The fallout from September's public arguments got the Geiger counters twitching last month. Your Party "insiders" briefed the press that it was taking legal action against the directors of MoU Holdings Ltd. This was the company set up by Andrew Feinstein, Beth Winter, and Jamie Driscoll ahead of the launch of Your Party, and was to hold some money and data gathered during the initial phases of the launch. Sultana climbed on board in the summer with her quitting Labour, announcing she would co-lead the founding process of a new left party. This was the occasion she announced a mailing list, attracting about 850,000 sign ups. The starting pistol on the foundation process had been fired, somewhat to the annoyance of Jeremy Corbyn and the people around him. Then Sultana jumped the gun again two months later, announcing Your Party's membership was open. About 20,000 joined inside a day, until Corbyn intervened and said no, this ain't happening. There was a public row with legal threats flying about, reports to the information commissioner, and a great deal of rancour. Then, about two weeks after, the "official" membership portal was launched.
Here lies the problem. The details and monies of the first "launch" sat with MoU Holdings. To be "official", members would need to either join again via the new route, or wait until the information and cash was transferred over. Unfortunately, this is a far from a straightforward matter. Legally, the monies and data can't simply be given. It's not like writing a cheque and sharing the relevant passwords. MoU is liable for bank charges for processing refunds. Second, there are more costs associated with navigating the transfer of the sum, winding up MoU, and settling the resulting legal bills. When YP "sources" threatened legal action against the directors of MoU, claiming they were withholding funds and accusing them of having "gone rogue", that same someone was lying. They knew there were legal complexities, and why Feinstein, Winter, and Driscoll were not prepared to shoulder the costs. I.e. It was not they who initiated the premature membership drive. That was Sultana. To try and resolve the problem, the Independent Alliance MPs were invited to become MoU directors but they turned it down, knowing they'd be on the hook for the costs. The existing directors then resigned, with Sultana becoming the sole director. Undoubtedly an expensive decision for her, but a willingness to take responsibility for the problems her premature membership call caused. Something she deserves credit for.
On Thursday Sultana was able to transfer £200k from MoU to YP, and for this she was targeted for a hostile briefing. Issued in the the name of the IA MPs while she was on BBC Question Time, it was an act of deliberate sabotage. Corbyn has apparently disowned the statement. It says everything that was said previously. All MoUs monies should be ours, we demand an immediate transfer, blah blah, yeah yeah. A move designed to undermine Sultana and throw more discord into the mill of pain the nascent party has become. Who is responsible? One of Corbyn's close allies who want something between a personality cult and Labour mkII, albeit with less democracy? Someone who enjoys being important and at the centre of things, and can rely on Corbyn's indulgence? Or someone else?
The timing of Adnan Hussein's resignation makes for an interesting coincidence. He references "becoming drawn into very serious and damaging internal disputes on matters relating to organisational conduct and governance", a barely-concealed Islamophobia ("I am troubled by the way ... Muslim men have been spoken about and treated ...I witnessed insinuations about capability, dismissive attitudes and language that carried ... veiled prejudice."), and how YP was at odds with its billing - a "movement that welcomed diversity of background and thought." It also came hours after Novara Media put questions to him that he and others in the IA were minded to dump the new party.
To be honest, the independent MPs should be nowhere near this process. As a "source close to Zarah Sultana" was quoted as saying in the New Statesman, "this shows what a stupid idea it was to transfer control of the founding process over from a decision making body, appointed by Jeremy and containing a broad array of left-wing figures, to the six MPs, some of whom do not remotely share the politics of the 800,000 people who signalled an interest in Your Party". Quite.
For example, trans issues are not a shibboleth to be fought over like one's attitude to the dead USSR, but a live issue used by sections of the media in a crude divide-and-rule effort. The government have jumped on the campaign to attack trans health care, and have made the lives of trans people a misery, stoked up prejudice, and driven some to take their lives. These are direct attacks on our class in all its diversity, something Hussein had the cheek to invoke in his Dear John letter. Anyone who alibis this are unsuited to be an elected representative of a class-based left party, never mind play a leading role in its founding. The same is true of MPs who defend first cousin marriages, the criminalisation of abortion after 24 weeks, call on the army to fill in for striking workers, or have significant landlord interests. Collaboration and cooperation in parliament, yes. Friendly relations and persuasion to win them over, also yes. Roll out the red carpet and give them leadership positions in a socialist party? No. This is so obvious that no one should need to say it.
