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

Meanwhile, Mrs Jeremy gives a high five to Adnan Hussain, which of course leads to the lunatic element of YP popping up in her comments to call her a Zionist stooge.
Are the Corbyns/Adnan Hussain now 'zionists'? Do they even know their own made up meaning of 'zionist' now? They seem to make up their own language, pontificate about whagt the 'menaing of words now is' then change the meanings to suit whatever they are saying! Who are these people?

Maybe Adnan has expressed support for a 2-state solution? I need to check. That might make him anti-Palestinian to some of the most deluded.

completely agree that there are many elements of fundamentalist and traditional Islam that is oppressive to Muslim women, which YP seemed fine with BTW when they courted the traditional Muslim vote and courted the Muslim Independent MP's. But the problem is that if Labour or Conservative try to do things like ban cousin marriages or actions against grooming gangs, actions against electoral fraud etc then they would be the very people who would call them Islamophobic. Yet these are things that would in the first instance protect Muslim women who are denied their rights by some elements of the male Muslim community and elders. They can't have it both ways. They cant say that when someone else does anything its Islamophobic but then when they decide that they disagree with Muslim stances on homosexuality and trans rights (partly because it would mean that Muslim women would not use public facilities like swimming pools etc) that they are 'too socially conservative'. What they want is to have their votes but make sure they just do as they say. If Islam is anathema to their liberal values then say so.

Personally I blame Enoch Powell for closing the asylums in the 1960s.

This party is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late party !It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies! It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-party?

But Andrew Feinstein told me it was just pining for the fjords

More rumours from Nicola James a member of the pro-Corbyn The Collective section of Your Party connected to Karrie Murphy.

Nicola James

There’s a pattern emerging that raises serious questions about democratic integrity - not just inside our own movement, but beyond it.

This statement that Zarah’s condition for resigning from the Labour Party was being installed as co-leader of the new party, immediately reminded me of two conversations I had with Andrew Feinstein in Bristol on 22 June, and a telephone call on 30 June.
He was trying to persuade me, and for me to influence others in The Collective, to back Zarah as deputy. I asked if this was a condition of her move, and he said “absolutely not”.

Feinstein told me that his preferred deputy was Salma Yaqoob, but that she couldn’t do it - and then added that although Zarah was “young and immature, she takes instruction well”. It struck me as both misogynistic and odd: hardly a vote of confidence in someone you’re lobbying to be elevated above others.

I told him then what I believe even more strongly now: you don’t crown leaders in a democratic movement. You don’t give anyone an unfair platform. Leadership has to be earned, not granted as a condition of entry.

And there’s something else that keeps resurfacing from multiple people: did Zarah approach the Green Party asking for a guaranteed leadership position before she left Labour? Several sources allege she did - and that she was told she would need to stand for election like anyone else.

I’m not asserting that - I’m just asking because it fits the wider pattern. So can the Green MPs who would most likely know please confirm or deny?

Exactly, great post. YP have no principles. As you say, if they stood on their values (much as I loathe the way they kowtow to the trans lobby) they could do some good potentially for problems women are actually facing.

It does seem like trans takes precedence over a lot. It's not as if Sultana has spoken out about cousin marriage or grooming gangs (which affected Muslim girls as well as Sikh and Hindu ones).

She likely aligns with the SWP line which is " err.. cops are involved actually and um Islamophobia and uh most abusers are white, actually"

https://socialistworker.co.uk/womens-liberation/what-causes-child-sexual-exploitation/

"...There is a specific context for why the home under capitalism provides such a fertile breeding ground for abuse. The capitalist nuclear family isn’t just a product of the wider system—it plays an important role in reinforcing it.
It’s through the family that children are taught to trust their parents above everyone else, and to obey adults more generally..."

Myths on grooming gangs meeting..

https://socialistworker.co.uk/swp-meetings/the-myths-of-muslim-grooming-gangs-scapegoating-and-islamophobia/

So if the nuclear family is terrible, what about the extended family and clan based kinship groups? Some of the more radical TRAs note their specific intention to destroy nuclear family norms in line the Butler utterings as an innately anti capitalist act

Communist Party debates possible relationship to Corbyn and Sultana’s new left party
But congress accepted the recommendation of the outgoing executive to oppose the motion on the grounds that it was too soon to tell what kind of party Your Party would turn out to be, noting it had been plagued by infighting from the beginning and, as it stood, did not allow joint membership with other political parties...

“Let’s not put this particular cart before this particular horse,” cautioned Lorraine Douglas of Eastern district. “Give the incoming executive the flexibility to deal with the situation on the ground as it develops.”

