Your Party's Chaotic Conference Exposed a Movement at War With Itself
Update: 2025-12-01
Description
Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
Read our
Digital / Print Editions
Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
"My glass of wine later is turning into a bottle," said the chair of Your Party's conference in Liverpool at one point during a particularly rowdy part of Saturday's session. It was hard not to feel sorry for her.
"We're going to have to cut the mic [of the speaker]. We have to keep order. We have to keep order!" she exclaimed at one point.
The member concerned wouldn't stop speaking - as he railed against what he described as a 'witchhunt' of members of other socialist parties.
It must have been a particularly painful thing to hear for Jeremy Corbyn, whose supporters so often condemned what they viewed as a witchhunt against his supporters in the early days of Keir Starmer's leadership. Now it was allegedly happening within Your Party, Jeremy Corbyn's upstart socialist party that has been riven with personal divisions and factional fighting even before it formally launched.
Its conference in Liverpoor exposed some real problems for the party. Originally planned to host 13,000 people, in the end, only around 2,500 people turned up, selected by 'sortition' - a bit like a jury. It's a hung one.
In the huge cavernous space of the ACC - also home to Labour's conference earlier this year - at times the delegates resembled ballbearings rattling around in a tin can.
Of course Your Party doesn't pretend to be a party on the scale of the Labour Party. But it does share some things in common: in particular the factionalism that so often tears left-wing movements asunder.
Internal Tumult
At one of many points of disruption in the hall, the Chair told members: "Please, please remember that we have a very important battle outside of this room, and it is called the very right wing media."
Your Party's scepticism of Britain's press is understandable and justified. But the project has often done itself few favours: from Zarah Sultana's unauthorised membership launch in September, to the departure of all the directors of MoU, which held the party's funds - including the income from that botched scheme.
And, in the past few weeks alone, they have seen the edeparture of two MPs from Corbyn's Independent Alliance in Parliament, which had been steering the foundation of the new party.
As a result, Your Party organisers were expecting some disruption at conference, and they got it.
Reporters were told - without much prompting - that if safety was put at risk or there was any violence, the conference would likely be shut down.
There was, thankfully, no such violence. But heckling and defiance of the chair over members of the Socialist Worker's Party, Socialist Party and others being rejected from the conference (and in some cases actively removed) made the atmosphere tense.
Rachel Reeves and the Daily Mailification of the BBC
For all the focus on its supposed "left wing bias", the BBC's heavy coverage of Conservative allegations of dishonesty against Rachel Reeves shows how its political coverage is still largely led by the right-wing press
Adam Bienkov
Motley Crew
Britain's 57 varieties of far-left parties have certainly jumped on board Your Party - or attempted to. I counted literature for eight different socialist/communist factions and parties at Your Party conference, plus Zarah Sultana rally leaflets. This was at one event, largely under one chair.
At the rally for Sultana supporters on the eve of Your Party conference, former Labour NEC member Mish Rahman hit out at briefings against her by other YP figures "in the billionaire press". "You don't do the movement any favours by talking to them…You haven't even got the guts to put your name to it."
At that very moment, at least one close ally of Sultana was briefing a journalist from a right-wing newspaper, I later learnt.
The battle for control of the 55,000-or-so strong party - without doubt Britain'...
Read our
Digital / Print Editions
Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
"My glass of wine later is turning into a bottle," said the chair of Your Party's conference in Liverpool at one point during a particularly rowdy part of Saturday's session. It was hard not to feel sorry for her.
"We're going to have to cut the mic [of the speaker]. We have to keep order. We have to keep order!" she exclaimed at one point.
The member concerned wouldn't stop speaking - as he railed against what he described as a 'witchhunt' of members of other socialist parties.
It must have been a particularly painful thing to hear for Jeremy Corbyn, whose supporters so often condemned what they viewed as a witchhunt against his supporters in the early days of Keir Starmer's leadership. Now it was allegedly happening within Your Party, Jeremy Corbyn's upstart socialist party that has been riven with personal divisions and factional fighting even before it formally launched.
Its conference in Liverpoor exposed some real problems for the party. Originally planned to host 13,000 people, in the end, only around 2,500 people turned up, selected by 'sortition' - a bit like a jury. It's a hung one.
In the huge cavernous space of the ACC - also home to Labour's conference earlier this year - at times the delegates resembled ballbearings rattling around in a tin can.
Of course Your Party doesn't pretend to be a party on the scale of the Labour Party. But it does share some things in common: in particular the factionalism that so often tears left-wing movements asunder.
Internal Tumult
At one of many points of disruption in the hall, the Chair told members: "Please, please remember that we have a very important battle outside of this room, and it is called the very right wing media."
Your Party's scepticism of Britain's press is understandable and justified. But the project has often done itself few favours: from Zarah Sultana's unauthorised membership launch in September, to the departure of all the directors of MoU, which held the party's funds - including the income from that botched scheme.
And, in the past few weeks alone, they have seen the edeparture of two MPs from Corbyn's Independent Alliance in Parliament, which had been steering the foundation of the new party.
As a result, Your Party organisers were expecting some disruption at conference, and they got it.
Reporters were told - without much prompting - that if safety was put at risk or there was any violence, the conference would likely be shut down.
There was, thankfully, no such violence. But heckling and defiance of the chair over members of the Socialist Worker's Party, Socialist Party and others being rejected from the conference (and in some cases actively removed) made the atmosphere tense.
Rachel Reeves and the Daily Mailification of the BBC
For all the focus on its supposed "left wing bias", the BBC's heavy coverage of Conservative allegations of dishonesty against Rachel Reeves shows how its political coverage is still largely led by the right-wing press
Adam Bienkov
Motley Crew
Britain's 57 varieties of far-left parties have certainly jumped on board Your Party - or attempted to. I counted literature for eight different socialist/communist factions and parties at Your Party conference, plus Zarah Sultana rally leaflets. This was at one event, largely under one chair.
At the rally for Sultana supporters on the eve of Your Party conference, former Labour NEC member Mish Rahman hit out at briefings against her by other YP figures "in the billionaire press". "You don't do the movement any favours by talking to them…You haven't even got the guts to put your name to it."
At that very moment, at least one close ally of Sultana was briefing a journalist from a right-wing newspaper, I later learnt.
The battle for control of the 55,000-or-so strong party - without doubt Britain'...
Comments
In Channel
























