Jeremy Corbyn’s slate has won the election to Your Party’s central executive committee. After a tense power struggle between Corbyn and his co-founder Zarah Sultana, The Many took 14 seats of the 24 up for grabs on the committee. Sultana’s slate, Grassroots Left, won seven, and three seats were won by independent candidates.
Twenty-four seats were up for election in the poll, which opened on 9 February and closed on Monday (23 February). Corbyn and Sultana were both elected as Public Office holders, alongside Laura Smith, who ran on The Many’s slate, and Grace Lewis, who ran as part of Grassroots Left. Corbyn will now become the party’s parliamentary leader. The party has four MPs: Sultana, Ayoub Khan, Shockat Adam and Corbyn himself.
Turnout was 61.8 per cent, with 25,347 people casting a ballot. The new committee will elect an officers’ group at its first meeting (this includes a chair, deputy chair and treasurer). The CEC will be in place for the next 21 months, at which point the party’s leadership structure will be reviewed. Reacting to the results, Corbyn said: “I am delighted that members have voted for a mass, socialist party that takes the fight to Starmer and Farage.” The CEC’s first priorities will be to plan for the 7 May local elections and to formally establish local branches.
This has been a consequential set of elections. Relations between the party’s two co-founders have never been smooth but have soured since the founding conference, at which Sultana boycotted the first day of proceedings over what her allies described as a “witch hunt”.
Sources close to Corbyn’s slate, The Many, had previously briefed that the only way for the party to survive is if they won the election over Grassroots Left. A source told the NS in January: “Jeremy knows the fate of Your Party rests on this election. It will determine whether it grows into a mass community-based party that can speak to millions of ordinary people or becomes a battle ground for every splinter group under the sun.”
Grassroots Left – which includes Sultana and the Democratic Socialists for Your Party member, Max Shanly – initially included Corbyn in their list of candidates. However, Corbyn had not given his permission and was said to have been “upset” by the inclusion. The slate, whose campaign managers were Shanly and Sultana’s husband Craig Lloyd, ran on a platform of “maximum member democracy”. Sultana recently told the i newspaper that she would consider doing a deal with Zack Polanski’s Green Party in any upcoming election.
In a statement, the Grassroots Left slate congratulated all those elected but added: “Your Party must now work together to become a party of and for the whole left – with no more witch-hunts or stitch-ups. All those who have been expelled should be reinstated. We now need a culture of mutual respect, open debate, and a shared focus on the real issues facing us: inequality, insecure work, crumbling public services, fascism, and a political establishment that keeps letting working people down.”
Here is the full list of CEC members:
Public office holders:
Jeremy Corbyn
Zarah Sultana
Laura Smith
Grace Lewis
North West of England:
Sam Gorst
Dawn Aspinall
North East of England:
Catherine Davis
Hannah Hawkins
Yorkshire and Humberside:
Monique Mosley
Sophie Wilson
East of England:
Joe Rust
Solma Ahmed
East Midlands:
Louise Regan
Riaz Khan
West Midlands:
Megan Clarke
Sue Moffat
South East:
Cassandra Bellingham
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissy
South West:
Candi Williams
Jennifer Forbes
London:
Melecia Mullings
Noor Jahan Begum
Scotland:
Niall Christie
Wales:
Maria Donnellan
[Further reading: Abandon all hope at the Your Party hustings]
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