General secretary Rob Griffiths noted the positive potential both of Your Party and the current shift left by the Greens but also warned of their weaknesses.

“One star does not a constellation make,” he said of Green leader Zack Polanski, while criticising the Greens’ refusal to support women’s sex-based rights, their policy of rejoining the ever more right-wing and authoritarian European Union and their decision to end their longstanding opposition to membership of the US-led Nato war alliance.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/communist-party-debates-possible-relationship-corbyn-and-sultanas-new-left-party

Note this is the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) who run the Morning Star there are other parties with similar names.

Fascinating.

"takes instruction well"

Well that's worked out swimmingly

Quite 😂

Yes LOL Had he ever met her ( or any self respecting woman for that matter)?

The 'Socialist' alternative to the nuclear family has always been 'communal' childrearing', which is more or less what many of the white working class abused girls were living in. They were living in institutions, because their nuclear family had broken down. The 'grooming gangs' were not abusing within nuclear families. (although there was some suspicion that they were also domestic abusers) but outside the family. They were supported and protected by their families and their 'clans' which is also a form of 'communal family' in the Communist childrearing ideal mould.

I don't think extended families are automatically worse than nuclear. But clearly the clan-style system of the families was a key factor which allowed them to hide abuse : the birarderi system is essentially the Pakistani mafia imo.

Otoh I do think clans and care homes don't fully explain what was going on. Eg. In rural China, clans are still key to a lot of village life. Yet there don't seem to be the kind of mass sadistic abuse gangs that have happened over here.

I've read arguments that the abuse was not due to racial animus, that the gangs would have abused any girl in the vulnerable family situations the white Rotherham/Rochdale girls were in.

But Sikh & Hindu girls were also abused (in lesser numbers), even though they were more likely to be in nuclear or extended families, due to racial/religious animus, but also because the powerful clans were able to override the families ' attempts to protect them.

Muslims girls were also abused within their own community, they were also mostly in nuclear/extended families.

The Mirpuri community back in Mirpur has clear problems with rape, DV, forced marriage, child marriage, honour killings and other crimes against women. This combined with the birarderi system and racial/religious animus to create a toxic combination...

Trouble in the Welsh section.

https://nitter.net/BethWinterCynon/status/1990333925776933138#m

Membership details are not being shared by central command with the Welsh groups, even though they feel things are going really well.

It might be that central YP don't actually have the data if it's with ZS?

I don't think extended families are automatically worse than nuclear. But clearly the clan-style system of the families was a key factor which allowed them to hide abuse : the birarderi system is essentially the Pakistani mafia imo.
No I don't either. And an extended family is still a family. It was more pointing out that the SWP criticising the nuclear family as a reason for abuse is flawed in this case because the abuse happened outside the nuclear family and the perpetrators were living within a system closer to the 'Communist ideal' system of communally raised children ( the idea being iirc from reading the Communist Manifesto that children being brought up in nuclear families exacerbate capitalism because parents put the needs of their own children above those of other people's children, whereas if children were taken from their parents and all children raised 'communally' then you wouldn't prefer your own children to others). But the abusers and the abused were not in traditional nuclear families so their point is just a distraction. Abuse is more a case of access and opportunity for abusers than the fact they live in a nuclear family.

From Unherd:

https://unherd.com/2025/11/zarah-sultana-is-a-fickle-comrade/

So her husband is hoping / actively anticipating being made General Secretary of Your Party. The author says it's like the Clinton's of the hard left, but it's surely more like Nicola Sturgeon and her husband who ended up Treasurer.

She's also announced a pre Conference Rally in Liverpool to be attended with , all the stars, Max Shanley and Lewis Nielsen from Stand Up to Racism.

https://nitter.net/zarahsultana/status/1990843592110227891#m

Morning Star interview

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/zarah-sultana-says-your-party-must-be-explicitly-socialist-and-embrace-class-war

Lewis Nielsen is an odd lad. He's literally a nepo baby who owes his position to (a) his parents being SWP bigwigs and (b) having at a young age been a protege of the now disgraced Martin Smith (who continues to have influence behind the scenes).

His speeches show no spark of humour or self-deprecation or insight. He comes across as an AI that can supply party talking points on any question.

He's nominally the national secretary of the SWP, which on paper makes him top dog, though nobody really believes that.

The Socialist Worker has developed this odd habit of reporting on events where he speaks, referring to him modestly as "Lewis from Stand Up To Racism", and then ruining the modesty by having a huge block quote of Dear Leader's remarks. It's as if they're trying to create a cult of personality around someone with no personality.

