Nominations for Your Party’s central executive committee (CEC) – the body that will lead this new left-wing force – opened earlier this month. But the contest began in earnest on Sunday night (11 January). In a post on X, the party’s co-founder Zarah Sultana announced the creation of Grassroots Left, a slate of candidates running to fill positions on the party’s CEC. The group said it will run on a platform of maximum member democracy and has called for “no more top-down” leadership of Your Party.
A website attached to the group that was released last night initially included a list of “candidates”. It included – at the top of the list – Your Party’s other co-founder, Jeremy Corbyn. But the New Statesman can reveal that Corbyn never gave permission for his name to be used on the slate.
In fact, a specific request was put in by his team that his name was not to be included. Sources close to the Independent MP for Islington North said he was “very upset” that this was done without his consent. Corbyn is expected to lay out his own broad left slate shortly. In a post on X his wife, Laura Alvarez, said it will “benefit the many” and will “be based on honesty, transparency and accountability”. (The Grassroots Left website has now changed its wording from “candidates” to “endorsed candidates”.)
Nominations for the CEC elections opened on 5 January with the election results announced on 26 February. (Nominations close on 16 January.) Members will elect a 16-person committee, of which seven will form the officers group. This will be made up of a chair, deputy chair, secretary, treasurer, political officer and spokesperson. Their roles will be decided internally following the election results at the end of February. (The chair, deputy chair and spokesperson are expected to be the public facing political leaders of the party.) None of these seven roles are open to sitting members of any national parliament. However, within the wider CEC, there will be four public office holders. These roles may be held by sitting MPs.
Announcing the new Grassroots Left slate, Sultana said she will run for one of the public office holder roles on the CEC. (Sultana previously told Laura Kuenssberg that she would also be running to be Your Party’s “parliamentary spokesperson” though such a role is not specified in the party’s constitution.) In a statement announcing the new slate, Sultana said: “Members didn’t join to be spectators while decisions are stitched up at the top. This slate is about taking back control and building a party that fights for working people.”
The slate includes several members who backed Sultana’s boycott of the conference’s first day over claims of an internal party “witch hunt”. Alongside Sultana are several other lay members of Your Party, including Max Shanly, a prominent member of the Democratic Socialists for Your Party, who previously worked for Momentum founder Jon Lansman. Michael Lavalette, a councillor on Lancashire County Council, is also on the slate. It was Lavalette who, alongside James Giles, claimed he had been barred from attending the first day of Your Party conference in Liverpool last year. (A Your Party source later said, after conversations with Lavelette, he was allowed to attend.) However, Lavalette later said he was standing as an Independent and as such is “not part of any slate”. In a post on Facebook, Lavalette added: “I have been endorsed by the Grassroots slate – but, again, I have not signed up to that slate and I am not a member of that slate.”
The Grassroots Left’s slate plans for Your Party include: 50 per cent of members’ fees going straight to branches, an independent audit of party finances, and the replacement of “capitalism” with workers’ control and democratic ownership. The policies appear to echo Sultana’s calls for maximum member democracy at the party’s conference in November.
Sources close to Corbyn said his inclusion on the original list of Grassroots Left candidates made it look as though he agreed with these policies and endorsed the slate’s candidates. They said Corbyn had not been included in any of the planning for the slate and added that his inclusion falsely gave the impression it was his slate. A source close to Corbyn told the New Statesman: “Jeremy will be laying out his vision for Your Party in the coming days, including his ambition to help build a diverse and broad-based movement for the change this country needs.”
This is the only first stage of Your Party’s internal election campaign and already the battle lines are being drawn. Once again, Sultana seems to have proceeded with a public announcement without Corbyn’s permission. Though members opted for collective leadership – a decision which one insider speculated may have been to avoid a public face-off between this troubled left-wing party’s co-founders – it’s clear the next few months will continue to be dominated by the battle for control of Your Party. But will it be Team Sultana or Team Corbyn that emerges victorious?
[Further reading: The great lie about the British welfare state]
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