The process of Your Party forming into a political party is now in place. The first Your Party conference is planned for 29th and 30th of November in Liverpool and invitations are being sent to members to apply to attend.
Sortition
The attendees will be chosen via a form of sortition process (random selection), chosen as a method to invite people in an inclusive way and according to a range of demographics: LGBTQ+, gender, disability, ethnicity and location. There are at least two rounds to the selection process. The process will be repeated if any places remain unfilled after two rounds, in order to ensure a balance across the categories. Your Party is working with the Independent Sortition Foundation. There is no public information about the exact quotas and how they were decided.
It could be that the sortition process is used in order to choose attendees for the first conference only. The letter sent to members from Your Party states that whilst people are used to a delegate system “there aren’t yet agreed party structures, so no official branches in which all members are able to take part.” It goes on to say that,“Sortition provides a way to have an accessible and inclusive conference, with every member given a fair chance to attend.”
There have been calls from at least one regional conference for a delegate system and proto branches have been built in many places (up to 150). However, it is true that there has been little time to set up branches and there has been no drive from Your Party for this to happen. Membership details have still not been circulated and people working to build Your Party across the country have been working blind via the contacts they already have in various existing organisations.
In our view, the priority should have been the establishment of local branches, in order for a delegate system to be able to work. If the leadership had put its weight behind such a drive, it could have been fruitful in a relatively short period of time, giving the founding conference a big boost and allowing proper procedures to take place. This did not happen, another method was chosen, and now activists should focus on how to make best use of it in terms of conference attendance and documents.
The announcement that membership had passed the 50,000 mark has underwhelmed many Your Party activists. Nationally, 50,000 members represents only 6% of the 800,000 who expressed an interest in Your Party when it was first announced. The initial enthusiasm for the project has been marred by the behind-the-scenes as well as public disagreements between the principal protagonists, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, and the reluctance by Corbyn in particular to embrace the explosion of interest in localities that initially materialised. However, 50,000 members is very big for an attempt to build a new working class party, and if things move in a positive direction Your Party can still attract wider layers. As things stand the 50,000 members are not being mobilised: the North and West Yorkshire Your Party Regional Assembly, in Bradford for example, had only 120 attendees from a region with a population of over two and a half million.
Despite the setbacks, at least the formal process is now underway and there is an attempt to get things moving. The regional assemblies have allowed some limited discussion on the four founding documents: Political Statement, Constitution, Organisational Strategy and Standing Orders (read our previously published comment on the YP conference documents here).
It is a matter of concern that it is not known who drafted the documents. There is also little information about who has been employed to help set up the organisation in its early stages. Activists have been told that there is a desire to protect Your Party workers from media attacks but this is a defensive, apologetic excuse for opaqueness. In reality, the leadership rests with the Alliance MPs and will continue to do so until the end of March. It appears that whether amendments sent in by individuals and groups are incorporated or not into the founding documents will be decided by an unelected and unidentified group.
This is not a good method of working on such important documents. In our view, members should ask for the conference to vote for a drafting commission to handle amendments, which will answer to the conference itself and present their methodology and proposals. We understand that this task will not be easy, but it is important that all members and conference participants feel that they have an actual say and their role is not to rubber-stamp decisions already taken elsewhere.
Regional assemblies
The main issues that came to the fore in the Bradford Regional Assembly were very clear. Comrades were demanding a bottom-up democratic model, were overwhelmingly in favour of delegate conferences, didn’t like the use of top-down language, terms such as Central Executive, director, and leader and wanted a rapid transition away from the dominance of the Alliance MPs. Attendees were critical of the methods and personnel that failed during the “Momentum” and “Enough is Enough” incarnations and are concerned that similar principles are being applied here. The lack of access to the database of members is a fundamental issue which urgently needs to be resolved. The leadership’s approach in asking for debate but then producing methods that stifle it is also a concern and a danger of establishing top-down methods.
