In a move that may portend perpetual infighting, the far-left Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana party has voted not to have any formal leaders, but rather to have decisions made by a communist-style politburo staffed by members.
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was ousted from his previous party amid antisemitism scandals, will not lead the party he founded earlier this year. Despite Corbyn advocating a single leader model, as is typical in most Western democratic parties, the now formally named ‘Your Party’ will not be led by him or his unruly acolyte and co-founder, Zarah Sultana, either.
Instead, the Your Party’s membership voted at its conference in Liverpool on Sunday to be ruled by a Central Executive Committee (CEC) of 16 non-politicians, selected by the party membership. According to the BBC, the measure only narrowly passed with 51 per cent of the vote, potentially setting up for more factionalism within the already deeply divided party.
The politburo will be empowered to oversee the party’s resources, make staffing decisions, and set strategy. It will also have a “democratic whip” system that can instruct any member of parliament to vote in line with the party’s agenda. The selection process for local election candidates will be divided between the CEC and the party’s MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, Shockat Adam, and Ayoub Khan.
A party spokesman claimed that the leaderless party structure demonstrates “that we really are doing politics differently – from the bottom up, not the top down”.
“In Westminster we have a professional political class increasingly disconnected from ordinary people, serving corporations and billionaires instead of the communities they are supposed to represent,” the spokesman continued. “With a truly member-led party, we will offer something different: democratic, grassroots, accountable.”
The shambolic rollout of the Corbynista party continued during its conference, with co-founder Zarah Sultana boycotting the first day of the event in Liverpool on Saturday over a move to block party members, including some of her staff, from attending over their continued membership in other far-left parties, including the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
Sultana argued that people “shouldn’t be made to choose” between other parties and “our new party”, and that efforts to block those with dual loyalties represented a “witch hunt”. A spokesman for the leftist MP said that the aim was to build a “party that welcomes all socialists.” This sentiment was shared among members, who voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to allow for multiple party members to be included.
Despite having risen as an acolyte of Corbyn’s, Sultana has frequently been at odds with the septuagenarian former Labour leader since the two came together to found a new leftist party, including at its very launch when Sultana pre-empted Corbyn by announcing it and proclaiming that she would be co-leader.
Sultana continued to go her own way in September by launching her own membership web portal, through which she raised some £800,000 in donations, sparking a legal battle within the party. She has so far returned £600,000 and has said she will return the difference, but has yet to do so, citing legal details that need to be “ironed out”. During the spat, she suggested that Corbyn and other top-ranking officials had acted like a “sexist boy’s club”.
The identity politics infighting has also extended to the Your Party’s Muslim faction, with two founding MPs, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed, both quitting the party earlier this month over alleged “toxic culture” towards Muslim men. They went on to claim the party was beset by a “pattern of clique-like behaviour and gatekeeping” and that it was “dominated by persistent infighting”.
