The Crisis in Your Party

Considering the last fortnight, it takes something special to make Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney look like exemplars of competence. Just a quick reminder of where we are in the Your Party crisis. Zarah Sultana's faction, annoyed with the snail's pace of the project and the conference arrangements worked out seemingly behind her back, opened a membership drive. Only to have it disowned by Jeremy Corbyn and the four Gaza Independents. Sultana's reply complained about being frozen out, and another communique from the Corbyn camp said they had reported the affair to the Information Commissioner. Archie Woodrow has done the honours in supplying the time lines, and his superlative guide to the hidden differences behind the Your Party project is required reading. Things have settled down a bit today, with prominent supporters in Wales and a new grassroots initiative each fielding their takes. Sultana has endorsed the latter while Sky News reports on reconciliation efforts. Your Party might be in the toilet but no one's pulled the chain. Yet.

There's nothing much to add except for hundreds of thousands of would-be supporters, the outbreak of collective joy that occasioned this summer's announcement that a new party is but a memory. Recrimination, anxiety, and disappointment is now filling the vacuum left by this unseemly falling out. As Woodrow writes in his overview of Your Party's factional balances, there is an abundance of control-freakery and secrecy. It's tempting to locate this in the desire of a handful of people around Corbyn wanting to secure paid positions and influence in the new party, and plenty have made that inference. But this is secondary to the politics of our shadowy movers and shakers. And what are these politics? Fundamentally, it comes down to what they think the new party should be.

For the Corbyn wing and its (understandably) reluctant leader, the desire is obviously a mk II Labour Party. One with a touch more democracy and better politics, but ultimately Labourist in orientation and method. The "sexist boys' club" Sultana criticised has centred the formation of the new party on the honourable members - Corbyn and the so-called Gaza Independents. From the off, the MPs have had a privileged say over the party's direction, and are looking to preserve their autonomy and standing within it. This is hardly the grass roots democracy Corbyn promised over the summer, and is concerning when it's very clear that apart from Gaza, the politics of the independents are barely Labourist, let alone socialist. But that suits a Labour mk II fine, which thrives on a politics of the lowest common denominator.

Some have asked why Corbyn wants to co-habit with the independents in a new party. Is he not aware of their positions on landlordism, LGBTQ issues, and cousin marriage? Of course he is, but Corbyn's ethical socialism predisposes him to a politics of diplomacy. This is a politics of moral outrage at the evils of the world, and believes in the essential dignity and goodness of human beings. Capitalism is obviously damaging and cruel, and there is an ethical imperative to build something better - a position everyone can get behind, because everyone benefits. Socialist morality abstracted from a materialist appreciation of power and politics, in Corbyn's case, helps explain his decency and willingness to engage with people most wouldn't touch with a barge pole. Why can't we all get along is the principle by which he's lived his political life, and he reciprocates the friendship and loyalty shown him by others. Karie Murphy, for instance, is often criticised as a gatekeeper and an authoritarian, but she stayed in the trench with Corbyn until the end. Small wonder she's part of the inner circle, alongside Len McCluskey who did everything he could to get Corbyn readmitted as a Labour MP. Unlike Starmer, who bins off allies when they become an encumbrance, the fusion of the personal and political in Corbyn means he can never be as mercenary. Regardless of how damaging his allies might be for whatever project he's involved with. Where the Gaza Independents are concerned, while Labour "oppositionists" to Israel's genocide have been few and far between, they have been resolute and faced down Westminster and media hostility. On paper, who would not want to make common political cause with such courageous people?

Corbyn-as-figurehead is the glue that keeps this faction together. Unity where their common interests are concerned, and diplomatic silences over political differences. Which makes Corbyn ideal to leas a broad church that stretches from the far left to anti-LGBTQ "traditionalists", as long as no one talks about difference or, horror of horrors, politics. This is where his keen interest in community organising comes in. While laudable in and of itself as a means of implanting the new party into our communities, activists so engaged will build trust and solidarity through good works. Disagreements would simply wither away and not matter because action takes precedence.

Sultana's faction has a different objective. They are not looking for a Labour mk II, and want to establish a radical left party. Indeed, in her interview with Novara on the topic, she said her preferred name for the new party would be the Left Party or The Left. In other words, quite similar to several continental left-green parties and broadly congruent with Zack Polanski's trajectory. She has argued for putting "class issues" front and centre, while maintaining it should be a socially liberal party. I.e. Mirror the vast majority of the class it seeks to organise in the age of immaterial labour. Obviously, this party isn't a place for landlords or those whose politics seek to sow division, regardless of how good they might be on questions of war and peace. And she's impatient with the bureaucratic obstructionism and foot dragging given the state of political affairs. Whether you agree or disagree with her positions, at least Sultana has been open about her vision and what the new party should be like. Can you say the same for Corbyn?

These are the fundamental differences between the two broad camps, and the reason we've reached this impasse is because one side - Corbyn's - would rather not have a "divisive" debate about the party's character. The problem is when you stifle politics, they find other, more damaging ways of finding expression, and it ends up scarring those doing the repressing. The situation we're in means Corbyn is the only politician with sufficient social weight to bring together the left and refound it on a mass, as opposed to a sectarian basis. But the more he delays, the more his associates are given free reign to arrest this process, the more his standing will diminish to the point where the moment could be lost. But the situation can and must be retrieved. Open the membership, put the party on a firm financial and organisational setting, regularise the already-existing branches and fora, and let's have this founding conference where the purpose and politics of our party can get thrashed out.

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