After an acrimonious first attempt at a launch last week, the membership portal for Your Party – the as-yet-unnamed new left-wing party being co-founded by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn – has officially opened. A site went live this morning, giving people the opportunity to sign up and pay a monthly membership fee of their choosing (from anywhere between £5-£100). Corbyn later officially confirmed the legitimacy of this second attempt in a video on social media, and an email went out to all those on the Your Party mailing list. Sultana has yet to comment.
In his statement, Corbyn apologised to all supporters for the “confusion” in getting to this point. “We’ve had some fraught days in the past week, which you will no doubt be aware of and to be honest with you, we haven’t covered ourselves in glory,” he said.
Though this launch has gone much more smoothly than the last, several questions remain: What happened to those who signed up as members last week? Why didn’t Sultana and Corbyn release a joint statement? Are they still co-leaders? At the time of writing, much of this remains unclear.
What we do know is that Your Party’s founding conference will take place between 29-30 November at Liverpool’s Arena and Convention Centre (ACC). It will include 13,000 members, who will be selected by sortition (the selection of officials by lottery) to participate in the two-day conference to debate and vote on the party’s structure and programme. Proposals will be approved under a one member, one vote system. In his post, Corbyn said: “Before the commotion last week, the plans themselves were warmly welcomed right across our movement. People desperately want the chance for a real alternative to poverty, war and injustice. So, let’s get on with it.”
But where is Sultana? Less than a week ago, she was threatening to sue her fellow Independent Alliance MPs for defamation. After the bust up, it was rumoured that a public joint statement or reconciliation was in the works. Yet Corbyn made his statement today completely alone. Though Your Party has been keen to assert that the founding process is being stewarded by the Independent Alliance of MPs – which includes Sultana – Corbyn and Sultana have been listed as co-founders ever since this new movement was mooted.
That this “official” announcement has come only from Corbyn will not quiet talk of a deep split between the two. There have even been rumours that, come the end of recess, Sultana will sit with the Greens rather than with the Independent Alliance. The two months before the founding conference is time for relations to be mended – or irreversibly damaged. A new left-wing party is certainly launching. Whether it will involve both Corbyn and Sultana is yet to be determined.
[Further reading: Exclusive: Andy Burnham’s plan for Britain]
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