The Regional Assemblies have struggled to meet even their limited objectives. The documents have been circulated but the time to really address them has been restricted. Only 130 minutes was devoted to a partial examination of the four documents in the West and North Yorkshire Regional Assembly. It was possible to discuss the Political Statement relatively satisfactorily because it is only one page long and the meeting broadly welcomed it with relatively minor amendments even though it lacks specifics at this stage. The other documents run to 6, 10 and 15 pages and it was impossible to give them due consideration in the time available. Groups were asked to look at an aspect of each of these three documents and feedback from their discussion but the limited feedback time at the end of the day meant that the day was rushed towards a conclusion.
However, there was time for the local Organising Committee (mainly comprised of left-wing activists) to ask for four aspects of the documents to be voted on, even though there had been a request from the Central Organising Team that no votes should be taken. This was immediately challenged from the floor as undemocratic and the local organising committee had to abandon the voting. The intention of the comrades who proposed this was good, in terms of wanting to make an “official” statement of the members, but didn’t take into account that democracy needs collectively agreed procedures. The rejection didn’t indicate a loyalty to the structure of the day imposed from the leading quarters, but rather what was seen as an attempt by the local Organising Committee to establish some form of proto-leadership before the relevant procedures being agreed. This intervention from below illustrated the depth of opposition to top-down methods. The feeling in the room seemed to favour either a bottom-up model or a flow of ideas circulating throughout the organisation. As one attendee put it, “Jeremy Corbyn can join a branch and put his motions and amendments to the branch, like the rest of us.”
Amendments and political balances
Amendments to the documents can be sent in via an on-line portal and feedback from the Regional Assemblies is also being forwarded. At the present moment it is unclear how these ideas and amendments will be incorporated into the documents. The only thing that is clear is that they have to be submitted by the 15th of November. My local proto branch is submitting extensive amendments. I know of other groups and individuals that are doing the same. There do seem to be common themes emerging from the discussions that are taking place – the question is will they be heard by the current leadership and will they make a significant difference to the final documents. This is a political challenge to be decided on at the conference itself.
Both Sultana and Corbyn have displayed weaknesses in terms of strategy and tactics. Corbyn, when he was leader of the Labour Party, was poor. He failed in so many ways: to stand up to the Blairites and their austerity agenda, to insist on mandatory reselection of MPs, to allow open debate within Momentum, and made a U-turn in his position on membership of the European Union and on other issues. Sultana has shown herself to be rather impetuous, but at least her socialist rhetoric is consistently expressed.
It still appears that Sultana has little influence with the Independent Alliance of MPs group. That group contains Perry Barr MP, Ayoub Khan, who asked the Deputy Prime Minister whether Army personnel could “assist the local charities and organisations that are helping” to clear up waste left in the streets during the ongoing refuse dispute in Birmingham. In other words, to sanction strike breaking by the military, something Winston Churchill would have approved of. Since then, he has corrected this position. At a recent meeting in West Yorkshire the Independent Alliance MP for Dewsbury and Batley, Iqbal Mohammed, stated that he was OK with “people becoming wealthy”, – echoing Peter Mandelson’s mantra of “we are very relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” These MPs, especially Khan, although popular with their constituents, do not reflect a socialist outlook. It is therefore doubly concerning that they are set to be a third of the Your Party leadership team until the end of March. A number of important strategic decisions have already been taken by this team and whether one supports these decisions or not, all of the decisions taken so far must be up for discussion and overturning if the membership so decides. In reality, the political problems of the Labour Party will be reflected inside Your Party and a political battle will commence on what is the correct path in order to make meaningful change in British politics.
