An opportunity squandered: why Your Party failed

On 7 May 2026, parliamentary elections in Wales and Scotland and local elections in parts of England dramatically confirmed the fragmentation of Britain’s electoral landscape.1 The two traditional pillars of the British political system, the Conservative Party and Labour, suffered historic losses, while parties seen as outsiders advanced. The results underscore the unpopularity of Labour prime minister Keir Starmer two years after his 2024 landslide victory. In England, Labour lost control of 37 councils. In Scotland, Labour secured its lowest number of seats, continuing a trend that has seen Labour’s seats and vote share decline in every election since the establishment of the Scottish parliament in 1999. In Wales, the election ended Labour’s 104-year winning streak, leaving the party in third place. Meanwhile, the Tories came fourth in Wales, fifth in Scotland and lost control of eight councils in England. The combined vote share of Labour and the Tories stood at only 34 percent in England, 31 percent in the Scottish constituencies and less than 22 percent in the Welsh constituencies.

This fragmentation is accompanied by polarisation. Reform UK, a racist far-right party, emerged as dominant in England, came second in Wales and—together with Labour—second in Scotland. On the left, Zack Polanski’s radicalised Green Party achieved historic results, taking control of the Hackney, Lewisham and Waltham Forest councils in London from Labour. The Greens also surpassed Labour in Birmingham and Lambeth, another London borough. A “Polanski effect” was felt in the devolved nations: the Greens entered the Senedd with two seats and achieved a record representation of 15 seats in Holyrood. By offering the vague promise of a break with Westminster and from any future Reform-led government, Plaid Cymru soared from 13 to 43 seats and secured victory in the Senedd. Similarly, the Scottish National Party (SNP) stemmed its decline by retaining minority control in Holyrood. Where socialists stood, many people voted for them.2

The elections illustrate the consequences of what this article seeks to explain: the failure of Your Party (YP) to live up to the expectations it engendered when it was first announced by Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana and Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn in summer 2025. YP represented a historic opportunity to create a mass socialist organisation to the left of Labour, unprecedented in Britain since the days of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Independent Labour Party in the 1930s-40s.3 More recent attempts at challenging Labour from the left, such as the Socialist Alliance and the Respect coalition in the 2000s, did not have a potential and credibility similar to YP, which, at its peak, had hundreds of thousands of supporters, dozens of councillors and six MPs.

This article explores why YP failed. It starts by locating the arguments in a broader critique of left reformism as developed by this journal. It then charts the new party’s descent into bitter factionalism, centred on the figures of Corbyn and Sultana. Back in March 2026, I wrote in Socialist Worker that “the leadership’s conduct shows that they may have broken with the Labour Party, but not the politics of ‘Labourism’”.4 Here, I will substantiate this claim by looking at the continuities between Corbyn’s leadership of Labour and YP. Similarly, Sultana’s efforts to build an alternative were undermined by pitfalls common to left reformism. Finally, I will address how revolutionaries have tried to relate to YP and its problems.

Left reformism

For Marxists, the predominance of reformist parties in Western politics is not an accident or a result of the reformist leaders’ success in “deceiving” workers. Rather, it reflects the extent of reformist consciousness in the working class, particularly (but not exclusively) in periods of low levels of struggle. According to Tony Cliff, these ideas develop organically through everyday experiences in capitalist society. Reformist parties channel workers’ desire for change into a project based on negotiation and compromise with capital and the state.5

Reformists can improve the living conditions of workers through gradual reforms in periods of economic expansion or if the ruling class is faced with mass struggle from below and forced to compromise. However, even in these cases, reformism ultimately fails to fulfil the expectations it raises because the capitalist system—the competitive accumulation of capital—imposes structural limits on reforms. The history of social democracy in the 20th century was one of adaptation to these pressures. Faced with economic boycott, capital flight, sabotage by unelected state officials and media attacks, reformist leaders tended to give in as they accepted the basic logic of capitalism.

In the 1970s, after the long post-war economic boom gave way to a series of economic crises, the space for reforms became more limited. Capitalism was reorganised along neoliberal lines. Under political leaders such as Tony Blair, social democracy participated in dismantling the welfare state and embraced market discipline. However, as support for these parties collapsed following the 2007-8 global economic crisis, this did not spontaneously give way to revolutionary politics. Instead, reformist consciousness found articulation in a new, more radical reformism. These parties benefited from the anger directed at traditional social democracy, but they did not break with its strategic orientation. Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza in Greece, Pablo Iglesias’s Podemos in the Spanish state and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s projects in France emerged as part of this radicalisation of reformism. Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party in 2015-20 drew on the same anger over austerity, inequality and the capitalist class—yet, he did not dare to break away from Labour and the British two-party system.

