Earlier today, Your Party sent an email with a link to a membership portal. Things became confused, however, when Jeremy Corbyn issued a notice signed by himself and other Your Party MPs (minus Zarah Sultana) warning that people should ignore the email. In their message, they described the membership announcement as “unauthorised”.
Sultana has now responded with an announcement of her own. And she has, by all accounts, hit the nuclear option.
Timeline of this latest Your Party chaos
The initial email from Your Party was sent at 10:13am, and reads as follows:
Today is the day. Our membership portal is now open.
For too long, Britain’s politics has been run in the interests of the rich and powerful. From Ayr to Aberystwyth, our new party is about changing that – taking power back for working people, communities and future generations.
Joining isn’t just about signing up. It means taking part in a founding process that is genuinely democratic and member-led.
This is your chance to help build something new. A party that belongs to its members, not the establishment.
Sign up to join Your Party today!
At 2:07pm, Corbyn issued the following announcement, which was preceded by an email at 1:49pm:
Urgent message to all https://t.co/4acVYPvSDi supporters pic.twitter.com/vtyGbJB0yO
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) September 18, 2025
People quickly realised Sultana’s name was absent from the list of signatories. The reason for this was explained at 2:44pm, when Sultana issued the following:
My response: pic.twitter.com/pIWrzZ4MzB
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) September 18, 2025
In the announcement, Sultana says Your Party has become a “sexist boys’ club”. She also raises concerns about Karie Murphy and her associates having “sole financial control of members’ money”.
In an article from 19 August, Canary writer Hannah Sharland wrote that other activists had raised concerns with Murphy:
has highlighted this key problem that local activists are coming up against.
As he noted on the Left Lane, Collective – one of the groups setting up the new party – is stifling local groups’ ability to expand their membership. Its leader Karie Murphy has purportedly made two decisions – one of which is that:
“All of the names and contact details of the 700,000 people who have said they want to join YOUR PARTY will continue to be held exclusively in a London office… at least until after the November convention. None will be passed on to any of the 100 or more local groups. (It is unknown who actually has control over the names.)”
However, Story and local organisers he spoke to argued this impedes grassroots organising.
Of course there are understandable data protection considerations about handing out names to local groups of an as-yet established political party. However, there’s also no way for these local groups to promote their events to those who’ve signed up in their area via the current data controllers, as the petition points out.
Story told Byline Times that:
“Word of mouth is fine, but we want to get the members involved, making videos, doing all the kinds of exciting things that can be done as an alternative to Labour and Reform.
“But we’re hampered. We’re not allowed to do that. I think it’s completely the wrong way to build a party.”
Murphy has also received criticism online, much of which began following the publication of an article by Gabriel Pogrund on alleged Your Party infighting:
Here is a link to the Pogrund piece which is not paywalled.
I would really urge comrades to read the leaked WhatsApp messages very closely.
The most important one is the screen grab recording that Karie Murphy personally removed Andrew Feinstein and Salma Yaqoob (both Zarah… pic.twitter.com/jvmHaTUTjT
— David Miller (@Tracking_Power) September 8, 2025
Unfortunately, it seems that Corbyn’s team, especially Karie Murphy, had no interest in creating a real democratic party, and that forced Sultana’s hand.
It was obvious from the beginning that it would head this way, hence why I urged for these failed advisers to be excluded.
— Ammar Kazmi 🇵🇸 (@AmmarKazmi_) September 18, 2025
Sultana ended her announcement by stating:
I am calling on Jeremy to meet with me and agree to make public all agreed structures, processes and decision-making protocols. Doing this will restore hope for our members, and ensure nothing like this can ever happen again. This party is more important than any one person, and we all owe it to the movement to deliver a truly democratic and socialist party.
Sort it out, quickly
As the Canary’s Maryam Jameela previously reported, Sultana has been putting her head above the parapet while others – that is, men (many of them white) – have not. Jameela wrote:
With the advent of Your Party, Sultana has made a clear strategic shift to a more plain-speaking and forthright style. She had no qualms in calling out smears made against her… Finally, here is someone with a vision for the future and principles that are actually built around the most vulnerable and marginalised people in society. But, let’s get one thing clear. It is fucking galling to see this principled brown woman make waves in politics whilst white and brown men who claim to have similar politics keep their mouths shut.
Just by being a brown woman with a considerable amount of public attention trained her way, Sultana is under more of a microscope than her male colleagues. Whether it’s Jeremy Corbyn or Adnan Hussain, anything that comes out of Sultana’s mouth is subject to more scrutiny and vitriol. As much as misogyny and racism irrevocably colour how her statements are received, it is when they come together that brown women face a particular form of vicious bad faith responses.
It seems apparent, from what has been said publicly and from what the Canary knows privately, that Sultana and her team have been treated appallingly by certain sections of Corbyn’s team. It is fast becoming beyond comprehensible that this is the case in a supposedly left-wing organisation. Corbyn needs to get a handle on the people around him – by all accounts Karie Murphy and her clique – before they do any more damage to Your Party and the left.
The Canary and Skwawkbox are here to represent working-class people and the broader movement of the left. In this instance, this means that Zarah and Jeremy need to come together, face-to-face as she suggested, and sort this unholy mess out once and for all. But that has to be on the understanding that the political game-playing by certain factions of the Your Party team has to end.
If this doesn’t happen, we will all suffer the consequences.
Featured image via Your Party
