From 20,000 Members to Legal Threats – The Left’s New Party Is in Pieces

Right, so Britain’s political left has always had a reputation for eating itself, but even by those standards the implosion of Your Party has been spectacular. A brand-new movement, still without a proper name, to be decided by members at an upcoming conference, finally asks for your money at breakfast time and by lunchtime is telling you to cancel the direct debit. You couldn’t script farce like that, though the mainstream press couldn’t believe their luck of course. It’s open season the left again. Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, hailed as the dream ticket, fell out publicly. The Your Party membership launch managed to turn hope into humiliation in under three hours. What should have been a rallying cry became a punchline: “sexist boys’ club” accusations, legal threats, duelling emails published on social media, and a membership portal denounced as fake by one of its own leaders. In the very hour Reform UK surged to record highs in the polls and Labour a record low, the left’s great alternative decided to set fire to itself. And people wonder why trust in politics is gone.
Right, so it should have been the left’s breakthrough moment. Look at the state of Britain as this drama unfolded. The Conservatives, after years of corruption and managed decline, were flatlining. Labour, under Keir Starmer’s anaemic leadership, was finally exposed for what it had become: a husk of a party, stripped of soul, incapable of speaking for anyone beyond a narrow band of technocrats and lobbyists. For the first time in its long history, Labour crashed to a miserable sixteen percent in the polls. The Tories, battered by years of scandal and incompetence, were stuck in the same ditch. And as those twin pillars of the old order collapsed, Reform UK surged into an astonishing eighteen percent lead, the highest any new populist vehicle had ever managed, congratulations to the mainstream media for providing them with daily political broadcasts in the form of interviews and headlines of course, their surge is no accident.
That was the backdrop. It was not some ordinary political cycle. It was a once-in-a-generation fracture in the system, the kind of opening radicals pray for, an opportunity like no other. Against that backdrop, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana were presented with a moment to stand on the stage of history, holding the banner of something new: Your Party. A party of hope. A party of mass membership. A party that would speak for those the establishment had abandoned.
The potential was staggering. Eight hundred thousand people had already signed up to stay informed. Tens of thousands were waiting to pay their dues and turn the mailing list into a member led movement as promised. A founding conference was on the horizon, billed as a radical experiment in democracy, with delegates chosen by lottery rather than stitched up by factions, though I have reservations about representation in taking that route. If ever there was a time to turn grassroots energy into a viable political force though, this was it. And yet, within the space of a single afternoon, the project managed to set fire to itself in full public view.
What happened that day has already been picked over in the press, and other alt media have had a say too. But to grasp the scale of the betrayal, because that is what this is in my view, you have to trace the collapse moment by moment.
Late in the morning, Zarah Sultana posted a link inviting people to become paying members of Your Party. The site looked official. It offered a standard membership fee, reportedly around fifty-five pounds per year, with concessionary rates around half that. There were apparently monthly options as well. Within minutes, an email blast went out to the subscriber list, repeating the invitation. I got that email, I’d subscribed to the mailing list, even though I’m a Green. Why? Because I’m nosy and I’m also a former member of Corbyn’s Labour, I remain very fond of him. But for the ordinary supporter, this was it: the launch moment they had been waiting for, the first step toward turning hope into power.
By early afternoon, Sultana was jubilant. She claimed twenty thousand people had already joined. If accurate, it was a staggering figure. In just a couple of hours, Your Party had signed up more members than many long-standing parties can boast full stop and was well on the way to chasing down much larger parties. That number reflected the hunger in the country of so many people, the readiness of ordinary people to throw their lot in with something new, something radical, something that promised to break the suffocation and ruination of their lives by Starmer’s Labour and years of Tory failure.
And then came the thunderclap. In the early afternoon, Jeremy Corbyn and four allied MPs issued a joint statement that did not just pour cold water on the launch — it effectively drowned it. Supporters were told not to sign up. Those who already had were instructed to cancel their direct debits. The portal was denounced as unauthorised, a “false membership system” collecting money and data without the party’s approval. Legal advice, the statement added, was being sought. Sultana’s name was conspicuously absent from that letter. To rub salt in the wound, Corbyn himself emailed members directly soon after, repeating the repudiation. To the outside world, it looked like the leader denouncing his own Co-Leader in real time.