During this time, left reformists used radical rhetoric, supported social movements and often denied any links with traditional reformism. Revolutionary strategies were rejected in favour of what the theorist of left populism Chantal Mouffe calls “revolutionary reformism”.6 More recently, in Britain, a similar idea was put forward by Andrew Murray, a former leading member of the Communist Party of Britain and author of several books on Corbynism. Murray, discussing YP, argues that “everyone on the left is still trying to find a route to socialism that is neither simply electing a parliamentary majority nor storming the Winter Palace”.7

Such arguments assume that overthrowing capitalism is a historical relic to which some Leninist parties, oriented on mass struggle and revolution, adhere even though it does not fit today’s world. However, the most important recent attempts to follow the more radical reformist course, as represented by Syriza and Podemos, remained trapped within managing the capitalist state and political moderation. The logic of capturing the state and being confronted by the forces of capitalism led these parties to subordinate struggles outside of parliament to electoral “realism” and, like their social democratic predecessors, to seek accommodation with the existing order.8

YP followed in the footsteps of this series of projects by the European left. However, whereas Syriza and Podemos only failed after being challenged by the capitalist state and capital, YP crumbled without ever confronting the system.

From big shot to laughing stock

In 2024, the election of five pro-Gaza independent MPs—including Corbyn—confirmed that a significant electoral space had opened to the left of Labour. Starmer’s support for Israel’s genocidal war in the Middle East, combined with the largest anti-imperialist revolt in decades, amplified calls for a political alternative. Corbyn, Britain’s best-known socialist and freshly expelled from Labour, was uniquely positioned to cohere the new mood into an electoral challenge. From late 2023, two groups around him, Collective and the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), had quietly begun to discuss how to fill this political vacuum.9 At Corbyn’s insistence, in June 2025, both groups formed an “organising committee”. It included the other four pro-Gaza independents elected in 2024 and Zarah Sultana, who was suspended from Labour after opposing the government’s two-child benefit cap policy. Many felt that a rupture was underway.10

After much uncertainty, on 3 July 2025, Sultana took to social media, announcing her resignation from Labour, declaring that she and Corbyn would “co-lead the founding of a new party”. She made a bold promise: “In 2029, the choice will be stark: socialism or barbarism”.11 A day later, Corbyn responded by congratulating Sultana “on her principled decision to leave the Labour Party”, stating: “Together, we can create something that is desperately missing from our broken political system: hope”.12 Corbyn joined a packed rally at the Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP) Marxism festival in London, where he called for a new “independent political voice”.13 On 24 July, Corbyn and Sultana announced plans for the founding conference of a new party and invited people to register interest. The hopes raised by Corbyn and Sultana seemed vindicated as some 200,000 responded to the call within the first 24 hours. At its peak, the number grew to 850,000 people. A survey in August suggested 20 percent of people in Britain would consider voting for a new party led by Corbyn and Sultana. The figure rose to 33 percent for those who voted for Labour in 2024 and to 43 percent for 2024 Green voters.14

However, even before the launch, rival groups in the organising committee clashed over the structure and leadership of the party.15 The day Sultana announced the new party, a majority in the organising committee voted for a joint leadership by Corbyn and Sultana, but it appears that those closer to Corbyn did not recognise this vote. Some then helped the right-wing press to turn on Sultana and purged supporters of her bid to become co-leader from a WhatsApp group.16

These tensions exploded in September 2025. When an interim executive, led by those around Corbyn, and a roadmap for the founding conference were announced without approval from Sultana, she retaliated by launching a membership portal without approval from Corbyn. Corbyn and the four other Independent Alliance MPs published a statement distancing themselves from the membership portal, urging supporters not to sign up and to cancel their subscriptions. Both sides publicly exchanged accusations and legal threats.17

