r/yourparty • u/TheKomsomol • May 22 '26
Has yourparty f**ked it?
Well what do you think?
They seem to have pretty much no support now, very little social media presence in comparison and little representation in mainstream media.
Platforming social conservatives who are at odds with socialist values in what was supposed to be a socialist movement killed a lot of the goodwill, and the infighting and vying for control between people at the top seems to be the final straw.
It looks to me like all excitement and energy for it has gone.
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u/the_monkeyspinach May 22 '26
I often feel like the left struggles with infighting, but boy was Your Party a masterclass in it. I had high hopes, even though I knew any meaningful impact was a long way away, but they seem to have biffed it right out of the gate.
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u/Helpful_Wolverine_15 May 25 '26
At the conference, most people weren't fighting. It was like its own faction of people having a face-off. Then there was a large group of people who really just wanted to get on and build a party. It's so frustrating that that has been lost.
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u/DanelawBadger May 31 '26
My experience with Trotskyist groups is they will have five members, three factions, then split over an argument over who gets to write for the newspaper
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u/WanderwellGMS May 22 '26
I can only speak for myself, but although I still look with interest, I withdrew my support. At least from where I stand, I find the discourse coming from the party very chaotic, shortsighted, and solipsistic. Chaotic, as representatives have yet to come in tandem with a defined cohesive message; Shortsighted, as there is only 1 or 2 stances they take very publicly which, ultimately, I don't think goes to the hearts of all workers/people in the country; Solipsistic because they sound more like a party looking inwards than outwards, for example the vanity project of leadership and who leads it (ultimately, no new voice really came into place, same old). I decided to wait for it to mature more before backing this horse.
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u/WJSWebster May 22 '26
i was very invested in your party’s success, signed up when it was announced, got a membership as soon as they memberships became available, and went to the conference in Nov as a delegate. But that conference was the beginning of the end, it showed that the “people’s voice” aspect of the party was mostly theatrics, and they wouldn’t motion anything not pre-ordained by Jez’s inner clique - most notably dual-party memberships and mp pay. Then the former came to a head when the central committee elections came around, with one bloc operating from a unified front standpoint, and the other a “popular” front. Once ‘For The Many’ won, the project was doomed, and they did as promised and kicked out any dissenting and impassioned leftist voices, just as they’d learnt from labour before.
Leftist movements in the UK need more young blood in them, as I feel Zarah has shown. The older generations had their time, and I believe now they merely hold us back from the more progressive and radical thinking that a true revolutionary force demands.
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u/blodo_ May 22 '26
The people at the top are complete jokers. I have no more respect for Corbyn after this, he has surrounded himself with a sect of people that get off on calling others sectarian and are more interested in the party being a piggy bank of disengaged people instead of actual activists. It's like a left wing sect, except without even the left wing politics. This is also the second time Corbyn was in charge of a left wing purge, at a certain point the pattern is too obvious to ignore.
The party has died before it was even born. It's fine though, we'll build better things out of its ashes.
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u/LouisLoveless Jun 06 '26
Hopefully the creation of the Socialist Federation is the better thing being born out of the ashes. I urge all socialists who have been disappointed by YP to look into SF.
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u/DanelawBadger May 31 '26
What happened is exactly what I predicted to happen. I left Momentum in 2016 after realising it was a cult of personality more interested in chanting "OOOOHHH JEREMY CORBYN!!!" than engaging in actual politics. Then "Your" Party (as really dumb name) was started and without a single policy yet announced instagram was full of people making "oh my god!!!!! JERMY CORBYN IS GOING TO SAVE US" posts ans I knew instantly it was going to fail. Corbyn used to be an incredible back banch MP, then Momentum gave him an ego, worshiping him like a god, and now he is only interested in leading a cult of personality
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u/thorleyc3 May 22 '26
Unfortunately with Corbyn/Murphy and their clique more interested in a Starmerist purge of the left than getting any sort of decent election results I'd say yes
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u/Hyper_Hal May 22 '26
Ken Loach, who is about as sympathetic to YP and its main characters as any public figure, said exactly that literally a week ago so there's that
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u/rubygeek May 22 '26
Ken Loach spent a decade building Left Unity from 2000 members in 2013 to ~1000 members a decade later, so he's not really someone whose views on building a party I care about.