The mainstream press, of course, feasted on this. It’s get Jez time again only they could go for Sultana too, cherry on the top. PoliticsHome quoted sources saying a formal split was inevitable. The Guardian splashed with the story of a false membership portal and a bitter rift, nobody having published more anti Corbyn sentiment to my mind than that paper has. Left Foot Forward covered Corbyn’s insistence that the launch had been unauthorised. The Morning Star, usually sympathetic to Corbyn, could only shake its head at the spectacle of divisions exploding into the open. But then came Sultana’s counterblast. Within the hour, she hit back with fury. She admitted she had launched without permission. But she branded Your Party a “sexist boys’ club,” claiming she had been excluded from decision-making by Corbyn’s inner circle, naming his former Chief of Staff Karie Murphy in the process, very much not the done thing, especially accusing her of financial illegality, its no ownder there are headlines floating around concerning threats to sue her now. Sultana demanded a meeting with Corbyn directly, without handlers, without fixers. The dirty laundry just kept on being aired.
The question, then, is whether this was simply a case of a young MP going rogue, or whether it was the inevitable collision of two fundamentally different instincts inside the project. The press framed it as Sultana freelancing, but that version of events is too convenient. The deeper truth is that the conflict had been building for months. On one side stood Sultana, energetic, arguably a bit impatient, with a mass youth following and credibility among the generation that had rallied to Corbynism in 2017 and 2019. She had driven the creation of this new party, it wasn’t all Corbyn, he has been dragging his feet for years over will he or won’t he launch a new party, so in my view, Sultana was refusing to let the dream of a radical alternative die. She knew people were desperate. She knew momentum mattered. The timing with recent polling and the election to Green Party leader of Zack Polanski, very much of the same left wing political persuasion, risked stealing their potential thunder and she pressed to seize the chance while it still existed. What was the hold up with beginning memberships after all? If this event proved anything, it showed the capacity was there. Surely there is no such thing as going early? On the other side stood Corbyn’s old guard, personified by Karie Murphy, his former chief of staff, as a result of Sultana publicly naming her. To some, Murphy was the tough operator who held Corbyn’s office together. To others, she was the ultimate gatekeeper, with her hands on the levers.
So the implosion was not an accident in and of itself, but was the manifestation of this clash behind the scenes. Sultana hit the launch button. Corbyn’s camp hit back with denunciations and lawyers. And Corbyn himself — as so often — fronted the caution of his advisers. The “sexist boys’ club” line was not random either. It was a direct challenge to the five signatories of that letter saying the membership portal was false and to the inner circle that had long kept control in Corbyn’s world. Whether or not the sexism charge sticks, the accusation exposed the factionalism within the operation.
The deeper damage, though, was not just the split but the trust it destroyed. Money, data, power — the three pillars of any political project were shattered in a single afternoon. You cannot ask people to set up direct debits in the morning and tell them to cancel by the afternoon alleging they are getting scammed without destroying your credibility. It is unbelievable. No party in modern memory has begged for money at breakfast and begged for cancellations by lunch. Who would risk their money again with a mess like that? You cannot have rival portals and unauthorised emails flying around without totally undermining confidence in data security. Who will trust their information in that environment? And you cannot promise grassroots empowerment while insiders pull strings behind the scenes to leverage it. Who will believe the rhetoric of democracy after this display of factional warfare?
No one comes out of this unscathed regardless of who’s side you might see yourself on. Sultana was made to look reckless, launching without consensus though arguably you might have been waiting another 6 months otherwise at the speed things were going and was certainly the one airting their dirty linen in public. Corbyn has ended up looking weak, allowing himself to be the front for Sultana’s alleged gatekeepers behind the scenes rather than a unifier and I take no joy in saying that at all, I am still, enormously fond of him. Murphy, who Sultana has presented as the face of Corbyn’s old guard represents an impression of selfish power-hoarders in the backroom, willing to strangle momentum to preserve control. I daresay at the rate dirty laundry is being aired here, we may well find out the truth of all of this yet.
For supporters, it has been devastating though. The promise of Your Party is now in tatters.
The selfishness of the implosion is only magnified by the political backdrop. Reform UK, at eighteen percent, was proving that the ground was shaky. Labour and the Tories, both at sixteen, were showing the collapse of the duopoly. Your Party, with its eight hundred thousand people signed up to stay informed, had the base to seize the moment. If even a fraction converted into paying membership, it could have launched as a mass force. On that very day, Sultana claimed twenty thousand had already joined. The chance was there, clear as daylight. And instead of planting its flag, the movement set fire to itself. The party imploded as Corbyn and Sultana traded threats and insults.