Grassroots initiatives and intervention by international left-wing figures brought the public spat to an end, but by the time a “unified” membership portal, controlled by the Independent Alliance of MPs, was established, many fewer people trusted the project. Only 50,000 joined. The venue for the founding conference was downgraded from a capacity of 13,000 to 2,500. Sultana was marginalised and Corbyn, the other independent MPs and their supporters were now firmly in control.18 In late November 2025, on the eve of the founding conference in Liverpool—and before any vote on the possibility of dual membership—a “membership team” issued emails to leading members of the SWP, telling them they had been expelled due to dual party memberships and were not eligible to attend the conference.19 When the conference took place, the unelected leadership suffered one defeat after another. A majority of members voted in favour of the view that YP should define itself as a socialist party, explicitly orient itself toward the working class, allow dual membership with other socialist organisations and adopt collective leadership instead of a single leader.20

The conference could have been an opportunity for a reset of the project around these principles. Instead, over the next few months, elections to the collective leadership body, the Central Executive Committee (CEC), confirmed a drift towards bureaucratic centralisation. Supporters of Sultana were organised in the Grassroots Left, putting forward a slate that included both Sultana and Corbyn. Corbyn’s slate, called The Many, excluded Sultana. The election resulted in a CEC dominated by The Many. Reports emerging from the first CEC meetings soon showed that the winners intended to use their majority to curtail any influence of their rivals, hollowing out what was supposed to be a “collective leadership”.21

Since summer 2025, activists across Britain had began forming proto-branches, in which supporters of the new party project met to discuss and organise local activity. These proto-branches were never recognised by the YP leadership, which starved them of support.22 The leadership’s disregard for democracy took particularly sharp expression in Wales and Scotland. From the outset, the YP leadership emphasised the principle of national autonomy, but this soon gave way to tensions between London and the devolved nations. In November 2025, the two key figures of the project in Wales, former leader of the Public and Commercial Services union Mark Serwotka and former Labour MP Beth Winter, issued a public statement: “We will not allow Wales to be treated with contempt, and it is beyond shameful that the actions of a few at the centre of YP at a UK level risks hindering what we are trying to achieve”.23 Winter later left YP to stand for the Senedd as an independent, and YP Cymru was largely inactive by then. In Scotland, YP received an important boost as a significant number of councillors and organisers associated with the Scottish Greens decided to defect to YP. In February 2026, a Scottish founding conference took place in Dundee, which voted in favour of becoming a separate sister organisation and standing candidates in the Scottish parliamentary election.24 However, the YP headquarters then suspended communication with the Scottish executive. In mid-April, the whole Scottish executive, as well as the only Scottish representative in the CEC, resigned from their posts and left YP.

When The Many secured control, most of the enthusiasm for YP had already disappeared. Instead, the Greens under the leadership of Polanski—who pushed the party to the left—now benefited from the discontent with Labour and established politics. In polls for the next general election, the Greens rose to 20 percent and support for YP dropped to 1 percent or less. Unsurprisingly, in the May 2026 elections, the Greens made record gains in England, Wales and Scotland. YP stood a few candidates—all of them in England—who tended to perform poorly, as did most independents endorsed by the party.25

The persistence of Corbynism

What had begun as a potentially historic reconfiguration of the British left turned into a familiar pattern of left-reformist degeneration. Moreover, the pressure typical of reformist projects was mediated through the specific features of British labourism. At the heart of the clashes in YP lay two distinct responses to the defeat of Corbynism in 2015-20, in which all the leading figures in YP played a role.

Corbynism was the catalyst for tens of thousands to become involved in politics and helped to popularise socialist ideas. Alex Nunns, Corbyn’s speechwriter in 2018-20, summarises its achievements: “It made austerity a dirty word, forced the Conservative government back on key policies, pushed the political conversation to the left, galvanised a movement, transformed Labour into the biggest left party in Europe and gave people hope”.26 Nunns, who has attended YP CEC meetings and is rumoured to be one of the anonymous YP staffers, has taken issue with the view that Corbynism’s defeat was a product of the fact that “Corbyn and his advisers were not defiant or radical enough” and that they “gave way instead of standing their ground”.27 Instead, Nunns contends, the Corbyn leadership was faced with an unfavourable balance of forces. This refers to the all-out war waged by the Labour right, aided by the political and media establishment, to destroy Corbyn—particularly after he defied predictions by almost leading Labour to victory on a left-wing manifesto in 2017. The attacks involved the weaponisation of accusations of antisemitism over Corbyn’s support for Palestine and a concerted push to force him to adopt an undemocratic position to reverse the 2016 Brexit referendum result.

