Week in, week out, I keep my thoughts on Your Party firmly placed on the back burner.
Not because of some unbreakable lifelong personal commitment to defend Jeremy Corbyn from the forces of elitist fuckwittery, and not because anyone is asking me to look the other way while the circus comes to town.
I’ve said very little about Your Party because I want it to succeed, and when I look at the current political landscape on the left, we need it to grow. I’m afraid a bit of rehashed Corbynism-lite with a green tint probably has its limitations.
In case you have forgotten, the enemy is the Labour government, Nigel Farage and Reform UK, and whoever it is that leads the Conservatives these days.
Kenny someone?
You see, it’s not easy to write about Your Party because what we see, hear and say on social media isn’t necessarily reflective of public opinion, away from agenda-based clickbait headlines, a few bizarre folk that pretend they’re in the know, and the fascistic hostility of Musk’s X platform.
But I’ll have a crack, because I’m absolutely sick of the mistruths, the briefings, the incompetence, the egotism and the one-sided tribal bullshit I read online on an almost daily basis.
If you’re hoping for a Corbyn/Sultana love-in, you’ve come to the wrong place.
Your Party: WTF?
When Your Party was first floated online, unexpectedly by Zarah Sultana, a wave of hope encapsulated the left. This was our moment and our movement, perfectly timed to challenge the neoliberal drivel that has forced millions into poverty, milked and destroyed our public services, and dragged us kicking and screaming into other people’s wars without our consent.
It was just a shame that Jeremy wasn’t tagged into the memo.
Months later, Your Party is up and running, albeit rather meekly, and the first ever party conference, hosted in Liverpool, came across, at least to me, as some Labour psychodrama where the only thing missing was a ‘police escort’ for Luciana Berger.
The 51% squeaker for the somewhat messy looking “collective leadership” sidelining Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana (who clashed over solo vs. co-lead models), rightly or wrongly, bans on Socialist Workers’ Party members, Sultana boycotting Day 1 of her own party conference over “shadowy bureaucrats”, infighting over cash and ideology… I swear we have worn this particular t-shirt before.
Seeing Team Corbyn and Team Sultana having bare-knuckle scraps over something like mailing lists isn’t particularly appealing, and even less helpful to poor people and working classes who are on the receiving end.
Will the most fragile of egos and the narcissism of the very few become the biggest stumbling blocks to a fairer, greener and better future for the many?
Your Party must not become a flawed, familiar, and fatally compromised mirror to Labour’s darkened soul. If it wants to evolve beyond Labour 2.0, it needs to ditch the parliamentary fetish and build from the shop floor before the infighting buries it alive.
What is the pitch?
Your Party’s pitch — wealth taxes, nationalisation of utilities and rail, massive social housing builds, and anti-austerity spending — will hoover up some disgruntled Labourites, but without challenging the system’s core.
Sultana calls it a bulwark against “decades of neoliberalism”, which sounds great in theory. Still, I’m yet to see the revolutionary edge that’s needed to make it sound just a little bit more convincing than a social-democratic placebo that softly dulls the edge of fundamental transformation.
It is easy to forget that the core of Your Party emerged as a desperate riposte to Starmer’s Labour, because the infighting effortlessly distracts us from the very reasons Your Party was formed in the first place.
This has to end if Your Party wants to be taken seriously. Your Party’s own critical failures and Zack Polanski’s well-pitched eco-populism have already seen the Greens capitalise, and credit to them for doing so.
I’m not here to rip into Jeremy or Zarah, at least not yet, because you will all have your own views on what has unfolded over the last few months, and your own support for the founders of Your Party will prejudice those views.
But as with most political disputes and conflicts, nothing is as straightforward as it seems. Briefing isn’t exclusive to one faction, nor is it egotistical, self-serving, or dishonesty from bureaucrats running amok.
Things must change
If Your Party evolves beyond the drama, and I believe it can, don’t write them off just yet.
Was there always likely to be teething pains for a brand new party built in just six months by people who’ve spent years being purged and slandered? Yes.
But Your Party activists will tell you that the energy on the ground is electric, the policy platform is the furthest left of any party with a realistic chance of double-digit MPs, and for once, the left has the potential to be a battering ram instead of a circular firing squad.
Has hope finally found a new home? No, not just yet, but at least the boxes have been packed up and labelled, and the removal firm is on standby.
I think it’s worth remembering that one-in-five Brits are open to the possibility of voting for a Corbyn-Sultana left-wing party. But we all remember 2019, and there is absolutely no doubt that Your Party will need all the friends it can get.
Your Party could well be the very best shot British socialism has had in decades, genuinely. Still, first we need to see the tolerance and decency that we wish to be commonplace in our society, spread around the upper echelons of the party itself, because without that, it isn’t really ‘your party’ at all.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.