I am taking the plunge into Your Party. My worries remain about its centralist tendencies and lack of democracy, but I will work for those from within.
Your Party is not a unionist party. It does not yet have a policy on Scottish Independence. I shall of course be striving for it actively to support Scottish Independence. I feel fairly confident that this will succeed.
The Left in Scotland is overwhelmingly pro-Independence, just as the Right is overwhelmingly anti-Independence. There do exist Scottish unionist socialists, but they are a small and shrinking minority. It may turn out they are disproportionately represented in Your Party, but I do not believe that is likely to be the case.
More to the point, for years opinion polls have shown that at least a third of Scottish Labour voters support Independence. There is now a major and consistent gap in opinion polls between support for Independence – averaging around 52% – and support for the SNP – averaging around 31%. 21% of Scottish voters support Independence but will not vote for the SNP. That is a significant source of potential support for a viable alternative pro-Independence Party.
It is worth recalling that ten years ago support for the SNP and support for Independence were very tightly correlated. That is now absolutely not the case, for the simple reason the SNP pay no more than lip service to Independence.
A Corbyn linked, pro-Independence Party in Scotland would have the capacity to destroy the Scottish branch of the Labour Party – which is already in deep trouble and polling around 15%.
There have been a number of attempts to provide a home for the Independence voters disillusioned with the SNP. The Scottish Greens currently show good polling figures, but they are a rather strange party, entirely separate from the English Greens, and far more interested in gender issues than in anything else.
I was a member of the Alba Party until the leadership made very plain I was unwanted, for reasons that don’t seem any more profound than their personal ambitions. While led by Alex Salmond, Alba was the obvious vehicle for Independence support, but since his demise it has torn itself apart. There are others including the Independence for Scotland Party and Liber8 which contain some great people, but are currently very small.
Your Party can become a vehicle for a socialism that, as part of its universal commitment to anti-Imperialism, supports Independence for Scotland and Wales and supports the reunification of Ireland. I see that as a transformative position in British politics and a truly radical response to the fundamental change needed in the British state.
I might add that I have never heard Jeremy Corbyn express any personal opposition to Scottish Independence. He supports self-determination and anti-Imperialism around the globe and supports Irish reunification. I think those who note he did not support Scottish Independence whilst leader of the Labour Party are being obtuse. It was not the position of his party. He now has a different party, and I am very confident he would follow the party position.
The rather shadowy leadership cadre of Your Party is anxious to fudge the issue by adopting a policy of “the right of the Scottish people to decide”. This is basically to say that they support a second independence referendum. That is slightly useful, but it is a peculiar abnegation of responsibility – and very easy to say in the knowledge Westminster will not agree.
Of course the Scottish people have the right to decide. That must be the starting point for any socialist party. But that is not a policy. You might as well state that the people have the right to decide whether utilities should be renationalised. Of course they do. But our policy is to renationalise utilities.
A party that just says “we believe in the will of the people – whatever that may be. We don’t actually have an opinion” is not much of a political party.
Which leads me on to the question which I think is driving Your Party’s lack of discernible structured democracy and voting process so far: Israel.
The leadership seem desperate to avoid a commitment to a single state of Palestine, from the River to the Sea. The reason for this is that Jeremy is still surrounded by the same group of “soft” zionists who wrecked his leadership of the Labour Party, by continually attempting to placate the zionist lobby through apology after apology. They committed expulsion after expulsion of lifelong antiracists and socialists.
The preferred formula of proponents within Your Party of the Bantustan two-state solution is: “Let the Palestinian people decide”. Often accompanied by the plausible sounding “it is not for us to decide for the Palestinian people”.
The problem is of course the Palestinian people have a gun to their head. Literally. They have no free will to decide anything. And of which Palestinian people are you going to take the word? Universally reviled Abbas and the Palestinian Authority? Some US installed puppet administration under the Gaza fake Peace Plan?
No. The only solution any socialist should support is a Palestine free, from the river to the sea. Then it should indeed be for the Palestinian people to decide. Within the free, secular, democratic state of Palestine for which we should strive – and which now has more support from the people of the world than ever. If the free people of Palestine voluntarily then decide to give some land for a Jewish ethno-state, so be it.
Finally, it seems to me that Your Party needs to support massive socio-economic change.
Late stage capitalism has resulted in inequalities of wealth which are simply staggering. These are not the natural order of things. They are a result of deliberate, state-imposed structures, including the creation of currency within the banking system, the state paying banks interest on currency of which the state itself licensed the creation, taxation structures where the burden of payment falls upon the poor, enterprise ownership structures that promote wealth accumulation, and a housing market tending to ever-greater concentration of capital and the permanent subservience of working people to a landlord class.