However, as Oliver Eagleton suggests in his new work on YP, to treat the mere “balance of forces” as explanatory, as Nunns does, is “defeatist”. It leads to the conclusion that “there’s nothing we can do to change this vast power asymmetry”, given that any left-wing challenge will always face a ruling class onslaught.28 It is necessary to assess the way in which the Corbyn leadership chose to confront the attacks. Corbyn’s decisions and the advice given to him by his closest aides flowed from their acceptance of the basic premises of Labourism.29 Corbyn has never claimed to be anything other than a principled left-wing reformist who believes that social transformation of society is possible through parliamentary reform. He and his allies looked to the British state as an instrument that the left could capture, turning it into a force for good. They looked to the Labour Party as the only vehicle that enables the left to achieve this goal.

Nunns explains that during the antisemitism smear campaign, Corbyn tried to resist the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism in Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC).30 However, because “no other part of the Labour movement represented on the NEC stuck by him”, it followed that “there was no magic lever…to change the situation”.31 However, the problem is that Corbyn only fought the slanders through internal negotiations. At no point did he turn to his mass support, the hundreds of thousands who had joined Labour to back him, to explain his position and ask them to mobilise against the right and in solidarity with Palestine. Corbyn’s collapse into supporting the campaign to reverse Brexit followed the same pattern. Nunns rightly argues that Corbyn’s capitulation around this question meant that in the 2019 general election, unlike in 2017, Corbyn “no longer appeared as an insurgent outsider, but rather another politician defending the status quo, on the same side as the bulk of the establishment”.32 Yet, Corbyn facilitated this outcome by failing to present a left-wing case against the European Union (EU) during the 2016 referendum, when he was already the leader of the opposition. Instead, he half-heartedly backed a position to remain in the EU.

Corbyn and his allies carried the logic of electoralism into YP. Although Sultana herself remained within this strategy, The Many displayed a stronger inclination to political moderation and “respectability”, leading to internal conflict. First, this was evident in discussions around “social conservatism”. Sultana was criticised by other Independence Alliance MPs and Corbyn allies over her support for LGBT+ rights and calls for an explicitly anti-Zionist position. Second, Corbyn’s readiness to form alliances with independent MPs and councillors of questionable left-wing credentials caused conflicts, reflecting the same push to build a respectable electoral vehicle.

Electoralism helps to explain Corbyn’s preference for softer politics and the “my way or the highway” attitude among The Many. This was not primarily about personal control by a few individuals at the top but about a political orientation that saw competing versions of the party as a threat to YP as an electoral coalition around existing MPs and councillors. In this context, it is unsurprising that Corbyn’s allies relied on bureaucratic manoeuvres and top-down centralisation.33 The attempt to recreate Corbynism outside of Labour without touching the core tenets of Labourism reproduced many of the methods traditionally associated with the Labour right in their struggle with the left.

Moreover, there are legitimate doubts over the extent to which Corbyn himself was fully committed to constructing a political force capable of burying Labour. Corbyn spent the majority of his political career inside Labour, repeatedly resisting opportunities to build alternatives. In the 2000s, despite his principled anti-war stance, Corbyn never followed George Galloway into Respect’s challenge to New Labour at the height of Tony Blair’s support for the Iraq war.34 After Labour’s own machine destroyed Corbyn’s chances of winning in 2019, there was little indication that the experience of defeat altered his commitment to Labour in any fundamental way. The years following his removal as leader were punctuated by moments that could have served as launchpads for a new left formation: for example, his 2020 suspension amid an investigation into antisemitism and removal of the whip, the decision to block him from re-standing in the Islington North constituency, where he has been elected since 1983, his speeches at Palestine solidarity demonstrations to hundreds of thousands. Even after his expulsion from Labour, and the historic victory by him and the other pro-Gaza independents in 2024, Corbyn still failed to launch an alternative. As recently as June 2025, when speaking to a crowd of 550 people in Liverpool, Corbyn said he knew “many people are very frustrated that we didn’t found a new political party… If you want to blame anybody, blame me”.35 Without Sultana’s intervention in July 2025, the delays, indecision and private discussions behind closed doors may have continued indefinitely.36

The Many faction consolidated control by destroying the excitement that had initially propelled the project. However, what has emerged from the infighting corresponds closely to Corbyn’s longstanding preferences: an electoral initiative with presence in parliaments and councils and a focus on local issues, instead of an insurgent mass socialist party. His ideas do not go beyond building a pressure group that provides a vehicle for some disaffected Labour ex-members to influence Labour MPs and ultimately co-exists with Labour. This is a far cry from the hopes of hundreds of thousands of supporters, now taken up by Polanski’s Green Party, which pledges “to replace Labour”.

