A group of members have split from Your Party, citing frustration with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and accusing the party of having “squandered the enormous promise of 800,000 signups last summer.”
On Sunday, 250 people – many of whom are members of Your Party’s branches in England, Scotland and Wales – joined a Zoom call and voted to found a new left-wing party, called Socialist Federation.
Among them were several members of Grassroots Left – the slate on which Zarah Sultana ran in the Your Party elections earlier this year – including the former Momentum organiser Max Shanly (though he briefly attended the conference, Shanly is not a member of the Socialist Federation). A source close to Sultana confirmed that she does not have any involvement in the founding of this new party.
Corbyn won election as the parliamentary leader of Your Party in late February this year with his slate The Many, winning 14 seats on the party’s Central Executive Committee, to Grassroots Left’s seven. Grace Lewis, a former independent councillor in Coventry, was also elected to the CEC alongside Sultana as part of the Grassroots Left slate, but has since quit the committee and is joining Socialist Federation. Lewis was elected as a public office holder, but lost her seat in the local elections and thereby quit the CEC.
Your Party’s first electoral test came in May, when the party supported several independent groups in the local elections. The party also stood 20 candidates in 17 wards but none were elected. Its profile has somewhat diminished since the start of this year.
In an opening statement shared on X, the new group said its members had “lost patience” with Your Party and Corbyn, and accused the party of showing “only contempt” for its grassroots supporters. It continued: “Socialist Federation is an interim organisation with a longer-term goal. We want to rally forces to form something neither Labour nor the Greens can claim to be: a party with unwavering socialist principles, that actively builds working class power in communities and workplaces.”
The group plans to hold a national conference on 28 June, with an in-person Congress taking place in the Midlands later this year. A spokesperson for the Socialist Federation said: “The Socialist Federation brings together people from all over the country who have been building socialist groups in their local areas.” They added: “The enthusiasm around Your Party was ruined by the actions of Jeremy Corbyn and his allies, but we have learned we don’t need celebrity politicians to organise things for us.”
Responding, a Your Party spokesperson said: “Our focus remains on building a broad, democratic, socialist party capable of delivering meaningful change.” They added that new members are joining Your Party every day and said: “Our priority is supporting members to organise in their communities and building a movement capable of challenging both this Labour government and the growing threat of the far right.”
[Further reading: Two visions for Labour’s future]
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