Your Party members have a massive decision to make this weekend

At the first Your Party conference this weekend, members will decide on whether or not to break from the political norm in Britain by opting for ‘collective leadership’.

Your Party: ‘relentlessly accountable to members and communities’

The party released new drafts of its founding documents on 25 November. And these give more details.

The “evolved draft Constitution” has received the input of “thousands of members at assemblies and via our digital crowd-editing tool”. And it states that a Central Executive Committee (CEC) will “consist of 16 ordinary members, representationally balanced in terms of gender, elected by the whole membership, alongside 4 Party public office holder seats, to likewise be elected by one-member-one-vote”. Members will vote either to make this CEC the party’s collective leadership, or simply to make it part of a leadership team alongside a single elected leader. The former would represent a significant break from how parties usually work in the UK.

Party leaders have taken on a more prominent role in Britain in recent decades. And this has arguably contributed to the anti-democratic policies that have come to dominate over that period. In this context, a more collective, grassroots, member-led model of leadership could help to challenge the destructive idea that the ‘leader-centred’ system we have today is the only way to do things. Alternative models like this already exist in some trade unions, left-wing parties in Europe, Latin American grassroots movements, and further afield.

In a press release, a party spokesperson said:

Your Party will be different, relentlessly accountable to its members and the communities we strive to represent.

Just how different it will be, however, depends on how members vote at the weekend.

“Our movement is full of leaders”

Zarah Sultana in particular has already made it clear that she supports the proposal for “a collective leadership”. Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, seems to be leaving the decision to members, who reportedly lean towards a single-leader model.

Councillor Sean Halsall, who has held around 20 local assemblies in Southport in the last couple of years, has been responsible for delivering Your Party’s regional assemblies on a tight budget. And he told the Canary:

There was no real appetite amongst the members at assemblies for any more confusion. Clarity is needed coming out of conference. We have huge fights on the horizon to deliver a politics that works for ordinary people.

A collective leadership model with no single leader based solely on membership engagement is being considered but any leadership grouping needs credibility and this requires a strong figure who has experience, a history of representing our class in the community, the country and internationally. There should be no coronations.

He added that:

Our movement is full of leaders in every community up and down the country. The assemblies, the members, have given me personally a lot of hope to see how many people are passionate at pushing back against establishment ideas and just how many natural leaders we have all over the country. People feeding their communities, making sure their communities’ needs are met, needs that should be met by this government but aren’t.

When Corbyn attended the launch event of Southport Community Independents early in 2025, he stressed that “mobilising and empowering” communities was key.

The establishment feeds off division

Britain’s political establishment works very hard to undermine the left. It has funnelled money into sabotage and coups, as it did around the time Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Party. It has sent undercover cops to spy and foster division for decades. And its corporate media allies have happily joined in.

Today, establishment media voices continue to push division on the left, or amplify it where it exists. For example, in its report on Your Party’s leadership options, the New Statesman focused on the fact that co-leadership wasn’t an option. And it’s fair to ask why. But it’s also been clear for a while (even in the middle-class Blairite magazine itself) that co-leadership was unlikely to be on the cards. Corbyn in particular has had his doubts, and a Your Party source told the neoliberal rag “you can’t force someone to be co-leader”. By not offering the option, the party simply wants to ‘end the leadership drama’ that has unfortunately surrounded its founding process.

The problematic New Statesman isn’t a fan of the Canary, and it once published a piece with the title Why Jeremy Corbyn is like Donald Trump. It hides content away behind a paywall (maybe centrism isn’t good business?), and is a ‘brand‘ of Progressive Media Investments (which boasts that Microsoft, Facebook and Google are among the “organisations who regularly benefit from working with us”). Let’s just say it’s not an outlet we should be taking our talking points from.

Unity on the left matters. Stopping fascism matters. Your Party must address this.

Corporate media have also been panicking recently about the Green surge under Zack Polanski. What makes matters worse for them is that Polanski’s party is open to collaborating with Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn, and “anyone who aligns with its values”. The prominent Your Party MPs have both shared the same sentiments. And it’s that spirit of cooperation and unity that the left needs broadly and that Your Party members in particular will be hoping to achieve at conference this weekend.

Fascism is knocking at the door with Reform and its Labour-Tory enablers. The left absolutely must get its act together, and quickly, if we’re going to stop the far right from entering government. Hopefully, by the end of Your Party’s conference this weekend, we’ll be a lot closer to having a movement that can help to stop that from happening.

Featured image via the Canary