October 14, 2025

*Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, October 2025/Getty Images*

This briefing note, by TDC Fellow Ben Sellers, addresses the situation on the British left at the moment, and particularly the development of a new left party. It is aimed in particular at an international audience, and especially for those not immersed in the culture of the British left, as the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of claims, counter claims, statements, and arguments, mostly played out over social media. None of this is conducive to producing any clarity, so the attempt here is to look at some of the key events and offer a few explanations.

The launch of an independent left party in Britain would be a truly historic development. While there have been several abortive attempts to create a party to the left of the Labour Party in recent decades, nothing has really got past the ground floor. The much-anticipated announcement of a launch caused great excitement towards the end of the summer, with hundreds of thousands of people registering their interest. However, that excitement soon dissipated as reality dawned over the fractious nature of party building.

One of the dangers, clearly, in all this, is that it has become hyper-factional and it is difficult, sometimes, to sift through the positioning to get to the underlying politics. Inevitably, this piece is a personal reflection offering the perspectives of the author, and the views reflected should not be attributed to TDC.

The Background

Informal discussions about the formation of a new party have been ongoing since 2020, initially via Jeremy Corbyn’s organisation, the Peace and Justice Project, and more recently centred around a group calling themselves ‘The Collective’. The people involved were almost all close to Corbyn, and the driving force was Corbyn’s former Chief of Staff from his time as Leader of the Labour Party, Karie Murphy. Discussions took a more urgent turn in May 2024, as Corbyn was finally forced out of Labour, only to stand and win as an Independent in his home constituency of Islington North in the July 4, 2024 UK general election, retaining a seat he’d held since 1983.

Even after Corbyn convincingly won his seat as an Independent in July 2024, however, there were months of discussions, and still no sign of any announcement or plan to launch a new left party. This was a source of considerable frustration amongst grassroots supporters, many of whom had either been expelled from, or left, the Labour Party, and were looking for a lead.

In the meantime, a group of Independent MPs – unusual in the British system, but elected in constituencies with high Muslim populations angry at Labour’s failure to condemn the slaughter in Gaza and complicity in Israel’s attack – joined Corbyn on the opposition benches in a formal Parliamentary grouping called the Independent Alliance.

There doesn’t seem to be clarity on what the roots of the delays were, but many commentators claimed that Corbyn was looking for a way back into the Labour Party, or at least pointed to evidence that he was pushed rather than leaving of his own volition. It now seems clear that there was an added element to this, in lower-level disputes about the way to organize and launch the new party.

In early 2025 a new ‘organising committee’ was put together, specifically tasked with setting out a launch timetable and plan. It seemed that, finally, there was a green light, though the form that might take was very much up in the air, and subject to prolonged debate. Apparently, on July 3, 2025, that committee then held a vote on one of the big questions – who should lead the party? It became the first major rift amongst the main players.

The two obvious contenders were Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Corbyn is 76, and by the time a new General Election is likely to come around, will be 80. However, he enjoys immense loyalty amongst many British leftists, especially those involved in the ‘Corbyn project’ (his leadership of the Labour Party, and the movement that backed it). Sultana is a Muslim MP, and in many senses, a protégé of Corbyn – and at 31, is seen as the future of the left by many. She has consistently been outspoken in her opposition to the genocide in Gaza, and austerity at home.

It seems that the Corbyn camp argued that only Jeremy Corbyn had the authority to take the interim role, and that he would make way for a younger leader in due course, and almost certainly before the next General Election, due in 2029. The organizing committee, however, overwhelmingly voted to endorse a co-leadership model, which would be in place until a conference could be organized, and a full vote of the new party membership. There was some contention about whether the committee had the authority to make such a decision, as key members were missing. Corbyn himself, apparently, asked for the vote not to take place.