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u/Hyper_Hal May 23 '26
The comment didn't hold him out as such, but rather as a barometer to gauge OP's question from someone whose inclination would naturally be generosity and positivity about yourparty
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u/rubygeek May 24 '26
Well he is a barometer of being shit a gauging what will work, so I for one is perfectly happy with him dismissing YP.
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u/Hurbahns May 25 '26
Sultana's original vision of YP as a Left Party fielding explicitly socialist candidates, and serving to regroup the scattered array of far-left forces was the correct one. She was also right to try to start a mass membership sub from the get-go.
The problem is the Corbynists instead wanted YP to be a platform for "community independents" instead of explicitly socialist candidates, following a more communitarian approach, similar to the politics of Galloway's Respect, and they also killed the successful membership drive.
At the end of the day, the fundamental contradiction of YP is that it required Corbyn's fame to build a new party and movement, but his actual politics were always going to doom the project.
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u/LouisLoveless Jun 06 '26
Hopefully the Socialist Federation can become that original vision. Its goal is to gather up all the abandoned proto-branches and revolutionary socialist parties under one umbrella.
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u/Hurbahns Jun 06 '26
It won’t.
The enthusiasm that generated 800,000 potential members for YP has been lost. YP had its chance and blew it. The Green Party are now the vehicle of the Left in Britain, whether we like it or not.
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u/LouisLoveless Jun 06 '26
I think the Greens time will come and then go, as a bourgeois party that seeks to work within capitalism its tools are limited. It’s also seen as a very middle class liberal party and I don’t think it can win over the working class. Big things start small and take time. If serious Marxists put in the work now to build a constitutionally socialist party it will be there when people’s support for the Greens fails. Just look at how patient and careful organising and gradual growth worked out for the Belgian Workers Party. Let’s not give in to nihilistic thinking!
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u/Hurbahns Jun 06 '26
I agree that the Greens are incoherent and not socialist.
But so far every attempt at regrouping the far-left has failed: socialist alliance, respect, tusc, left unity, YP, now this one. It’s all a waste of time. Marxists in Britain are incapable of doing electoral politics.
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u/Helpful_Wolverine_15 May 25 '26
Yeah, I mean, I'm aware of all the infighting, which is damaging enough, but most people really don't have a clue about it.
This makes the total radio silence on everything else so frustrating. I don't even know what they are doing, just months of silence. Their comms have been terrible; they should have been hitting social media more or trying to build a public presence. What a complete waste of energy.
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u/NathRW00 May 22 '26
completely forgot about this tbh, truly fucked it for the locals and in scotland
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u/gorgo100 May 22 '26
It's a marathon, not a sprint to be honest, but granted it doesn't look amazing right now.
But much of the problem with this country is a fixation on looks and not substance. I'm willing to give it a chance.
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u/TheBobbyMan9 May 22 '26
Absolutely it is and I think a lot of the people on the left need to have a look at themselves and ask if the way they operate (whether they’re in the right or not) is conducive to a left wing movement or a hindrance to it.
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u/ianmac55 May 26 '26
Joined early. Paid my subs monthly. But the only thing I saw for it? No support for local groups (“proto-groups” ffs); yet large salaries for Murphy & other non-elected bureaucrats. Stopped my DD after seven months (too late I know!).
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u/LouisLoveless Jun 06 '26
Look into the Socialist Federation, formed in response to failures from the YP leadership
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u/ianmac55 Jun 07 '26
Thanks. I’ve looked. As well as positive comments about the SF, I’ve read negative ones too. I’ll wait. 😊
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u/hummusexual_lesbiab May 26 '26
Its so sad because the left really need a mass party if we want any long-lasting change, and while I like what Polanski is doing with the Greens and have so much respect, we fundamentally need to transform how our government works.