Post-Corbynism

If The Many pursued the reconstruction of Corbynism outside of Labour, other leading figures in YP sought to base the new party on a somewhat more critical reading of that experience. Sultana began her political career as part of Corbynism, but she attempted to articulate a vision that breaks with labourism.

Like many in her generation, Sultana was driven to politics by opposition to the War on Terror, the 2007-8 financial crisis and the rebellion against the tripling of tuition fees for university students. She joined Labour at the age of 17 and went on to become a member of the leadership of the National Union of Students. After Corbyn became Labour leader, she worked in his “community organising unit”. In 2019, she was elected MP for Coventry South, joining the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs. As noted above, in 2024, Sultana was one of seven MPs who had the whip removed over their defiance over the two-child benefit cap.37

After co-founding YP, Sultana argued: “We have to build on the strengths of Corbynism…and we also have to recognise its limitations… When it came under attack from the state and the media, it should have fought back, recognising that these are our class enemies…instead it was frightened and far too conciliatory”.38

Sultana called for a party based on “active participation” in social movements and an explicitly socialist framework with comprehensive redistributive demands, a clear anti-racist and anti-imperialist stance, and that champions the rights of LGBT+ people. Most of the YP left, including the SWP, supported Sultana’s more attractive vision when she clashed with Corbyn. However, it is important to recognise that Sultana’s own politics did not breach the boundaries of a left-reformist framework—eventually leading her to rely on methods all too common in Labour. Asked whether parliament or efforts to “strengthen and create working class institutions” should be the new party’s priority, Sultana argued “it’s a false binary”:

I see my job in Westminster as a bridge between social movements, trade unions and Parliament… A party that only cares about election will be irrelevant outside of an election cycle. And a party that ignores Parliament will create a vacuum that will inevitably be taken up by the far-right. What I want…is a campaigning, social-movement orientation combined with a robust parliamentary presence.39

This two-track “one foot in parliament, one on the streets” approach, identified above as a characteristic of left reformism, is common among left critics of Corbyn in YP. The same notion is expressed by James Schneider, a co-founder of Momentum, the group established in 2015 to build support for Corbyn. He argues that under Corbynism, “the logic of parliamentary socialism remained very much intact” so that a “fundamental shift in our strategic vision” is needed.40 According to him, “it doesn’t fundamentally matter whether you have 50 or 100 MPs unless your electoral strategy is linked to [a] wider social project”. However, “popular power” is still seen as an instrument aimed at “creating the conditions for the party to legislate from above”.41

These views shaped Sultana’s response to attacks from Corbyn’s camp. Instead of building a base within the party, her unilateral launch of a membership portal or her spectacular interventions through social media posts and press statements confused supporters. The following spiral of internal conflict took YP away from engaging in the real battles outside its structures, an arena in which the different perspectives for the project could have been tested. Despite constant rhetoric about movements and organising, YP played no meaningful role in building demonstrations, strikes and campaigns. In the nine months following its launch, hundreds of thousands continued to take to the streets over Palestine, Defend Our Juries defied the authoritarian ban on Palestine Action through mass civil disobedience action, Birmingham bin workers struck against the Labour council and mass anti-racist mobilisations fought back far-right attacks on refugees across Britain. YP was irrelevant to all these battles.

After SWP members were expelled from YP on the eve of the Liverpool conference, it was commendable that Sultana stood in solidarity with them. However, her decision to boycott most of the conference proceedings, speaking to the press outside instead of standing with her supporters on the conference floor and participating in the debates about the politics of the new organisation, reflected the same orientation on politics from above. In Labour, the belief that the party is the vehicle for change leads to a tendency to see internal factional struggle as a central site of politics. Motions and resolutions, internal battles and jockeying for positions are fetishised as events of decisive importance, invested with almost magical powers.42 This culture was reproduced inside YP by both Corbyn’s and Sultana’s supporters.