The economic changes required are profound. The Greens have adopted one idea I have consistently promoted, limits on CEO pay and benefits relative to the workforce. They have I think suggested 10 x the average salary in the enterprise, whereas I suggested 8 x the lowest salary in the enterprise, but it is the same policy.
Rather to my amazement there was a really good editorial in the Observer yesterday suggesting some policies that directly start to tackle a number of the problems I have outlined, not least the state borrowing its own currency from the banks.
I used to favour a modified capitalism where share ownership lay largely with workers, but as states have evolved into far more complex financial systems where huge volumes of financial transactions do not relate to the purchase of goods and services, that approach is now only a small part of the answer, and the role of the state needs to increase. I am not sure I have quite finished reconciling this with my libertarian instincts, nor yet fully integrated those parts of modern monetary theory which are self-evidently true. But I am working on it.
To return to Your Party, I profoundly distrust the “Assemble” model of meetings split up into little groups. These avoid votes or any genuine effort to actually determine the will of the meeting. Instead they give the power of divining the “consensus” to unseen central figures. I have been told this system combats patriarchalism. That is obvious nonsense – I am pretty sure you will find patriarchs behind the curtains, dictating what was “decided” by the touchy-feely groups. And if they are matriarchs, that would be no better.
The national Conference is to be on the basis of sortition. The key question is this. Who gets to be there without going through the sortition process? How many and who are they? That seems to me essential to know. I have already seen direct evidence that a very large number of the little political groups who are dictating matters behind the scenes will avoid sortition by being present as “stewards”. As though stewards could not have been forthcoming from among those selected by sortition.
There are also officially going to be “VIPs” not subject to sortition. Who chooses them? Will a list be published?
The sortition itself, according to the documents circulated to members, will be fixed to make sure groups are fairly represented. What sort of groups? Ethnic? Gender? Political? This undermined the entire basis of sortition itself.
I have the deepest possible reservations about the manipulation of “democracy” within Your Party. But there are bound to be teething troubles at the start, and while there is plainly a huge amount of plotting for control, I don’t see anything we the members – and I am now one – cannot sweep aside as we get the party going.
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The choice of name- Your Party- is deeply revealing. Not even Our Party. Your Party. The leadership addresses potential members as “you” rather than “we”. This isn’t a party, it’s a marketing strategy- a brand. Corbyn and his remaining friends will siphon off some of the energy needed to oppose late capitalism and run a few election campaigns before quietly folding. And the UK will be in a worse place than when this endeavour started.
The name has to be something along the lines of “No f*cking zionists whatsoever”, otherwise it’s doomed.
The name “Your Party” even as a holding name is idiotic and patronising, and it’s remarkable that nobody realised this. But since he first became an MP in 1983 Jeremy Corbyn has been arsehole-clenchingly committed to the parliamentary road. I doubt even if the anti-terrorist police frogmarch him out of his house and attach electrodes to his knackers he’ll ever see the light. (Nobody should bother trying to construct a counter-argument based on Northern Ireland BTW.)
Forgive the harshness if you’re reading this, Jeremy. I respect that you have principles.
Incidentally “Your Party” is in keeping with Jeremy Corbyn’s idea of a “people’s prime minister’s question time” in the hallowed Commons chamber, with which IIRC David Cameron was happy to play ball.
Of course it’s better to stop fascism by voting than to fight a war against it, but we’re already long past that as an option.
If a) there is a next election, b) I am in Britain, c) I am still alive, and d) Your Party puts up a candidate where I’m registered, I will probably vote for him or her. But seriously they will be skating on thin ice where I’m concerned if they promise to create 1 million climate change jobs and mention transsexuals about a dozen times, as the Labour manifesto did when Corbyn was leader.
Bearing in mind the Workers’ Party’s promise of blockchain for the working class, they could possibly get even more batshit than that, but let’s hope they don’t.
Just nobody mention Orkney or Shetland independence, okay?
I’m glad to hear that you have made the plunge into Your Party. I share your concerns about the initial democratic deficits on display but hopefully once branches are established the members can begin the task of creating the promised ‘member-led’ party. And then I’m sure we will quickly see support for a free Palestine and independent Scotland turned into policy, as well as opposition to NATO membership and nuclear weapons. Things have moved in since Corbyn’s leadership of Labour but some are still suffering from the effects of prolonged Labour membership – which clearly still lies like a nightmare over the minds of the living.