Unfortunately, we know who is responsible for this. And that's Corbyn. He's responsible for the people he's promoted to the heart of the new party, he's responsible for bringing the IA MPs into the fold while overlooking questionable and anti-working class aspects of their politics, and he's responsible for dragging his feet - even having to be bounced into starting a mailing list. The only thing preventing this from being a complete write off is that despite the shenanigans and stupidities, upwards of 50,000 people have joined - in the face of the serious alternative presented by the Greens. By all accounts, where regional assemblies are taking place members are showing up. And across the country, unofficial branches have convened. A dynamic independent of the centre's gatekeeping and the dithering is underway, and is refusing to be snuffed out by the idiocies leading figures keep inflicting on the project. Yes, it's hard to believe right now but this resilience shows Your Party, or whatever it will end up getting called, can come out the other side of these squabbles. It could overcome its over-dependence on Corbyn. It may yet realise its potential and have a great future ahead.
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8 comments:
I honestly think, why bother. Green has to be the top priority, and the prospect of working with aging aggressive wannabe revolutionaries appals me. Your Party has been sabotaged by people who like nothing more than wrecking things for shits and giggles, it seems to me. I feel sorry for the grassroots members who are at least trying to make something work, but YP never will
Not something I would normally do, but I recommend people wanting an insight into the cynical bureaucratic performative "democracy " shambles at local level all over the country that the Your Party "assemblies" taking place recently represent , have a look at the local reports on these events in the CPGB's online Weekly Worker over the last few issues. It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry !
The extraordinarily top down control freak behaviour of the Your Party leadership , and its apparently incurable internal factionalism itself, bodes ill for any chance that this huge political opportunity will survive very long. Also, what is quite clear is that much of the policy package that is emerging , chaotically, for Your Party will be identical to that of the Green Party under Polanski - and in both cases will have little electorally significant appeal outside of the radical Big City Left Liberal middle classes . If people want this particular policy bundle they can just join the Greens - without all the shambolic infighting daftness of the Your Party farce.
This bird just ain't going to fly - and can already surely be counted as yet another likely self destructing failed Left realignment project , but this time with much more tragedy than
the umpteen previous ones of the last 30 years or so.
And Jeremy Corbyn himself does not emerge well from this ongoing farce, and must (alongside his inner core acolyte - who had previously shown the same behaviour running Momentum) take a big chunk of the blame .
And this is before the enterist revolutionaries start their work of recruitment and disruption. Read of a YP meeing with 150 participants that seems to have been made up of the SWP, CPGB PC, SPEW, AWL, RCP and some innocents who thought it might be a party for them.
If YP ever gets going it will be intersting to see which enterist group leaves first on a point of principle.
Debacle is too kind a description. Suspect that old Jeremy was really hoping to get back into the Labour Party once Starmer moved on and Sultana's youthful eagerness disorientated him. Maybe time he retired.
I am tempted to start with, Bless! You still have hopes of this clown car party, which shows that you are at heart an optimist, albeit a rather endearingly naive one.
To me the inability to even think of a name was strongly suggestive of how far from prepared the people who stumbled though this series of pratfalls and custard-pie-in-face moments were. FFS - a name! Ask AI if you can't think of anything!
One of life's great teachers is time, or should be. Time allows us to experience many situations, and so gain knowledge grounded in reality, and perhaps some wisdom. Corbyn is old enough and has been through enough to have learned better than to get into this mess. Surely his experiences with the PLP have taught him about ambition and principle and that trust needs to be earned and positions secured? He seems to have learned nothing.
I always sided with him and felt he was abysmally treated but now I can see how frustrating he must have been as party leader. Those around him who wanted to help and protect him must have been pulling their hair out!
If we subtract the rest of the Independents, we are left with Corbyn and Sultana - apparently at loggerheads. This is no basis for a party. While there are still many desperate socialists looking for something to get behind but who are suspicious of the Greens (seeing them as too middle class and bourgeois) this will just be another failed attempt that splinters into fighting factions obsessed with minor differences in approach.
Walk away, Phil, you'll only get hurt.
Sounds like a real mess- we need something else not this. I won't be joining. There will be another day. More experience and with more organisation and different leadership . I agree don't spend time with this. Focus on the future- something more astute.
I'm wondering if Corbyn might actually face a fair challenge from the Greens for his seat. They are always his main opposition, and honestly, he's made such a huge mess of this he has revealed that he has some serious flaws politically.
100% always thought that at the core if all this is the fact that Corbyn is at heart a Labour Party loyalist and doesn't want to split its vote.
Your optimism in the grassroots is well placed, Phil. If anything is to come out of this it will be from the grassroots as a development and expansion of the existing and growing left community independents such as locally here in the East Mids Broxtowe Alliance, Derbyshire Community Party and Nottingham People’s Alliance - all aligned with, bur waiting to see what happens with Your Party. The original idea of a broad alliance of local socialist networks is still in play and available should the centralised model not work - and it still could be transformed. Electoral cooperation with the Greens is already happening (see upcoming by-election in Broxtowe Stapleford SE) so it is not either/or as those seeking division are eager to push.
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