The Many had a far clearer understanding of the kind of project they wanted. Sultana and the post-Corbynistas issued slogans but struggled to translate their promise of a more radical vision into a coherent organisational and strategic alternative. Instead, they fought Corbyn and his allies on the terrain where the latter were strongest. Corbyn’s allies relied on their leader’s prestige and possessed deeper institutional networks, while their background in the trade union bureaucracy and the Labour machine gave them considerable tactical advantages over Sultana’s camp. Sultana compounded these weaknesses when she tried to compensate for them by allying herself with small sectarian groups with little social weight. They made tactically inept pronouncements, increasingly striving for a narrow split, and hence lending credibility to The Many’s claim that it offered the only sensible leadership.

Revolutionaries and YP

Given The Many’s tight control and the narrow focus on electoralism, it is not surprising that the participation of the revolutionary left in YP increasingly became a contentious issue. Moreover, the second membership form launched by the Independent Alliance sought to exclude members of far-left organisations. Writing in Jacobin, John Tranter claimed after the expulsion of SWP members that “through its centralised decision-making, relative geographic spread, and experience in other projects, the SWP…can easily become the leading organised faction in YP, using its weight to steer large numbers of members”.43 The final decision by the CEC to ban members of the SWP and other socialist organisations on 12 April 2026 echoed this language.44 The expulsions of socialists was necessary because these groups “maintain internal discipline and binding lines that are incompatible with transparency and accountability within YP”, potentially leading members to make decisions that do not “put YP’s interests first” and are “for the benefit of another party”.45

Contrary to these suggestions of shady, secretive behaviour, the SWP has been open about its vision for YP, something which cannot be said of those involved in Corbyn’s faction. Immediately after the YP was launched, the SWP welcomed it, urging “everyone on the left to take part in the discussions”. The SWP publicly spelt out the set of ideas its members would defend. The new party needed to “amplify the movements, not to try to substitute for them” and to become “an insurgent expression” of them. There should not be “a grubby search for votes that abandons, for example, refugees or trans people”. The organisation needed to be “democratic, guided by the voices of its supporters”. It had to learn from the “shattered promises and betrayals” of Syriza, Podemos and Labour, which “prioritised winning elections over struggle, and when they reached government…conceded to the bosses and bankers, moved rightward and failed”.46

The SWP initially argued that the new organisation could start as a “pluralist umbrella”, organised around core principles. These could have included opposition to austerity and racism, support for LGBT+ rights, welfare not warfare, a free Palestine and real action on climate change. This approach had two advantages: first, it would have ensured those standing under the banner of YP were genuinely left candidates. Second, it would have allowed YP branches to start life on the basis of activity, running outwards-looking campaigns with hundreds of candidates in the May elections, rather than around dry discussions of internal procedures.47 SWP members also participated in building proto-branches alongside others and helped organise some of the largest rallies of YP supporters.48

The trajectory of YP raises the question of whether revolutionaries were mistaken to join it. Joseph Choonara argues that broad left electoral projects structurally advantage reformist ideas over revolutionary ones. Within these projects, revolutionaries compete with reformists on the terrain where the latter are strongest—elections—rather than strikes and other forms of collective resistance. Moreover, revolutionaries in such organisations are typically a minority, as the bulk of the membership remains reformist. These factors create a strong tendency towards adaptation to existing consciousness rather than seeking to transform it. The story of revolutionaries participating in broad reformist formations offers a cautionary tale.49

As the discussion above should make clear, these structural pressures were part of YP. At the conference, votes leaned towards the more radical positions associated with Sultana, but the online election to the CEC, in which over 20,000 members voted, delivered victory to The Many. This is because those attending the conferences tended to be the more active and committed among the membership. Online ballots, by contrast, involved many more passive supporters, whose political horizon remained overwhelmingly electoral. Many of them followed Corbyn into YP because they wanted a new viable left electoral alternative to Labour. The Many tapped into the common sense of this larger group, with mass emails sent by Corbyn’s Peace & Justice Project titled “Do it for Jeremy” and warnings against creating a “narrow sectarian party”.