In the immediate wake of the successful vote, the Sultana camp immediately took to social media, to announce that Zarah had left Starmer’s Labour, and was taking on an interim co-leadership role to form a new left party, alongside Jeremy Corbyn. There followed an awkward 24 hour period of silence from Corbyn, who eventually made a rather vague statement that expressed his delight that Sultana “will help us build a real alternative” and that “discussions are ongoing,” but not actually confirming the co-leadership model. However, most of the press and activist supporters ignored these details and the interim leadership team seemed to be confirmed by a joint statement three weeks later, announcing a new party, temporarily named ‘Your Party.’ As part of the announcement, Zarah Sultana joined the Independent Alliance of MPs in Parliament.

850,000 signs-up was extraordinary, representing an outpouring of hope, especially, it seemed, about the ‘dream team’ of Corbyn and Sultana – reminiscent of the early days of Corbynism.

There followed a great period of enthusiasm from supporters of the new party, with approximately 850,000 answering the call to register an interest in the new party. For context, the Labour Party at its recent height during Corbyn’s leadership (when it became the largest political party in Western Europe) was just over 600,000, and the recorded vote for Corbyn in 2015 was just over 250,000. 850,000 signs-up was therefore extraordinary, representing an outpouring of hope, especially, it seemed, about the ‘dream team’ of Corbyn and Sultana – reminiscent of the early days of Corbynism.

It wasn’t to last.

The Split

First, it seems important to outline the key events of the short period immediately after Zarah Sultana’s announcement of the co-leadership, which undoubtedly caused great consternation in Corbyn’s camp. One very useful account of where we are up to is Andrew Murray’s piece in the Morning Star, published on September 20. Murray is a former advisor to Jeremy Corbyn, who was also previously Chief of Staff at Unite the Union, one of the largest trade unions in Britain. What follows is a summary of a frantic two days in mid-September:

A road map to the founding Your Party conference was announced by Team Corbyn on Tuesday September 16, apparently without consulting Zarah Sultana. It contained one or two more contentious proposals, such as sortition (a weighted lottery for members to attend the founding conference in person), but also laid out a timeline for a membership launch and pre-conference “regional assemblies” where members can “listen to each other, break bread and debate” founding documents.
Team Sultana objected most of all to (a) not being consulted and (b) for conference arrangements to be decided ostensibly by a small group of Independent Alliance MPs (in reality, the leg work was to be done by an unnamed operational team). Sultana wanted a conference arrangements committee more representative of the coalition that had been brought together, rather than IA MPs and former Leader of the Opposition (LOTO) staffers, but was reported to have been rebuffed.
That seems to have been the trigger for a spiral of events that brought the Your Party project to a potential breaking point. Two days later, on the morning of Thursday September 18, Zarah Sultana announced the launch of the Your Party membership portal, writing on X, ‘We said this was your party – and we meant it. We have just launched our membership. Join us and be a part of history: https://yourparty-membership.uk.’ 20,000 signed up in just a few hours.