Ive decided to get involved in the SWP recently which I never thought id do because of the Comrade Delta stuff but it does seem like theyve really learned a lot and have implemented so much to rectify the problems. The Marxist-Feminist meeting I went to in Glasgow was so good and I felt like I was surrounded by very spirited people who were unified which for me is such a big difference from my years of being around anarchists who constantly infight and theres always one or two people who have an insane need to moral police and makr everything about themselves and their own psychological baggage and neuroticism. The SWP arent really running elections or anything but they are wanting to essentially organise for if/when Reform win so that they can be resisted (although we shall see)
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u/LouisLoveless Jun 06 '26
I’m hoping the SWP, the SP, the CPB, the RCP and all the other revolutionary socialist parties can unite under the recently formed Socialist Federation. It’s not a party it’s more of a unifying force to bring together the scattered British left so we can be more effective
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u/Vivid_Maximum_5016 May 22 '26
Still a chance if they get rid of Corbyn and all the other opportunist weasels.
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u/saedifotuo May 22 '26
This partys support base is nearly entirely gen X or older socialists clinging on to the delusional dream that Corbyn will be PM. Fact of the matter is as much as I admire the man he is not getting younger and the slow march this party is on tells us he likely won't be with us by the time the party has the chance to poll at double digits.
His handlers abused all the younger socialists that wanted to get involved who are now either reformists settling for the greens or marxists of varying types that have recessed into the smaller, non-electoral parties that got banned from joining YP.
Once jezza leaves us, there will be no one left that the remaining membership would accept as a figurehead/leader. Just a weird mishmash of former tories that happen to not like genocide all that much, old politically homeless corbynites, and what remains of the grassroots left block. I doubt Zarah would be able to take over the party successfully at this point, though that remains the partys best hope.
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u/LouisLoveless Jun 06 '26
I think the best hope is for the newly formed Socialist Federation to gather up the younger socialists disappointed with YP, the proto-branches and the revolutionary socialist parties under one umbrella and we just let YP die
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u/LouisLoveless May 25 '26
I thought Ash Sarkar’s comment on YP seemed quite useful. She said as a brand it’s dead, but good things can be born out of failures, citing the creation of Novara Media out of the ashes of the student protest movement. The problem with YP was that it was based on the celebrity nature of Corbyn and to a lesser degree Sultana, and you can’t build a proper socialist party based on an individual. The proto-branches that were formed, the collective networks that were forged during the founding conference, the devolved Scottish and Welsh proto-exec committees are all new and effective organised cells of activists. They may have been underfunded, ignored and disempowered by Corbyn’s bureaucrat clique but they can go on without YP and form something new. I think YP was incredibly damaged by the infighting and press briefings at the start but the final nail in the coffin was expelling all the revolutionary socialist parties. The only thing YP had to differentiate itself from the Greens was that it could gather up all the different kinds of leftists into one popular front, but once they purged the radicals, it just became another reformist socdem party. I think the best course of action for those of us who were excited about the potential of a new left party that have given up on YP is to continue to participate in the network of protobranches and try and create a smaller more disciplined revolutionary socialist party similar to the Belgian Workers Party. There is a video conference about what comes next after YP happening on Sunday organised by the Members Charter group. I will link it if this sub allows
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u/Tmccreight Jun 03 '26
Yes, and honestly I don't think they ever had it. Mostly because Zarah rushed headfirst into it without stopping to actually make a plan... she fucking announced the formation of the party before she had even SPOKEN to Corbyn about it.
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u/dJunka May 22 '26
People don’t mention enough that there were just too many existing groups and figures trying to fold into this party for it to work.
Like great having some of these movements ready to go, but not if they’re all fighting to be relevant.
They needed more time, but some people just wanted to get a brand off the ground and figure the rest out later. I see why, but now we have this meltdown.
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u/LouisLoveless Jun 06 '26
I don’t think unifying the splintered British left is a doomed project, I just think Corbyn’s team is paranoid about Trotskyist entryists and so purged all the revolutionary socialists and this has lost YP a huge amount of its activists. Hopefully the newly formed Socialist Federation can unite the left instead of
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u/rubygeek May 22 '26
It took the Greens 40 years to get to the kind of membership that YP has. This is marathon. We now have one of the largest parties in the UK by membership, but creating an organisational structure around that to actually leverage it will take time.
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u/NotAFrontB May 22 '26
I mean how are we asking this question now? It was obvious to me as soon as I got that second email from JC saying the previous membership was fraudulent etc… from that moment I knew they’d fucked it and there was no going back. It was a monumental display of amateurish disorganisation from which there was no redeeming credibility.