Recently Adnan Hussain, one of the Independent Alliance MPs resigned from the project, citing political infighting as his principal reason and Zarah Sultana has recently stated that she will run for the leadership of Your Party if the single leader model is adopted. She is clear that she favours a joint leadership model. In an on-line meeting Sultana said: “I genuinely think that given all the crap that we’ve seen, there might be obstacles to block me from doing that (standing).” She added that any attempts to block a Sultana candidacy would not come from her co-founder, Jeremy Corbyn, but from “people who are organising the onference, who are organising the party or organising the rallies, who are drafting these documents”. This statement shows that the unelected group writing these documents, takes no account of the views of Sultana. It also suggests, that the top-down model inherent in the documents may well be a firm part of their agenda and not subject to change.
Green Party surge
Meanwhile there has been a surge in membership of the Green Party, since the election of its new leader, Zak Polanski. Polanski uses the media and slick, but abstract progressive sound-bites to appeal to especially young voters and it is working. Membership of the Green Party has doubled to 150,000 since Polanski was made leader and they are now the favoured party of voters under the age of 50, getting 25% in terms of current voting intention. While Reform UK has stalled in the polls with no increase in support since May 2025 on 27%, the Greens have increased their support to 18% from 10% in May 2025. Meanwhile support for the Conservatives and Labour continues to decline in sinc across the same period from 22% to 18%.
It is possible that this surge in support for the Greens could be cut across by Your Party when it is finally established, but anecdotal evidence would suggest that many who were inspired by the Your Party launch have become disillusioned by the lack of clarity of vision and instead are choosing Polanski’s Green party as a more credible way of resisting the progress Reform is making. The low numbers of those joining Your Party is evidence of this as is the relatively low numbers attending the regional assemblies.
There are calls to work with the Greens in the up-coming local elections and see them as allies on the left. The traditional membership of the Green’s contains a significant block of the politically liberal strain. There are also more radical elements and this uneasy alliance could sever, with the Greens moving sharply and decisively to the left and undermining the attempt to build a mass party of the working class by Your Party. In any case, it is true that the real political direction of the Greens will remain reformist and if ever in power it will betray its promises as they have previously done. Polanski’s political convictions seem to hinge on self-promotion and opportunism – not a good formula for leading long-term radical political change. The generalised statements on their website offer no real programme for change beyond a modest increase in taxation on the rich, something that the vast majority of British people would support as well as general aspirations towards a fairer, greener future. However, there is no pledge for a radical transformation of society and while capitalism is criticised, there is no plan laid out on how to replace it and with what.
In the short-term it makes sense for Your Party to establish itself first and take a pragmatic view of future alliances. It seems unlikely that many actual Your Party branches will be properly formed before the March 31st 2026 deadline for nominations for local elections. However, there needs to be a discussion around tactics towards the Green Party at the YP conference and in the local assemblies. The Green Party cannot be just dismissed as part of the establishment, especially since it seems that an increasing number of voters count them on the left. YP needs to lay out a programme for essential change and open up a public dialogue over it, with the aim to find meaningful alliances or expose those who talk left but do otherwise in practice.
The need for political discussion
The discussions around a programme to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism are at an embryonic stage in Your Party. Sultana and Corbyn use the term socialism but as of yet there is no political programme that really suggests the means of achieving this end. There are those who want to soften any programme in order to keep voters on-side. They argue that radical language will put voters off. The experience of the Corbyn surge however was that the more radical the public statements were, the more support Corbyn gained. The failure of the capitalist system cannot be allowed to be “the elephant in the room”. Your Party needs a radical programme from the outset and a plan on how to communicate this with workers and build support. The growth of the Green Party will not make this process any easier. The vague promises they make will appeal to many as progressive. Fundamentally, the Greens don’t challenge the status quo but rather suggest a compromise can be made with capitalism.
Delegates who understand the need for YP to be a working-class party with real democracy and a socialist programme should work together in the conference to politicise the debates and raise relevant issues.
Your Party needs to embrace grounded radicalism in order to offer real solutions to working class problems. It needs to reject a traditional top-down model and listen to the members. It needs to urgently build branches and allow those branches the freedom to take the message of socialism into working-class communities and build a party based in those communities as well as amongst the rest of society.
