Your Party hasn’t formally launched, but it already has its first faction
‘Your Party’ – the new political outfit being founded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana is yet to formally launch. Despite this, it now has its first internal faction, with the establishment of ‘Democratic Bloc’.
According to its website, Democratic Bloc states that is a group of “socialists working together to ensure that the new left party is genuinely democratic and grassroots”. The group say they want to “form a network of activists who can collectively build and articulate democratic demands ahead of the founding conference of the party”.
Democratic Bloc has put together a series of proposals it wants to see implemented in advance of Your Party’s founding conference which is set to take place in November. Among these are that all members of Your Party should have a vote at this conference and in future leadership elections, that there should be a structure through which trade unions should be able to affiliate to Your Party and that Your Party members should be allowed to be members of other parties with conference approval.
The group has called these proposals a ‘discussion guide’ to ‘structure conversations’ around democratic participation in the new party.
Writing for the Morning Star on the launch of Democratic Bloc, Mish Rahman – who previously served on the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee – said: “The Democratic Bloc believes that we have to put the people, the grassroots, the members, in the driving seat. Real democracy means the many shaping outcomes together, not leaving decisions to a handful, chosen by chance. Without mass participation, there is no legitimacy, just exclusion dressed up as fairness.”
The launch of Democratic Bloc comes on a chaotic day for Your Party. This morning, people signed up to Your Party’s mailing list received an email saying that the party’s membership scheme had launched. Throughout the day, Zarah Sultana posted the membership link on social media.
However, later in the day a statement was published on Your Party social media channels, as well as by Jeremy Corbyn, which claimed the email was ‘unauthorised’, that legal advice is being taken and that any direct debits people have set up should be cancelled.
Responding to this, Sultana later said that she had been sidelined by the other MPs involved in the party, and claimed to have been subjected “to what can only be described as a sexist boys’ club”, said that she launched the membership portal “so supporters could continue to engage and organise”, and claimed that “this was as in line with the roadmap set out to members on Monday”.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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