Under the cover of these democratic sounding arguments, the caretaker leadership of YP institutionalised a bias towards the less active members. The use of “sortition” (random selection) to choose conference delegates was an example, seeking to dilute the influence of the more politicised layers and to maximise the weight of those most amenable to the leadership’s plans. Similarly, reliance on online consultations projected the appearance of democratic participation while retaining agency in the hands of the organisers. Members’ feedback on constitutional documents drafted by Corbyn’s office was selectively adopted, controversial amendments were excluded despite high support online and, on several complex issues, members were only presented with two narrow choices. A desire to insulate the passive membership also explains the fate of the proto-branches. Branches could have been a real basis for grassroots democracy but, instead, quickly became dominated by small numbers of hardened ex-Labour activists and sectarian groups wanting to talk about the right “programme” for YP. Mass member participation would have been an antidote to such fixations, but this is precisely what the YP leaders’ push for control prevented.

These risks and pressures are inherent in any left-reformist project, but it does not follow that revolutionaries were wrong to participate in the founding debates of YP or that its failure was predetermined. The SWP has long advocated the construction of an independent revolutionary force in British politics. It rejects the idea that the only path to building mass revolutionary parties is through participation in broader workers’ parties or that it is always the task of revolutionaries, where such broad parties do not exist, to facilitate their emergence.50 Through the united front tactic, it is possible for revolutionaries to relate to mass reformist consciousness and maintain organisational independence.51 However, under the right circumstances, participation by revolutionaries in broader formations may be compatible with the project of developing an independent revolutionary force.

A context in which hundreds of thousands of working-class people looked beyond Labour, and in which ideological debates were taking place about the kind of new left needed, represented one such moment. A successful mass formation to the left of Labour would have offered the possibility of a credible electoral vehicle for advancing socialist politics. It could have helped to raise the level of struggle and strengthen movements against war, racism and oppression. The SWP did not expect YP to adopt its own programme of workers’ revolution, including the overthrow of the capitalist state. The expectation was that the emerging politics would be one of left reformism. The SWP would have supported mass workers’ struggle to win the demands raised by YP and secure reforms from the state and capital, pushing against the limits of the system, while participating in the electoral effort to advance these struggles.

Importantly, it was possible for organised revolutionaries to participate in these because the principle of dual membership provided a reasonable framework.52 Over time, the pressures of electoralism would have grown stronger, and debates about YP’s orientation would have intensified. We can only speculate as to how long revolutionaries and reformists could have coexisted in YP. However, at least initially, there was no incompatibility and revolutionaries made a contribution to the wider project. The push to expel the left further eroded links between YP and the extra-parliamentary movements on which its electoral opportunities were based.

Conclusion

A historic opening for the creation of a mass socialist organisation was narrowed into something far more modest: a small left-reformist force orbiting around Labour, instead of decisively challenging it and breaking from its politics. The inadequacies of YP have meant the Greens, under the leadership of Polanski, could occupy a large part of the electoral space to the left of Labour. They now have over 200,000 members and are positioning themselves as the main challengers to Reform UK in an upcoming general election. The Greens, however, remain a party focused primarily on electoralism, with no clear orientation on the working class, while the experience of their sister parties in Germany, Ireland and Scotland offer sad tales of retreats and moderation.53 Although Polanski’s leadership represents a leftwards shift, their emergence as the largest force on the left is a setback for the hopes for a mass socialist party that YP had raised.

The space for a generalised socialist challenge at the ballot box has narrowed. However, revolutionaries should be open to the idea of standing in elections if these can be used as a platform to popularise their ideas.54 The SWP will continue to seek to work with the mass membership of the Greens in activity and may call for a vote for their candidates. Equally, the SWP will continue to work with both Corbyn and Sultana in various campaigns, as well as defending them from right-wing attacks.

The historic Together demonstration in London on 28 March 2026, in which revolutionaries, a bloc of Greens and a bloc of YP members mobilised as part of a protest by 500,000 anti-racists, offers a model for how this can be done. Stand Up to Racism’s activities against the far right are a key arena for socialists to work together and test their ideas without having to be in the same organisation. They allow the revolutionary minority to relate to the reformist majority. Debates will continue between those who want to radicalise these struggles into a wider challenge to the system and those who want to channel them into parliamentarism. Those who want the former approach to win out need to be organised in their own revolutionary formation.

Héctor Sierra is a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers party and is based in Glasgow. He is also an activist in Stand Up to Racism and Stop the War Scotland.

Notes