However, activists sensed that, much like the co-leadership announcement, all was not well. Rumors swirled that the membership link was a ‘hack,’ and a scam. No similar membership announcement was forthcoming from Jeremy Corbyn – quite the opposite. Three hours later, Jeremy Corbyn posted an alarming, urgent message to all Your Party UK supporters from the Independent Alliance (excluding Zarah Sultana), saying, “This morning, an unauthorised email was sent to all yourparty.uk supporters with details of a supposed membership portal hosted in a new domain name… Legal advice is being taken. That email should be ignored by all supporters. If direct debits have been set up, they should immediately be cancelled.”
Those supportive of Sultana challenged the allegations, arguing that although there was a dispute over authority, the agreement to sign off each other’s work had initially been breached by Corbyn’s team, with the unilateral announcement about the party launch. This version of events was somewhat corroborated by a group intervention by Andrew Feinstein (ex ANC MP in South Africa and challenger to Keir Starmer in his Holborn & St Pancras constituency), Jamie Driscoll (ex-Mayor of North of Tyne) and Beth Winter (ex-Labour MP) who had been custodians of membership monies and donations.
I think it is a fair assumption to say that the language used (creating panic amongst hundreds, if not thousands of Your Party supporters), was fuelled by simmering tensions between the IA MPs, Corbyn’s backroom team, and those around Zarah Sultana over a number of issues, including the self-declared ‘social conservatism’ of some of the IA MPs, and specific disputes over issues of identity, especially the support or otherwise for trans men and women.
What Sultana’s team did next upped the ante considerably. In an almost immediate response to the IA joint post, she wrote a long statement which upbraided the Independent Alliance as a “sexist boys’ club”, and took aim at Corbyn’s chief ally, Karie Murphy, whom she accused of wanting “sole financial control over members money and sole constitutional control over our conference.”
Later that evening (still September 18), a statement shared via the Your Party X account confirmed that it would be reporting “this morning’s unauthorised email to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO)”. The formalizing of the legal language very much drew more fire on Sultana, with her social media accounts filling up with accusations of fraud.
It wasn’t quite finished there, either. Before the night was out, Sultana issued her own legal threat – saying that she’d instructed specialist defamation lawyers and that she intended “to hold to account those responsible for [the baseless attacks on my character]”. By now, Your Party supporters and many others were clearly angry and disappointed at this seemingly endless tit-for-tat and counterproductive factional warfare being conducted in public. It then went quiet, for a while.

Causes of the Rift

It may be some time before we understand the true reasons for the rift in the leadership of Your Party. To many, it was interpreted as an explosion, unexpected and ego-driven. As a consequence, a lot of the commentary, both in the press and on social media, has been very personality-based. But actually there are political and organizational roots to the dispute that are important to analyze.

The first was the issue of co-leadership. Whether Corbyn himself did or not agree to co-leadership is hard to tell, but certainly Corbyn’s team never seemed to accept the model and perhaps felt that Corbyn was entitled to a ‘veto’ over the idea, considering his long, hard battle in the service of the movement. There was a suggestion that Sultana was positioning herself to be the ‘heir apparent,’ while they felt Corbyn was the only person that could navigate the party through the choppy waters of its founding.
From Sultana’s team, there was a feeling that despite the respect they had for Jeremy, his backroom team were using his position to enable a top-down, undemocratic start to the party’s life. Certainly, Sultana has been bolder and potentially more cognizant of the need for a party founded on grassroots democracy, and the process that is needed to get there. She has also been critical of aspects of Corbynism, in particular its capitulation on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. So, in their eyes, hanging on to the idea of co-leadership was also a fight for democracy, accountability and learning the lessons of the previous iteration of the project. The appointment of the ‘executive team’ to deliver Your Party to its supporters was seen as a bit of an ‘in house’ job, with almost all members drawn from among old Leader of the Opposition (LOTO) staffers from the period of Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.
There are also longer-term conflicts, which are to do with the disparate coalition that was put together, and held together, by Corbyn’s leadership of Labour. During that time, the need for unity was paramount, and most people disciplined themselves to that end. In this respect at least, it also helped having a clear, and aggressive opposition – in the form of the Labour Right – whose actions were a constant reminder of who the most immediate enemy was in terms of setting a left direction within Labour.
Soon after the General Election defeat of 2019, however, a fracturing of that coalition started to take place: part of it was generational, but not all – it was also about background, class, identitarian politics, and attachment to labour movement traditions or new forms of organizing. The positioning of the new left party, which mostly took place behind closed doors and amongst small groups of people attached to Corbyn’s leadership office, was never settled in relation to this mix of cultures and ways of doing politics. To a certain extent, the rift which blew up between Corbyn and Sultana was a reflection of these underlying long-run fractures.

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A post shared by Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultanamp)

Reconciliation

The result of this chaotic two days was calamitous, certainly in the immediate term; amongst the 850,000 who signed up with such enthusiasm, there has been a deep despair. People have talked of hope being extinguished, of dreams dashed – and, in the face of a rampant far right and a deeply dishonest and record-breakingly unpopular Labour government that is tanking fast, there may seem little to be hopeful about. Clearly, some of this is due to a naïve belief that a left party would be delivered to people, without battles, factions, mistakes, and splits. Ultimately, that’s not realistic, and the events of the last few weeks may be a healthy corrective to that kind of wishful thinking that seeks to bury or ignore genuine political differences on the left.

