After months of buildup, the founding conference of the Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana-led Your Party took place in Liverpool over November 29–30.
The conference ratified the name “Your Party”, initially a temporary stand-in name, and decided on a leadership structure, key constitutional provisions and set a vision for the kind of party it hopes to be.
Your Party was announced in July when Sultana posted on X that she was leaving the Labour Party to form a new party with Corbyn, other independent MPs and activists across the country.
The party was broadly conceived to be a left alternative to Labour, and a force to challenge the rise of Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party, which has risen in the polls and which some analysts said in October could hold the largest bloc of MPs in the house if an election was held.
The Keir Starmer Labour government has overseen falling living standards, delayed promises to overturn anti-union laws and has backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It has also refused to tackle Reform’s racism head on and has hardened its policies around asylum seekers.
Initial excitement
The strong appetite for a party that can take on these challenges was made clear when 80,000 people signed up to the Your Party mailing list within five hours of its opening. By August, 800,000 people had signed up.
Since then, the initial excitement waned as internal divisions, in particular between Corbyn and Sultana, played out in public.
Tensions erupted when Sultana launched a membership portal, reportedly without permission from Corbyn and the other independent MPs. Corbyn’s team reported the matter to the Information Commissioner's Office and urged supporters to cancel any payments made.
Sultana responded by describing the Your Party leadership as a “sexist boys’ club” from which she had been excluded from discussions.
These divisions led some to jump ship to the Green Party, which claimed to have reached 170,000 members last month, more than doubling the 70,000 members it achieved when Zack Polanski took over the leadership in September.
By the time the Your Party conference came around, many were concerned the project would fall apart before it began.
Two of the independent group of MPs involved in forming Your Party — Iqbal Mohamed and Adnan Hussain — left in the weeks before the conference.
Hussain said he quit because of “persistent infighting and a struggle for power” in the organisation, while Mohamed cited “false allegations and smears against him”, after he was accused of transphobia.
Another flare-up occurred when members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) were expelled from Your Party on the eve of the conference, with Sultana boycotting the first day of the conference in solidarity with them.
“It’s been a bumpy road,” Corbyn told left-wing commentator Owen Jones on the opening day of the conference. “It hasn’t been an easy time … but we are where we are, and we are going forward together.”
A ‘new democratic socialist party’
The conference was attended by about 2500 delegates who were selected through an online sortition process, which involved randomly selecting people from the membership to act as delegates.
The first day began with an introduction by Liverpool City councillor Lucy Williams and an opening speech from Corbyn.
“We are here today to found a new democratic socialist party in Britain that can challenge power in our society,” Corbyn said.
“We have an amazing opportunity before us … It’s up to us to develop a mass party and a force that brings people in and gives people that sense of hope.
“We live in a world with the most grotesque level of inequality imaginable … Our movement is one of justice, equality and environmental sustainability.”
Corbyn spoke about Britain’s complicity in arming Israel’s genocide and led a chant of “Free, free Palestine”. “We will not rest until there is justice!”
He also spoke about the need to oppose Reform UK, challenge Labour’s attacks on refugees and address the housing and cost-of-living crisis.
Corbyn said the goal of Your Party is “to transfer the wealth and power now concentrated in the hands of the few, to the overwhelming majority in a democratic, socialist society”.
“Your Party stands for freedom, from exploitation, poverty and war … this is our opportunity, we are going to seize it with both hands and build that party, build that society and campaign for real socialism and real social justice.”
‘Party must be run by the members’
Sultana spoke on the second day of the conference. “I am so honoured to co-found this party with Jeremy, who I have an enormous amount of admiration and respect for.
“In just a few months, we have built something no one in Westminster thought was possible, a mass democratic working-class movement, the largest socialist party in the UK since the 1940s.”
Addressing the expulsion of SWP members, Sultana said “the expulsions, the bans, the censorship on the conference floor are unacceptable. It is undemocratic and an attack on members and this movement.
“This party must be run by members, not MPs, it must not be run from above,” she said.
“Everyone knows what’s wrong with Britain, nothing works and nothing gets better. This country is rigged to serve the rich and powerful … we plan on beating them before they lead us into fascism to protect their own wealth and power.”
The conference decided on some key points, including retaining the name Your Party, and voted up a constitution, a founding political statement, standing orders and organising strategy. It also voted to allow dual membership with aligned political parties, likely reversing the SWP’s and other expulsions, and for a collective leadership model over a single elected leader.
The collective leadership model includes a 20-person executive committee made up of 16 elected members and four people who hold public office. From amongst them, there will be six positions elected, including treasurer, secretary, spokesperson, political officer, chair and deputy chair, who will oversee the day-to-day running of the party.
Time will tell whether Your Party is able to regain some of the momentum lost in the lead-up to the conference.
It now has more than 55,000 paid up members, which Corbyn described as a “sustainable basis for our work and activity”.
Leadership elections will take place over January and February and branches will be established across the country in the coming months.
Founding conferences will be held in Scotland and Wales next year.