A tale of two Your Party conferences

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Hi Diogenes,

Your Party represents a near-unprecedented experiment in grassroots democracy in the UK and while much of the media coverage of their launch conference focused on clashes between the headline names, members in attendance experienced an event that restored their hope for progressive politics in the UK.

FEATURED STORY

With UK politics in flux, Your Party may well surprise you yet

Paul Rogers

UK politics is in a remarkable state of flux, with Keir Starmer's Labour government facing multiple problems.

Reform UK is surging ahead in the polls and, although the next general election is not until 2029, many pundits are already convinced we are headed for a far-right government led by Nigel Farage, possibly propped up by the Conservatives in coalition.

Given the current state of the Labour Party and the extent of its corporate capture, any opposition to this will have to come from the likes of the Green Party and the newly fledged Your Party, the latter of which had its inaugural conference in Liverpool last weekend.

It felt very much as though there were two completely different conferences taking place; the one being reported on in the mainstream/legacy media and the one being experienced by people in attendance.

The first conference was a source of contempt and ridicule in the UK's mostly right-wing legacy media. Reporters struggled even to try fathom that a political party would indulge in the apparently quaint idea of grassroots democracy on a substantial scale. Their consensus was that Your Party was going nowhere fast.

The other conference, the one experienced by participants, was full of renewed enthusiasm for the seriously progressive policies that had lain behind Corbynism since 1995 and were now hopefully being exemplified.

Over two days, the 2,500 members in attendance (and the many thousands more who joined in online) debated and held direct and binding votes on 28 key issues, ranging from the name (they chose to stick with Your Party) to its constitution and organising strategy, through to finer details such as the fiscal behaviour of its MPs.

Their passion was clear, although somewhat tempered by dismay at the deep divisions that clearly persisted, with the party having been substantially knocked back by several internal disagreements in the run-up to the event and its co-founders and main figureheads, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana often appearing at loggerheads.

This dismay was made worse by the nastiness typical of modern social media and the thoughtful yet often dispiriting in-depth analyses, including by Steven Methven in Novara Media and Paul Knaggs in Labour Heartlands.

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Whatever you think of Your Party and the various analyses it's prompted, one thing should not be forgotten: this is a near-unprecedented experiment in grassroots democracy in the UK.

In recent months, hundreds of people across the country have worked together to organise Your Party meetings, often at a couple of days' notice, with the gatherings attended by many thousands more.

The whole process may have been far from perfect and was certainly done in a rush, not least with the local and Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections looming in May, but Your Party now has the potential to embed this kind of grassroots accountability in its culture, even if the challenges it faces are huge.

After all, the current national economic culture is rooted in the neoliberalist model that is diametrically opposite to the outlook of Your Party. That model is essential to the ensuring the UK's super-wealthy elite continue to thrive and is supported by the national print media and its singularly wealthy owners, making it even harder to take on.

In the United States, Donald Trump's second term is seeing the results of Project 2025, the detailed preparation for office generated by the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank. Here in the UK, a similar process is underway. This is loosely termed Project 2029 and, according to Byline Times, involves a political lobbyist linked to the Heritage Foundation working with Reform UK in the run-up to the 2029 General Election.

From that perspective, the best development would be for Reform to merge with and dominate the Tory Party, and win the election with the help of advice and funding from Trump-land.

A year ago that would have seemed a tall order but politics in the UK really is in a state of flux. Labour won a landslide last year with less than 34% of the vote and is now in the doldrums, while the Green Party now has a larger membership than the Conservatives, largely thanks to its surging popularity under new leader Zack Polanski.

As to Your Party, much will depend on its capacity to build on the commitment shown in Liverpool, rising above and healing internal divisions in the process.

We already know that things can change with astonishing rapidity and that new ideas and approaches can come seemingly from nowhere. The impact of the Polanski leadership on the Greens is a good example, but two others over the past decade should be remembered.

Is MAGA a religion? Why has protest been criminalised in England and Wales? Who is profiting from anti-immigration sentiment? And how can we engage with young men who've fallen down the alt-right pipeline?

These are just a few of the questions that we've put to leading thinkers, frontline activists, and global experts on our new podcast, In Solidarity, over the past six months.

In Solidarity is a podcast for people who understand that politics doesn't just happen in the halls of power. Every show, we tackle a new theme to uncover how authoritarianism spreads, who is benefiting from fear, and how solidarity is evolving into resistance movements around the world.

To ensure you never miss an episode of In Solidarity, subscribe to get an email notification whenever a new one is released.

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In 2015, Corbyn fought a leadership campaign within the Labour Party and won 60% of the vote, with the second-place candidate managing only 19%. Then, at the general election two years later, he managed to deprive Conservative leader Theresa May not only of the landslide victory she was expected to win, but of an overall parliamentary majority, forcing her to do a deal with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party to stay in office.

In both cases, Corbyn won votes with policies that sought to rebalance the UK's huge wealth inequality, which resonated with millions of people beyond Labour's traditional base.

Given there is still more than three years before the next election and the current widespread political apathy across the UK, do not be surprised if Corbyn and Your Party manage something like that again.