The Family Feud Inside Your Party
There is more trouble in Your Party, the new left-wing movement led by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.
Their first annual conference is due to begin in a few weeks, to decide policy and elect the ruling politburo. The party’s foundational documents sketch out a familiar picture — a middle-class, vanguardist organisation obsessed with anti-imperialism abroad and opposition to neoliberalism at home.
Now, inevitably, the crisis is over money and membership.
The £800,000 Question
On 18 September, Zarah Sultana launched a new membership portal using a different domain from the party’s main website. Within hours, Corbyn and four other independent MPs denounced the move, urging supporters to ignore the “unauthorised email,” cancel any direct debits, and promising that legal advice was being taken.
The party’s data controller reportedly alerted the Information Commissioner’s Office to a potential data breach that allowed Sultana to contact potential members.
Sultana hit back, insisting she was acting “in line with the agreed road map.” She accused the leadership of being a “sexist boys’ club” dominated by Corbyn ally Karie Murphy.
Membership fees collected through MOU Ltd — a company controlled by former North-East mayoral candidate Jamie Driscoll, ex-Labour candidate Andrew Feinstein, and former MP Beth Winter — became the next flashpoint.
After a wave of legal threats and counter-claims, Driscoll, Feinstein, and Winter resigned as directors in late October, leaving Sultana in sole control of the funds.
MOU Ltd reportedly holds around £800,000 in subscriptions — a huge sum for a start-up party. Your Party is said to be considering legal action to recover the money. Sultana has offered to transfer £600,000, retaining the rest for “legal and administrative costs.” The Guardian claims another £500,000 raised elsewhere is also disputed.
A Familiar Script
If all this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. When Corbyn launched his Peace and Justice Ltd a few years ago, I compared it to the structure of the old British National Party.
Nick Griffin once transformed the BNP from a fringe group of cosplay Nazis into a real political force: two MEPs, a London Assembly seat, and double-digit councillors in Barking and Burnley.
At the heart of that operation was a Belfast-based call centre, which Griffin controlled via the party’s membership list — years out of date but rich in contact details of the angry and extreme. He’d make a racist statement, threaten legal action, then the call centre would contact supporters for “donations to fight the case.” Once the cash rolled in, the apology would quietly follow.
That cycle of outrage and fundraising powered the BNP’s growth — until the membership list leaked, breaking Griffin’s hold and splintering the party.
Control of membership data is the real prize in any movement like this. It’s not just about campaigning; it’s the key to fundraising and monetising outrage.
That’s exactly what’s happening inside Your Party. Its members are affluent, ideologically pure, and happy to pay subscriptions to a party that tells them what they want to hear. Whoever controls the membership data — and the income it generates — controls the movement, and their own future earnings.
Farce and Consequence
It’s a farce, and a predictable one. But it matters.
Britain is facing the most dangerous wave of far-right politics since the 1930s — not quite Nazis, but close enough. Politicians openly fantasise about deporting non-white citizens, and conspiracy thinking now sits comfortably inside the mainstream.
The only way to fight authoritarianism is through alliances — not just within the left, but between the left, the Lib Dems, the Greens, and the few socially liberal Conservatives still standing.
The chaotic factionalism of Your Party achieves the opposite. It hands ammunition to the far right.
The immediate winner is the Green Party, whose membership has surged under Zach Polanski. It’s become the natural home for disillusioned Corbynites. But if the Greens want to stay credible, they’d better steer clear of the people who took over Labour, led it to defeat, and are now tearing apart their latest political toy.