Jeremy Corbyn’s new left-wing British party in chaos as row overshadows gathering

LIVERPOOL, England - Veteran British socialist Jeremy Corbyn’s new left-wing political party faced a fresh crisis on Nov 29 after its co-founder, Ms Zarah Sultana, vowed to skip the first day of its inaugural conference.

Mr Corbyn had called for members to “come together” at the opening of the conference, with the party seeking to move on from a messy launch and become a viable left-wing challenger to the ruling Labour party.

“As a party, we’ve got to come together and be united because division and disunity will not serve the interests of the people that we want to represent,” Mr Corbyn told the conference in the north-western English city of Liverpool.

A few hours later, a spokeswoman for Ms Sultana said that she would not enter the conference hall on Nov 29 in protest against one of her supporters being denied entry to the event and several others being expelled from the party over alleged membership of the far-left Socialist Workers Party.

Ms Sultana said she was “disappointed” at the expulsions, but would not be “pushed out” of the new party.

“We absolutely have to work together,” she said.

“But what we have to get rid of is this toxic culture of leaks to the right-wing press, of legal threats, of bullying, intimidation and acts of sabotage.”

A spokesman for the new party, currently called Your Party, defended the expulsions.

“Members of another national political party signed up to Your Party in contravention of clearly stated membership rules – and these rules were enforced,” the spokesman said.

This is the latest blow for a party hoping to fill a gap on the left as British politics fractures into a multi-party system and Labour moves rightwards on some issues.

Mr Corbyn, 76, and Ms Sultana, 32, both former Labour MPs, have been frequently in dispute since they announced the party in July.

Two of the four independent MPs who initially signed up later quit over the divisions, which have included a row over a botched membership launch and threats of legal action.

“It’s pretty obvious that it has been a disaster so far,” Dr Colm Murphy, an expert on the British left at Queen Mary University of London, told AFP.

The new party faces a mammoth task, with polls showing that the Green Party – now headed by charismatic leader Zack Polanski, 30 years younger than Mr Corbyn – is mopping up most of the disaffected on the left.

Over the course of the conference, members are set to choose the party’s official name and decide whether it should have a single leader or be led by its members.

‘Natural home’

Mr Corbyn lost two general elections as Labour leader between 2015 and 2020 before being suspended for refusing to fully accept a rights watchdog’s findings that anti-Semitism was rife among activists during his leadership.

He was succeeded by Mr Keir Starmer, the current prime minister, who dragged the party rightwards and returned it to power in July 2024
after 14 years in opposition.

But Labour has since enraged many left-wing voters in particular by launching a crackdown on immigration
.

Left-wingers also accuse the government of failing to redistribute enough wealth and being too soft on Israel over its conduct in Gaza.

“I voted Labour for most of my life, but became disillusioned with some of their stances on not being visible about anti-transphobia, anti-racism and not supporting Palestine visibly,” said Ms Tris Rodriguez, 49, who travelled from Bristol to attend the conference.

Some 50,000 people have become members of Your Party, Mr Corbyn announced earlier in November, calling the outfit a “mass democratic movement for real change”.

But a YouGov poll published this week suggested that only 12 per cent of Britons would consider voting for it, compared to 28 per cent for the Greens.

Your Party is “at risk of being irrelevant very quickly”, said Dr Murphy, noting that Mr Polanski had “taken over” Mr Corbyn’s role as the “populist, radical left voice” in Britain.

UK politics has long been dominated by Labour and the Conservatives, but the centre-left Liberal Democrats won 72 seats in the 650-seat Parliament in 2024, while Reform, led by Mr Nigel Farage, won five and the Greens took four. AFP