The founders of Your Party have fired off another legal threat
Your Party UK Limited, steered by Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and other Independent Alliance MPs, is preparing to launch legal action against a group of founders.
In September, Zarah Sultana unilaterally launched Your Party’s membership portal, allowing supporters to sign up as members.
Membership fees were paid into an account linked to MoU Operations. Three of the left-wing party’s founders, former North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll, Beth Winter former Labour MP for Cynon Valley and Andrew Feinstein, an anti-apartheid activist run MoU.
It is understood that over £800,000 in membership fees were paid to MoU Operations’ account.
According to The Guardian, Your Party sources are now accusing Driscoll, Winter and Feinstein of “going rogue” and failing to hand over the funds and membership data.
Party sources say an agreement signed in July required MoU to hold membership money and data until Your Party registered with the Electoral Commission. After that, MoU was to transfer the funds to a different account.
In a statement to the Guardian, Driscoll, Winter and Feinstein said: “These allegations are factually incorrect and frankly nonsense. We will make a full statement when we have time, but none of us are paid politicians with press officers.”
This latest spat threatens to overshadow Your Party’s founding conference in Liverpool on 29-30 November.
It is part of an ongoing factional battle between Peace and Justice Project Ltd, led by Jeremy Corbyn and his former chief of staff Karie Murphy, and her rivals at MOU Operations Ltd.
Responding to the latest legal challenge, Ash Sarkar wrote on X: “Since mid-Sept, there have been at least 3 threats of legal action lobbed in various directions between Your Party’s founders. Aside from anything else – who’s gonna see that and think “Yep, this looks like an organisation to which I want to devote my precious and limited time!”.
At the time, Corbyn said Sultana’s launch of the membership portal was “unauthorised” and that he was taking legal advice.
Sultana later accused Corbyn and the other Independent Alliance MPs ((Iqbal Mohamed, Adnan Hussain, Shockat Adam and Ayoub Khan) of making “baseless attacks on my character”.
As a result, the Coventry MP said she had instructed specialist defamation lawyers against Corbyn and others. She subsequently said she’d dropped the legal action.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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