Jeremy Corbyn spoke to the Peeps YouTube channel

ISLINGTON North MP Jeremy Corbyn has apologised for the in-fighting that has dominated the first months of Your Party.

Speaking to the Tribune in Liverpool at its inaugural conference, he said: “I am sorry and I regret some of the stuff that has happened. Social media is not a good place to conduct political debate because it very quickly descends into rancour.

“A new party is bound to evoke a lot of passions and the passions are certainly there, bucket-loads of them.”

Since Zarah Sultana’s announcement of the new party in July, the operation has been criticised for becoming overshadowed by factional division, briefings to the press, and legal threats.

The Coventry South MP has had to explain what is happening to funds from donations secured through a company separate to Your Party.

She in turn has accused Mr Corbyn’s advisers of freezing her out of important decision-making. Ms Sultana’s supporters argue that getting the project off the ground has been sluggish and bureaucratic, but Mr Corbyn said it was “a hard call” to decide how quickly to found it.

He told the Tribune: “It could have been sooner, but that might have been rushed. This way we move on. As of Monday, we are going to have a group of people chosen by sortition [selection by drawing lots] to be the committee that takes it forward.”

“As of the end of January, we will have an elected executive committee. Things are moving quite quickly now.”

Over the course of the weekend, members voted to keep the name Your Party, endorse independent candidates in May local elections, and for a “collective leadership”. MPs will not be allowed to stand for chair or deputy chair of the Central Executive Committee, meaning Mr Corbyn’s ambitions to steward the new party will remain unfulfilled.

Zarah Sultana

Ahead of the vote, he had told the Tribune that he was in favour of a “leader of the party with a whole team around them”.

Asked whether he thought he should be that leader, he said: “I’m very happy to get the party under way and get it started. I’ve put a huge amount of effort into this endeavour, ever since the July 2024 election.”

The MP, who held his seat in parliament as an independent standing against Labour, his old party, joked: “There’s been lots of thrills and spills along the way, and I’m happy to write a handbook on how to form a political party, or how not to form a political party.”

Over the course of the weekend, the conference on Merseyside became the scene of a broader debate over what the party should stand for.

Some attendees argued that Mr Corbyn is too much of a “centrist” – a suggestion that provoked amusement among members of his team – and that the project should go in a more radical direction beyond electoral politics.

Others, meanwhile, said they supported the party because they feel abandoned by Labour and wanted a party that largely seeks to achieve aims Mr Corbyn outlined while he was leader.

Mr Corbyn said, however, that these competing visions of the party could be reconciled.

“To some extent they’re at odds with each other. In other ways they are in a sense almost complementary”, he said.

“If you say you’re fed up with the current system and you want to change it, well you do that by campaigning and by argument, but you’ve got to win people over, you’ve got to bring people with you.”

He added: “In reality, a socialist movement operates in both spheres. You operate in the community organising, you operate in the communities, you operate supporting people trying to win decent wages for themselves, and at the same time you take that argument into the electoral sphere as well.”

A different party – with very different ambitions

A packed hall for the founding conference

“YOUR PARTY: DIVIDED” read the leaflet being handed out by hard-left groups outside the conference hall in Merseyside.

The narrative that the two personalities behind this project – Corbyn and Sultana – are fighting is one that has been written several dozen times over the past months, as allegations of a “sexist boys’ club”, leaks, and smears give further fodder for the story to be told in new and shocking ways.

Indeed, public apologies for the division at the top quickly seemed wholly performative as jibes once again undermined any sheen of professionalism at the very first conference.

Ms Sultana boycotted the first day over expulsions of members who are also part of the SWP.

She argued that the decisions were being made by “nameless, faceless bureaucrats” and that this was at odds with the democratic nature of the project. Backstage Mr Corbyn’s team were confused why Ms Sultana had not arrived at the conference centre.

“She should be here,” one said, while also fretting that she might “pull something”.

Little did they seem to know she already had.

But the problem for Your Party runs much deeper than a fight for power between two MPs. The problem, as became clear from countless conversations with attendees, is that members have very different ideas about what the party should be. For some, they want Your Party to essentially be a traditional political party that has socialist policies. But then what would that party be offering that is different to Zack Polanski’s revitalised Green Party?

Others, however, feel that Your Party needs to be a “radically insurgent” force that prioritises creating power in communities – even setting up parallel systems of government – over winning seats in parliament.

The energy for an alternative is there, and democracy is messy. Maybe a lack of a single leader can mark a new chapter in the development of the party.

For many, however, the worry is that this new force – for which there is a clear appetite – will be consigned to simply shouting from the sidelines, and also at each other.