Your Party is locked in a battle over membership data and funding – with itself. Following a botched attempt by Zarah Sultana, one of the party’s co-founders, to launch a membership portal, and the subsequent launch of a different, official membership portal less than a week later, the party has been unable to merge the two data sets. It also cannot access the funding raised in the unofficial launch. Members who signed up both times have not been refunded.
How did Your Party get to this point? According to an email sent on 14 October to members who joined by the official channel, the funding and data from the unauthorised launch is being held by MoU Operations. The company was incorporated in April, when informal discussions about the need for a new left-wing party were ongoing.
Its directors are the former Labour mayor of North Tyne, Jamie Driscoll; the independent candidate who stood against Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras last July, Andrew Feinstein; and the former Welsh Labour MP Beth Winters. The trio are also signatories on the bank account that was intended for use by what would later become Your Party.
On 18 September, Sultana announced Your Party had launched its membership portal, where interested parties could provide their personal information and bank details. (Sources close to her co-founder Jeremy Corbyn told the New Statesman that she did not inform him of her intention to do so.)
Within an hour Sultana reported on X that 20,000 people had signed up. But shortly after the portal went live, a statement went out from the Independent Alliance of MPs (which included Corbyn, but not Sultana) informing members to ignore the email and membership portal. The money and data from this launch has been held by MoU Operations ever since; the company’s address and details are included in the privacy policy of the website used in the unauthorised membership launch.
Speaking at an event in Hastings on 30 September, Feinstein said: “The three of us as signatories will hand over that money to the new party entity in order to fund and plan the launch conference… once there are registered legal structures in place.”
Your Party has pointed out that legal structures are now in place. Your Party Ltd, whose directors are all six of the Independent Alliance MPs (Sultana, Corbyn, Ayoub Khan, Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed), has registered the party with the Electoral Commission. Both Sultana and Corbyn have written to the MoU group requesting that they make the transfer. But no transfer has taken place.
According to a source close to proceedings, the MoU group has been told it is not legal for it to transfer over the data; instead, the group wants the two entities to merge formally. Your Party officials, however, believe the MoU group is holding on to the data in a deliberate attempt to stall progress. They accuse the MoU group of consistently “moving the goal posts” in order to avoid a straight transfer. The MoU group denies this: it says its request has always been for the two groups to merge. Neither side wants to take responsibility for any incident involving members’ data, which may eventually incur a fine from the Information Commissioner’s Office.
With its founding conference just six weeks away, this is another tense moment for Your Party. Zack Polanski’s Greens are already filling the void on the left that Your Party hoped to. How much longer will its supporters be willing to wait?
[Further reading: Great Britain’s failed state]
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