Photo by David Canales/SOPA
It’s happened again. After attempting to bounce Jeremy Corbyn into co-founding a new left-wing party, Zarah Sultana has attempted to bounce her co-founder into opening the party’s registration up to members. An email went out this morning to all 750,000 people who have signed up for updates on the as-yet-unnamed movement, temporarily called Your Party, informing them that the party’s membership portal has now opened. For £5 per month, or £55 per year, interested parties could become paid-up members of this new Corbyn-Sultana movement. Or so they thought.
Sultana was quick off the starting blocks, lauding this moment for Your Party. “We said this was your party – and we meant it. We have just launched our membership,” she posted on X, shortly after the email went out. Within an hour, Sultana had tweeted again: “10,000 have joined us as paid-up members! Some people have experienced issues due to such high traffic!”.
But in the hours since Sultana’s announcement, rumours had already begun to swirl. Messages sent in Your Party group chats warned members that the email they had received that morning wasn’t legitimate, and to warn potential members to hold fire before signing up. Confusion reigned. One insider told me that the email “uses exactly the same email and payment systems and is linked to the same bank account as all previous Your Party communications and donations”. The confusion, they said, was over who had authorised the email’s release. But still Sultana doubled down. In a post announcing Your Party had made it to 20,000 sign-ups, she claimed: “Right-wing bad faith actors are desperate to claim this link is fake. It isn’t. It’s safe and secure!”
At 2.07pm, Corbyn posted an urgent message for Your Party supporters on X. It read: “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.” Corbyn urged all supporters to ignore the email and cancel any direct debits already set up. He also said legal advice was being taken over this supposed unauthorised release. All members of the Independent Alliance were signatories to the letter – except Sultana. An email from the official Your Party account later went out to supporters. Once again, Sultana’s name was not included in the sign off. Although nothing had yet been confirmed, it was easy to deduce whom among the group may have been responsible for this “unauthorised release”.
If anything, this blatant breach in communications between Sultana and Corbyn confirms that the split in Your Party is real. As I wrote earlier this week, this is less a clashing of ideological differences and more about the diverging personalities involved and their different visions for how Your Party should run. Sultana was clearly growing impatient in waiting for her fellow MPs to get a move on – she has been clear that her vision for this new movement is grassroots first. But in moving so quickly she has made enemies of her allies. Whether there is any coming back for Sultana after this second messy surprise for her co-leader remains to be seen.
In a statement released this afternoon, Sultana confirmed that the email had been sent without authorisation from Corbyn. She clarified her “sole motivation” has been to “safeguard the grassroots involvement” in the new party and claimed that she has been “subjected to what can only be described as a sexist boys club”. She called on Corbyn to meet with her and agree to make public all agreed structures, processes and decision-making. “This party is more important than any one person,” Sultana concluded.
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