He has also, somehow, become big mates with Zarah Sultana. Check out how often she makes a public appearance with Lewis in tow.

The implosion of Your party is going to be dissected for years:

Inside the Your Party crack-up
Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana have irreconcilable visions of democracy
For Corbyn’s allies, his Labour Party is the only contemporary reference point for a viable left politics in Britain, having won 13 million votes for a radical programme which expanded the country’s horizon of possibility. Murphy and the other staffers who steered that project can thus make a strong claim that they should play a role in shaping its inheritor (especially if the ultimate defeat of Corbynism was a result of Brexit splitting its voter base, not of any major strategic errors on their part). This position is bolstered by their alliance with the independent MPs, who, though their backgrounds are not in the socialist movement, are nonetheless emblems of the Palestine upsurge – without which there would be no Your Party. The fact that they inflicted a stunning defeat on the Labour machine by turning out thousands of voters means that their control over the conference has a clear democratic foundation. These are leaders who have already proved their ability to reach people who were neglected by the two-party system and who may well have otherwise stayed home on election day: precisely the kind of experience that Your Party needs to harness and extend.
Supporters of Sultana, however, dismiss the idea of a party founded by Corbyn staffers and MPs as “Labour 2.0”, asserting that the defeat of 2019 calls for tough, self-critical reflection on their record – not just the contingencies of Brexit, but what she claims were deeper patterns of mismanagement. To avoid the mistakes of the past, Sultana argues, it is necessary to open up the proto-party to other parts of the left, particularly activists and social movements. On this basis she has styled herself as a defender of the grassroots against the bureaucrats. Her proximity to politicians like Driscoll and Andrew Feinstein, both of whom emphasise community organising as the force for rebuilding Britain’s progressive bloc, is a reflection of this tendency. She objects to the elevation of the independent MPs on the grounds that a resolute commitment to the left – and a determination to revivify it after years in the wilderness – is more important than any ephemeral election victory.
So while Corbyn and the independent MPs have staked their claim on inspiring many who were, or still are, outside the left, Sultana has mostly played to its base. The online row over gender politics between Sultana and the independent MP Iqbal Mohamed should be read as a reflection of this dynamic. It is not simply another debate over “women’s spaces”, which could in theory be settled by adopting a sufficiently principled yet pluralist policy at conference. It is a clash over who has the right to represent Your Party: the Independent Alliance as the proxy for the protest vote of 2024, powered in large part by Muslim communities who do not always identify with the left; or Sultana as the tribune of an uncompromising socialism.
The hope was that co-leadership would allow Your Party to display both these strengths: looking outward to the country at large while also activating its core cadre. But, again, because socialists in Britain do not have many robust political institutions, nor even a coherent political culture, they have struggled properly to balance these two priorities – and a polarisation has instead asserted itself. This structural issue has, in turn, been exacerbated by dubious decisions on the part of both factions. Team Corbyn is scarred by the memory of letting people into the inner circle in 2015-19 only for them to sabotage the project. They have therefore treated Sultana with suspicion and hostility. Team Sultana has been so confident in its claim to legitimacy, and so outraged by its perceived exclusion, that it has made unilateral decisions – the co-leadership announcement, the membership system – which have further inflamed tensions.

https://archive.is/yVS4s

I see that Audrey White ( AKA Red Rosa) is on the bill as a guest at the pre-conference do. That woman is a nasty piece of work in spite of her claims to represent the interests of a better, nicer world. Whenever Kier Starmer comes to Liverpool she's in his face, ranting and raving - even as he has lunch in a busy local bistro.

Some months ago Audrey White, and her pensioners group, staged a protest in the central reservation of a main road through the city. It was located outside of Paula Barker's constituency office. They were there to wave banners and protest about Gaza and also to harangue Barker. The next day I noticed that Barker's office signage had disappeared ( as in someone had climbed up and removed it over-night). It has still not been replaced. 🙄

O Lord, the lineup of stars at Zarah's rally... it says a lot about her popularity in Coventry that one (1) Labour councillor there has defected to YP, and seems to have become one of Zarah's bag carriers.

I am also tempted to put on my Lady Violet Bonham Carter voice and ask "Who is this Max Shanly? Who is he? What on earth qualifies a man with a 'Twitter account' to go around telling everyone else what they should be doing?"

"all members can take part in online one member one vote" at the conference

https://nitter.net/thisisyourparty/status/1990850662607851862#m