Yesterday’s Your Party implosion was the culmination of six weeks of chaos. It’s been an open secret that the party has been beset by competing Sultana and Corbyn factions, dysfunction in its basic decision making processes, and an inability to execute the planning for its intended autumn conference. 

The latest episode in this deeply embarrassing spat began after Sultana unilaterally launched a paid party membership portal that within hours had over 20,000 members. In response, the Your Party X account posted a statement signed by Corbyn and four other MPs in the Independent Alliance group stating that the portal was unauthorised, advising prospective members not to join, and announcing that they would be seeking legal advice. 

Sultana then responded with her own X attachment accusing the MPs of sidelining her within the party, subjecting her to a “sexist boys’ club”, and indicating that the Corbyn faction, and in particular Corbyn’s former chief of staff Karie Murphy, was seeking to control both party finances and constitutional control of the conference contrary to an initial power-sharing agreement. 

The Your Party account replied again with an unsigned statement informing those unable to look away from this car crash that the party had now reported the morning’s “unauthorised email” to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The statement denied Sultana’s account of the situation. 

It was a great run. 

Part of the pure insanity of yesterday’s back and forth was its timing. It shouldn’t have been possible to distract from the clouds gathering over PM Keir Starmer and his week of public fealty to hardening fascist Donald Trump. Until he is finally dislodged from No 10, every day should be about Starmer’s hiring of known Epstein associate Peter Mandelson, the constant chaos in his office, and his unrelenting commitment to austerity, repression, and appeasement to the forces of hate and reaction.  

This is a period of crisis. One of the country’s largest far-right rallies in decades was not even a week ago. Reform is surging in popularity. The government continues to enthusiastically help perpetrate genocide in Gaza, arrest protesters en masse under terror legislation, and accelerate its newest migrant deportation and demonisation scheme. To make the situation worse, the government recently agreed to hand over the keys to national security, education, and health infrastructure in a “strategic partnership” with OpenAI, a company ushering in a form of modern-day imperialism. 

Starmer’s premiership has been a complete failure and he ought to be on his way out as soon as possible. But that alone will not improve the situation. 

Another open secret is that Health Secretary Wes Streeting is primed to replace Starmer. Streeting, like Starmer, is plainly anti-trans, anti-worker, and anti-Palestinian. All indications are that there is very little difference on a substantive level between the two. The Labour right will continue to fulfill its historic mission of advancing the interests of capital and fending off the left. 

It’s worth noting that Streeting shouldn't even be an MP right now. A year ago, he won his Ilford North constituency by 528 votes over independent Leanne Mohamad, a then 23-year old British-Palestinian youth worker who left the Labour party over its endorsement of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It was notable at the time that Corbyn’s re-election campaign, for a seat he had held for decades, was a large operation. It's not an unfair criticism to say that additional campaign resources, including the redirection of canvassers from North to East London on polling day, should have been diverted from Corbyn to the benefit of Mohamad.

We deserve better than an immediately non-functional party seized by the same insiders who have repeatedly clung onto Corbyn to the detriment of building a movement beyond him. We deserve far more than Corbyn’s own stifling indecision and lack of concrete vision that has long impeded progress on developing left electoral politics outside of the Labour party. And we deserve to have more trust in our politicians than Sultana has earned over the past six weeks of blatant and ineffective politicking and the continued solicitation of funds for a now discredited project. 

A party that believes in the mass redistribution of wealth and power is one worth building. Apart, Corbyn and Sultana have long demonstrated their commitment to the political principles that Your Party was meant to stand for. But together they’ve created a mess. Enough.▼