So where does the energy go now? Well I for one am incredibly angry at this. I had hoped for a united front between Your Party and the Greens at some point down the line to actually challenge the dominance of the far right that right now looks set to seize a massive majority in 2029 and God help us all if that happens. Together, they could have formed a broad bloc capable of challenging both the establishment parties and Reform. That hope is now in tatters. The Greens, under Zack Polanski, have shifted decisively left. They are socialist on economics, firm in solidarity with Palestine, sharper than ever on climate justice. Polanski himself is increasingly impressive — a savvy media performer, sharper than Corbyn, steadier than Sultana, coherent in a way the circus of Your Party absolutely is not. On the day of the implosion, the Greens quietly gained another 2000 members, not directly linked to Your Party’s blow out incidentally, but symbolically still powerful. As one party collapsed, the other grew.
Yet Polanski is still deliberately frozen out of much of the media as the Greens always have been. The Greens still carry the baggage of their past centrism for many people as well. And many disillusioned would-be members of Your Party may not automatically drift to them as a result of that. Some will retreat into apathy, others into single-issue campaigns, others into bitter distrust of parties even more than they already were. The opening for a radical left breakthrough is not closed, but it is far narrower than it was now.
Could Corbyn and Sultana salvage anything from this? The obvious demand is for the two of them to sit down face to face, without handlers, without fixers, and thrash out a truce between the two of them. If there is any hope of reconciliation, it lies there. But even if they manage it, the damage may already be irreparable. Once you tell people to cancel their memberships, they do not forget. Once you expose the depth of factional power struggles, they do not forgive. And more fundamentally, the instincts at play may simply be incompatible now. Sultana embodies urgency, energy, impatience. Corbyn embodies caution, consensus, delay. One presses the accelerator, the other the brake. You cannot drive a movement that way.
The implosion also raises larger questions that go beyond the individuals. Who really controls new political movements? Is it the figureheads, or the unelected advisers behind them? What does member empowerment mean in practice — is a lottery conference genuinely democratic, or a gimmick that risks randomness over real representation? Can the left ever reconcile the tension between caution and urgency, or is it fated to miss every political window while waiting for perfection? How much damage does public infighting do compared to resolving disputes quietly? Was Sultana right to go public, or did it doom reconciliation forever? And perhaps most important of all, what does this mean in the struggle against the far right? With Reform surging, the implosion of the left’s great hope hands them a free run.
The conclusion unfortunately is brutal. The implosion of Your Party is more than an organisational failure. It is a betrayal. Eight hundred thousand people gave their names in hope. Tens of thousands were ready to hand over their money. Millions were desperate for change. And the leaders gave them chaos instead. It is selfish. It is short-sighted. And it reinforces every caricature the press loves to weaponise: that the left cannot govern itself, let alone the country.
Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn, Karie Murphy, whoever else that might remain thusfar unnamed — all of them share some level of blame here. Recklessness, weakness, control. An inability to put aside ego and turf wars for the sake of those who needed them. At the very moment when the political ground cracked open, when the duopoly collapsed and the far right surged, the left had a once in a lifetime chance. And chose to set fire to it.
Unity and trust are not optional extras. Without them, no movement survives. With them, even a small force can grow into something historic. For those who placed their last hope in Your Party, the anger is justified. For the wider left, the warning is that if we keep repeating these mistakes — if we keep allowing selfishness and gatekeeping and infighting to sabotage opportunity — then the far right and the hollow shells of Labour and the Tories will continue to dictate the future.
And yet, one question lingers. Was this really Sultana going rogue, or was it Corbyn or his old guard pulling the plug? Who truly wrecked the moment, and why? It does take two to tango in my view. And perhaps the most damning question of all: after this chaos, who could ever trust them again?
The chance was there. It will come again I’m sure, because I do think Your Party collapsed yesterday. I can’t see a way back, save a massive reconciliation effort somehow succeeding and people still being willing to back that if it happens. Perhaps its already here though in the form of Zack Polanski. But if another opportunity comes, it cannot be wasted like this one has been.
For more on Polanski’s win of the Green Party leadership, why it was such an emphatic victory and what this guy is all about if you still have reservations about where the Green Party is headed now, do check out this video recommendation here as your recommended next watch, there is a place for socialists like us there, I for one have never been happier.
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