my Mum was doing interpreting work and also tried setting up English classes for Bangladeshi women in our town. It all went pear shaped because the wives of one set of BD restaurant owners wouldn't be seen in the same room as the wives from the rival restaurant.

I note the thing in Tower Hamlets (I posted earlier that Lutfur Rahmans Aspire councillors are also standing for The Bangladesh National Party. Khaleda Zias son has now returned to BD and might become head of the official nationalist / Islamist adjacent opposition to the interim government). The men who were asked would always say their wives were too busy for such things as committee meetings. I think there is one woman councillor at Tower Hamlets Aspire. This is what the postal votes crackdown is all about

An exciting development!

Zarah Sultana has launched another grouping called Grassroots Left (edited to add: to fill the allocations for members of the Your Party CEC) which is promising to pledge solidarity to the oppressed people of the world and build a bottom up socialist movement
https://nitter.net/zarahsultana/status/2010447511069372437#m
Look! There's official Ayatollah of Democratic Socialism Max Shanly!

She's also handily including a link where people can donate for this brilliant cause that will surely finally end the imperialist forever wars

https://nitter.net/zarahsultana/status/2010447511069372437#m

https://app.grassrootsleft.org/donate

Oh.

"Scoop: more detail from my story last night that Jeremy Corbyn never gave his permission to be listed on the new Grassroots Left slate and was "very upset" that his request not to be included was ignored. Sources close to Corbyn confirmed he will be releasing his own plans in the coming days"

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2026/01/the-fight-for-control-of-your-party-has-begun

If anyone in the world shouldn't be left alone with the lunch money from their mum, let alone serious amounts of moolah from grass roots supporters, it's Zarah.

promising to pledge solidarity to the oppressed people of the world and build a bottom up socialist movement

She's nothing if not ambitious.

@Lalgarh Ye gods & little fishes, are people still giving RS money?!

Here is Sultana on Iran, which (a) throws some light on what her convoluted idea of solidarity is, and (b) still draws the ire of antisemitic wackaloon Professor David Miller, who has quite a following in the very online left circles that Sultana relies on for support.

I note the portal "solidarity tech" that is collecting it styles itself as an activist based setup. So presumably not actually backing up it's data on a terrible Amazon cloud account and using dreadful possibly Israel linked software?

https://www.solidarity.tech/?utm_source=site-mark

It lists "who we serve". (Includes the Mamdani campaign) But not "who we are". Is that usual?

Data controller listed as "saint-simon and co", a company limited by guarantee

https://www.grassrootsleft.org/privacy

She of course has nothing to say about the outside power dictating and interfering with Gaza, namely Iranian-backed Hamas.

And blames Irans economic problems on US sanctions, when they seem to have plenty of money to fund terrorism, despite those sanctions.

She really does play the game like any other politician might. For all her protestations that socialists are moral and non hypocritical and call out abuses of power wherever she sees them, she's as blind to the evils of the left and Islamism as she sees capitalists facilitating evil.
Not that different from the likes of John Pilger etc.

It's part of being unwilling to let go of a very all encompassing, inflexible, interpretive lens.

It's often possible to make a very pragmatic case for not getting involved in internal conflicts like Iran, simply because very frequently, despite good intentions, it doesn't work or makes things worse.

But people like ZS feel the need to dress that up in ideological terms.

The level of contradiction on questions like, when is it ok to influence international issues is really off the charts. If it were a pragmatic question then that makes sense - it may be ok when it works, but sometimes it's not going to work. If you need that justified in terms of ideology it creates a web of contradictions.

An insightful article by Daniel Finkelstein yesterday's Times:

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/once-again-the-hard-left-is-wrong-on-iran-tsrj3c8n2

"This week Miller has been busy arguing that the problem with the Islamic Republic of Iran is that it is too liberal and democratic, that it is nevertheless “the last line of defence against the destruction of civilisation by PaxJudaica” and that there should be “no leniency towards saboteurs” who he argues need to be liquidated. He calls Iranian refugees “American running dogs of the Zionist enemy”. Supportmiller.org is still available online should you wish to donate, or to add your signature to that of Noam Chomsky.
Miller is an extremist, even within the ranks of extremists. He, for instance, describes Zarah Sultana, who recently advocated the nationalisation of all of Britain’s sweet shops, as “shilling for Mossad”, while one of the recent fruits of his eminent scholarship has been to identify the Guardian columnist Owen Jones as a “footsoldier for the Jewish empire”.
So it would be unfair to suggest his latest pronouncements are supported by all the people who leapt to his defence in 2021. But precisely because he seems no longer to care what anyone else thinks, his frank opinion is helpful in understanding the puzzling position of the left towards Iran over the last 45 years.
Miller’s view is that the revolutionary forces in Iran are a vital bulwark against capitalist imperialism. It is essentially the same position taken by Jeremy Corbyn towards the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Corbyn told a conference held by the Morning Star that while there were criticisms to be made of the Soviets, they were the only country protecting insurgent states from the West"

Horseshoe Theory, where David Miller meets Nick Fuentes.

antisemitic wackaloon former Professor David Miller

In the UK, of course, we have Connor Tomlinson, who is Nick Fuentes without the wit and charm.

One thing Danny doesn't touch on, though I think it's significant, is that this is not just a function of the tankie left. Even groups that make being "anti-tankie" a core part of their identity are very quiet on Iran. I don't know why. Yes, the ayatollahs are anti-America and anti-Israel, but that didn't prevent groups like RS21 from spending years furiously denouncing Assad.

I also know that some of the people who defended David Miller when he was being sacked had strong suspicions that he was an antisemitic crank. He's become much more obvious about that recently, but they were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as long as he used the right codewords and didn't denounce their leaders.

It must be hard to square compulsory hijabs, the murder of young women, and hanging as the punishment for protest with your idealistic socialist vision.

Maybe the only thing that counts is being anti-capitalist?