Anyone playing bingo with the left-wing lexicon would have been sure of a fully marked-off card by the close of Your Party’s founding conference on the banks of the Mersey.
Witch hunt – check. Sabotage and intimidation – check. Faceless unelected bureaucrats – HOUSE!
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Bonus points were also on offer if you spotted the right-wing newspaper reporter forced to hang around outside the conference after a mysterious and unfixable error with his accreditation stopped him from accessing the venue.
For a party painting itself as the face of the new left, there was plenty of dated behaviour during this two-day jamboree.
A gauntlet of leafleters awaited all attendees from an extensive range of left-wing organisations.
Your correspondent ended the gathering with literature from (deep breath) – the Revolutionary Communist Group, the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Unity Platform, the Socialist Equality Party, the Democratic Socialists, the Democratic Bloc, the Spartacist League, Workers Hammer, the Weekly Worker and, of course, the Morning Star.
Tensions make compelling politics
Your Party founder Zarah Sultana hits out at party ‘witch hunts’ and ‘bullying’
Jeremy Corbyn declines to call Zarah Sultana a friend as Your Party holds first conference
Sultana accused by Corbyn allies of encouraging ‘ultra leftists’ to disrupt Your Party conference
This plethora of groupings led to some predictable positional tensions.
At one point the Democratic Socialists – who had already split from the more formal Your Party grouping to align with Zarah Sultana’s supporters – then split again, this time from Team Sultana, and called for members to reject the founding constitution and political statement that they had spent the past 24 hours trying to amend, only to then pivot one more time and encourage their base to vote in favour.
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So – beyond the fact that this has been incredibly compelling politics – why do I relay all this to you?
Well, it’s because Your Party’s analysis of its reason for being is a good one.
A threat to Labour?
There is political space for a new left-wing force that could inflict severe damage to Labour at the ballot box.
But based on events this weekend, I can’t say with confidence that force will be Your Party.
There is obviously a huge amount of tension between the two most high-profile politicians in the party.
Zarah Sultana spent much of the weekend directly accusing figures around Jeremy Corbyn of trying to drum out some of her supporters, even going as far as boycotting the first day of her own conference in protest at expulsions carried out on the eve of the event.
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The Coventry South MP did insist the pair were friends, saying, “Jeremy came to my wedding.”
‘We’re colleagues’
But the former Labour leader seemed less sure.
When asked the same question, he simply and – somewhat brutally – said “we’re colleagues”.
As for where this goes now, the party is about to begin a process not of electing a leader, but a leadership committee – chaired by a rank-and-file member with four spots reserved for MPs and councillors.
The idea is to hand more power over policy-making and whipping to the grassroots.
The risk is that this new structure just becomes another venue for further falling out.
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If a camel is a horse designed by committee, could this “pioneering” leadership structure end up pleasing no one and angering everyone?
This all matters more because the same ‘modern left’ electoral arena these guys are trying to occupy already has a new kid on the block in the slickly communicated and comparatively collegiate Green Party.
Read more from Sky News:
Why all the tension in Your Party?
Committee to lead Your Party
Many members in Liverpool spoke highly of Zack Polanski, with senior party figures and supporters alike open to the idea of exploring electoral pacts on a constituency-by-constituency basis.
It’s in this broader concept of a progressive alliance that Your Party’s future may realistically lie in the long run.
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For as much as the comrades on the Mersey raged at Sir Keir Starmer, would they really let Nigel Farage slope into Downing Street in order to lash out at Labour?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Internecine warfare can come naturally to the left.
And as we’ve learnt in Liverpool this weekend, old habits die hard.
