After eight months of rows and rifts, leadership election is offering members two 'fundamentally differing visions'
An increasingly bloody battle for the soul of the leftwing Your Party set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana will come to a conclusion on Thursday, when the results of its leadership election will be announced.
After almost eight months of public spats, rows over money, accusations of sexism and rifts over policy and direction, Your Party is hoping to turn a page on the manifold misfortunes that have beset it since its launch last year. "The future of the party lies in the balance," said one Corbyn-allied insider. "You have two fundamentally differing visions of the party and what it is for."
Earlier this month, a Your Party event at the Missing Sock in Cambridge was packed. Members had filed past the hookah hut and double-decker bus bar in the garden to fill a meeting room where Jeremy Corbyn was ready to lay out his vision for the leftwing party, before elections to decide who would lead it.
Corbyn started speaking - and then the power cut out. Lit by phone torches, the MP for Islington North, who formed the socialist Your Party with Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana last summer, ploughed on. But when the floor was opened to questions, he was grilled by a supporter of Sultana, who is offering an alternative vision for the leftwing collective.
Soon, little could be heard other than increasingly irate voices talking over each other. In a video taken at the event, one voice rang out. "Anyone that's chosen can speak," it declared. "Anyone else I will fucking throw out."
In the same city two days later, footage was taken of Your Party members confronting Sultana to complain they had not been let into an event she was speaking at. Sultana, snarked one Corbyn supporter on the social media site X, was in favour of "maximum member democracy .... unless you disagree with [her] faction".
The two exchanges came just 48 hours apart and highlight divisions within the party.
Thursday will see the result of its elections for its central executive committee (CEC) - a collective leadership model - that has been dominated by two slates, Corbyn's The Many and Sultana's Grassroots Left. Who takes majority control of the 24 seats on offer will determine its political direction and - insiders argue - the survival of the party.
Some members have been unhappy with the election process. Independent candidate for the north-east region, Stuart Hill, said the elections had been dominated by Corbyn and Sultana, leaving little room for others. "I would say the vast majority of ordinary members have been eliminated from any kind of participation," he said.
Asked what he thought would happen if Corbyn or Sultana dominated, he replied: "There is the potential for either of them to leave, because both of them are driven, in my opinion, more by ego than by the best interests of Your Party."
Many are deeply unhappy with the infighting that has plagued the party almost since its inception - and has continued throughout the election. "It's just not been serious," said one ex-member. "It's actually been so unserious that it's sort of been hard to believe."
Co-founded by Sultana and Corbyn in July last year as a leftwing alternative to the "control freaks" of Labour, Your Party attracted the interest of 800,000 eager socialists. But by September, their initial unity spectacularly imploded after Sultana revealed a new membership portal on X and encouraged members to become paying members for £55. Corbyn described the site as a "false membership system" and told supporters to ignore an email requesting funds. Sultana shot back, accusing the party of being run by a "sexist boys' club".
By mid-November, two of five Independent Alliance MPs - who had won urban, formerly Labour seats on Gaza-focused platforms - quit the party because of "persistent infighting and a struggle for power".
Just weeks later, Sultana boycotted the first day of the party's inaugural conference in solidarity with delegates who were expelled over links to other leftwing parties, describing the process as a "witch-hunt". She and co-founder Corbyn disagreed about how the party should be run, with the elder statesman favouring a single leader model while Sultana pushed for collective leadership.
Then, in January, it emerged that the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) advised the party that while it was taking no further action over Sultana's Your Party membership portal launch, it may have involved "serious criminal activity" and should be referred to the police.
Even if the election does provide some resolution, it is unlikely to be the end of the drama. The Guardian understands that a dispute about the funds, which centres on hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of donations and fees received by MOU Operations Ltd, a company set up earlier this year, is ongoing.
Sultana, who now has sole control over MOU Operations, is understood to have transferred £600,000 of about £850,000 to Your Party coffers, arguing the rest should be retained in case of future legal or administrative expenses. A separate pot of money - believed to be about £500,000 - that was collected after Sultana launched an unauthorised membership portal on 18 September remains in limbo.
A spokesperson for MOU Operations Ltd said it was ready to transfer all funds and had made "repeated approaches" about the mechanics, which had "not been meaningfully answered". They added: "MOU Operations will bring this matter to the attention of the newly elected CEC as soon as they are in place, and hope that we can work with them to bring this matter to a close."
There has been speculation that if Sultana is the clear victor after Thursday's results, Corbyn - and the two other remaining Independent Alliance MPs - would quit Your Party. A spokesperson declined to comment, saying the former Labour leader's aim "has always been to get this party up and running, so that people in Britain can mobilise behind a real, mass, socialist alternative."
Inacio Vieira, a Sultana ally, said Zarah would "fight for this party and for a party that is democratic", which would have space for The Many. "It will have arguments that are internal," he said. "But we feel like that's how we grow."
One insider argued that if Corbyn won - with the support of Independent Alliance MPs Shockat Adam MP and Ayoub Khan MP - there could be a path towards support in constituencies which could be won by an independent. But, regardless of the result on Thursday, the road to electoral viability would be long and difficult. "I think once you are a laughing stock in the eyes of the public, it's difficult to move on from that," they said. "And if both Jeremy and Zarah get elected on to the CEC, I don't see how the fighting stops."