People have talked of hope being extinguished, of dreams dashed – and, in the face of a rampant far right and a deeply dishonest and record-breakingly unpopular Labour government that is tanking fast, there may seem little to be hopeful about.

However, there was immediate talk of mediation between the two main actors, Corbyn and Sultana, and that began in earnest on September 21, when Zarah Sultana issued yet another statement, this time offering an olive branch and declaring her legal action to be withdrawn. Tired though people were of statements and counter-statements, this one was received relatively warmly.

Other solutions to the immediate stand-off were offered, including a proposal to move the whole founding process to a neutral handover team – in the hope that this will break the impasse. This solution seems, at the very least, to have an understanding that the issues are more than personal.

In the last 2 to 3 weeks, there has been a definite thawing of relations, and a re-focus on the launch of the new party in November. The Your Party executive, now seemingly established as the team delivering the party launch, have issued clarifications around the founding conference, to be held in Liverpool on November 29-30, whilst a re-launch of the membership scheme was announced on September 24, this time with Jeremy Corbyn’s sanction. On Thursday, October 9, Corbyn and Sultana appeared at a well-attended rally at St George’s Hall in Liverpool, and were pictured raising their hands together in a brief moment of unity.

There are still issues, however. Unlike Zarah Sultana’s pre-emptive announcement (which was followed by immediate celebratory statements about the numbers joining), Corbyn’s launch proved a much more low-key affair, with no membership updates so far, leading many to speculate that the numbers have been disappointing. Certainly, whilst the past few weeks have been marked by a steady determination to get on with the business of launching the party (with large local and regional meeting continuing), there is a generalized caution, cynicism even, from grassroots activists – and much of that early enthusiasm seems to have waned or disappeared. The Green Party, under new leftwing leader Zack Polanski, have been the clear beneficiaries, and the ultimate balance of forces and relations between the two parties remains up in the air.

Of course, there are several possible conclusions to this story. It may be that peace reigns and the centrality of launching ‘Your Party’ trumps any lingering disputes. Or it could be that one ‘faction’ wins out – and forces through their agenda, delivering the party to an awaiting base. We may, of course, end up with two left parties outside the Greens, possibly reflecting the longer-term divisions described above. Or we could end up with a ‘rip it up and start again’ solution, where the lessons are learned, but a wholly different political formation arises from the ashes. That is all still to be determined. One way or another, it will prove to be of decisive importance to the future of the left in Britain and of the course of British politics in a time of deepening political and economic crisis and a surging far right.

Your Party? Turbulent beginnings for a new left party in Britain

The Background

850,000 signs-up was extraordinary, representing an outpouring of hope, especially, it seemed, about the ‘dream team’ of Corbyn and Sultana – reminiscent of the early days of Corbynism.

The Split

Causes of the Rift

Reconciliation

People have talked of hope being extinguished, of dreams dashed – and, in the face of a rampant far right and a deeply dishonest and record-breakingly unpopular Labour government that is tanking fast, there may seem little to be hopeful about.

Further Reading

Think. Do. Change.

Your Party? Turbulent beginnings for a new left party in Britain

The Background

850,000 signs-up was extraordinary, representing an outpouring of hope, especially, it seemed, about the ‘dream team’ of Corbyn and Sultana – reminiscent of the early days of Corbynism.

The Split

Causes of the Rift

Reconciliation

People have talked of hope being extinguished, of dreams dashed – and, in the face of a rampant far right and a deeply dishonest and record-breakingly unpopular Labour government that is tanking fast, there may seem little to be hopeful about.

Further Reading

TDC signs open letter condemning attacks on nonprofits

Think. Do. Change.