Denied campaign funds and details of their own members, the new party will struggle to field candidates in May’s local elections.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Your Party, the socialist party launched last summer by ex-Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, will almost certainly not be fielding candidates in Croydon’s local elections in May.
‘Grassroots organisation’: Karie Murphy, previously chief of staff to Jeremy Corbyn, is holding back funds and data from Your Party’s formative local branches
And they definitely won’t be having a candidate standing to become Croydon Mayor, Inside Croydon has discovered.
This will be seen as good news for Rowenna Davis, Labour’s candidate for Croydon Mayor, who may have had her vote split – however marginally – if Your Party had a candidate on the ballot paper.
But it could prove to be even better news for Peter Underwood, the Green Party’s mayoral candidate, and his colleagues seeking to become local councillors.
Your Party has been embroiled in bitter internal divisions since Sultana unilaterally announced its formation last July, and it has spiralled into further acrimony and disputes, with arguments over the management of more than £1million in membership fees and donations, some held by a limited company outside the party’s still nebulous organisation.
Some senior and influential figures, including one MP and a former metro mayor, previously prominent in Labour when Corbyn was its party leader, have already walked away from Your Party.
And Inside Croydon has discovered that national officials of Your Party, which claims to be a grassroots-based organisation, are withholding membership details from local activists.
The local party organisation in Croydon is having to rely on whip-rounds at its meetings to fund its activities, even basic items such as room hire. Meanwhile, Your Party nationally sits on the money accrued from supporters in the first wave of enthusiasm for its formation.
Lack of member data and money are two massive brakes on any activity Your Party might undertake. The situation is understood to apply across the country, not just in Croydon.
In dispute: Zarah Sultana has fallen out with her fellow founders of Your Party
“If we don’t know who our members are,” one Croydon Your Party activist said, “we can’t very well select any candidates for local elections.
“Without any funding, we can only undertake very limited campaigning.”
The decision to withhold member details is a direct result of the on-going dispute over who should hold and administer Your Party’s financial accounts and membership database. That decision is believed to have been taken by Karie Murphy, who was Corbyn’s chief of staff when he was Leader of the Opposition (although her exact role within Your Party is as yet ill-defined).
Reasons given have included data protection concerns and the possibility of legal action arising over the financial dispute, but it has also been suggested that holding on to the vital tools for local organisers is part of the struggle for power going on between the factions.
The dilemma over membership details was revealed to Croydon Your Party activists at a local meeting in November. A definitive decision over whether to try to field any candidates across the borough’s 28 voting districts, or wards, is expected to be determined at another meeting, due to take place at Ruskin House next Wednesday.
Your Party in Croydon is not expected to have any ward or branch organisation in place until March. According to membership figures leaked last month, there are more than 400 members signed up across Croydon’s four parliamentary constituencies (including Streatham and Croydon North).
But, for the time being, at least, they are stymied.
“We do not yet have the data from [Your Party] nationally as to the membership in Croydon,” local members were told in an email this week notifying them of the next meeting.
Local elections in Croydon are due to be held on May 7, giving a very short time for the new party, as yet with little formal structure and with even less in campaign funds, to put together even a handful of candidates for the council elections, never mind a full roster of 70 across the borough, from Crystal Palace to Coulsdon.
There is the possibility that, in a handful of target wards, such as Broad Green and West Thornton, “independents” might be put forward, but not badged as Your Party candidates. That is known to be the approach being taken, among all the party’s uncertainties, by Your Party activists in other London boroughs, such as Harrow.
Green shoots: mayoral candidate Peter Underwood (left), here with Zack Polanski, could benefit if Your Party does not stand in the elections
But the biggest influence over Croydon Your Party’s decision-making since Sultana and Corbyn’s botched launch and the clusterfuck conference staged in Liverpool has been the selection by the Green Party of Zack Polanski as their re-energising leader.
Some Your Party supporters, disillusioned by the conduct of the party’s leading figures and the “student politics” they witnessed at the conference in November, have already begun to consider their political choices, with an established party under Polanski’s bold leadership looking more attractive.
Whether Your Party locally should throw its weight behind Green candidates, including mayoral candidate Underwood, has already been openly discussed.
Given the highly motivated nature of many of Your Party’s activists, any decision at next week’s meeting could see Green Party canvassing teams swelled by dozens of often experienced campaigners – including many old acquaintances from the days when Corbyn was Labour leader.
A spokesperson for Your Party in Croydon told Inside Croydon: “We are pressing Your Party nationally to provide our membership data and a proportion of the membership fees.
“If we have these things quickly it will be a golden opportunity for us to stand candidates in some wards.
“Voters are crying out for a progressive party which opposes cuts to council services and offers policies ‘For the many, not the few’.”
Read more: Your Party meeting shows a movement in need of direction
Read more: How a party with no candidates might influence the elections
Last August, for our premium content podcast, Andrew Fisher interviewed Jeremy Corbyn about the formation of Your Party, and about how he was expelled from Labour after 50 years’ membership with a note suggesting he could call Samaritans.- Click here to listen to the podcast on our Spotify channel (charges apply)
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You can kick the Corbynites out of Labour, but you can’t remove the Labour dirty tricks and factionalism from the Corbynites
A resounding endorsement of the democratic process Arfur.
Looking good there isn’t it. The party is off. They have closed the brewery. Where is Andrew Fisher when you need him?
I had high hopes for YP for about ten minutes, it’s such a shame because we need an opposition to the far right and this stinking, genocide supporting Labour government who are licking Trump’s and Netanyahu’s boots and arresting grannies who protest peacefully against genocide,and holding people without trial for legitimate protest against Israel. It’s all on Zack Polanski by the look of it!