If you limit the CEO pay they’ll compensate with the stock options. But this is small stuff. The big question is, can any “alternative” party survive in a modern Western democracy? The deep state will react, so the leadership will be either bought or set up and destroyed, as I am sure you are aware of.
Or maybe this whole idea is a mouse trap?
“opinion polls between support for Independence – averaging around 52%”
Wikipedia lists 23 opinion polls on the question of Scottish independence conducted since the British general election of 4 July 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_Scottish_independence
Disregarding what Wikipedia call the “undecided”, the averages in favour of independence are as follows:
x average of the last x polls
1 55%2 53%
3 52%
4 48%
5 52%
6 54%
7 48%
8 49%
9 56%
10 45%
11 44%
12 52%
13 51%
14 53%
15 54%
16 48%
17 50%
18 52%
19 46%
20 48%
21 49%
22 44%
23 48%
Those with time on their hands might like to look at how the figures change if polls by Find Out Now are excluded. FON seem to find more support than other pollsters for both the Reform party and Scottish independence. (Of course they may be “right” and the other pollsters “wrong”, to the extent that it means anything to be right or wrong when surveying opinion on a hypothetical question based on how people might vote right now when they’re not actually able to vote right now. But when both FON and YouGov – aka “anything for you, guv” – in their respectively most recent British polls found 15% support for the Greens – and “Lord” Ashcroft found 17% – one has to take it all with a big pinch of salt. Unless of course I’m the one who’s wrong and 1 voter in 6 votes Green in the next British general election.)
Wait – those figures are wrong – I put the $ in the wrong place in Excel. Apologies. Correction coming…
These are the corrected figures. This is for support for independence:
x average of last x polls
1 55%
2 54%
3 53%
4 52%
5 52%
6 52%
7 52%
8 51%
9 52%
10 51%
11 50%
12 51%
13 51%
14 51%
15 51%
16 51%
17 51%
18 51%
19 51%
20 50%
21 50%
22 50%
23 50%
My preference for the Your Party line would be do all of the following:
1. Support a new referendum
2. Say there should be two good options
3. Backburner the issue
You say “Your Party is not a unionist party. It does not yet have a policy on Scottish Independence. I shall of course be striving for it actively to support Scottish Independence. I feel fairly confident that this will succeed.” I don’t have a problem with you being a member of a unionist party who I might ad its leader used to be the leader of another unionist Labour party which brought about the Scotland act and the branch office we now know as Holyrood. I’m just wonder why you didn’t seek clarification from Your Party on Scottish Independence before you joined.
Mr Murray any party who want to govern England and these other nations is a unionist party that’s just a fact and to ask our colonizers for us to have the right to choose well that speaks volumes about you being our Ambassador for Scotland at the UN. I’ve got a funny feeling you’ll want to be a candidate for Your Party next year Holyrood elections.
Jeremy Corbyn could have made his position clear on the Scottish constitutional question when he was leader of the Labour party and he didn’t and I’ll tell you why he’s a speaker not a leader.
I wonder if you’ll also be trying to get Your Party to join Liberate Scotland if you where you left it out.
It seems to me that no change in the status of Scotland should be made without a referendum (in Scotland).
It would be wrong for a party that just gained a majority to impose independence. Therefore I think it’s right for ‘Your Party’ to have “holding a referendum on independence” as its policy.
A policy position of ‘Your party’ based on the dissolution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a recipe for disaster.
We already have the constituent parts of the UK state able to exercise their rights to self determination through a referendum, then. when 50% plus one vote to leave the UK state all the relevant parties can come together to thrash out the constitutional and financial measures required. [No small feat]. Presumably taking the policy position of ‘Your Party’ to be Scottish Independence, Scottish members of ‘Your party’ will be encouraged to break up the UK state. Similar polices might apply to Wales and Northern Ireland. In my opinion this is all wishful thinking, ‘Your party’ advocating these radical proposals nationwide will crash and burn in short order.
As regards Northern Ireland, it is a fact that not one person resident there [1,8 million people] has the vote, Oh yes people are allowed to go along to the voting booth and put a form into a box, unfortunately they cannot vote for any of the parties that govern them, Labour, Conservative, Reform or Lib Dem etc, all of whom have taken a discriminatory position not to organize constituency organizations in the 18 available in the Province. After legal action the Labour NEC allowed NI citizens limited membership in a Province wide “constituency” [approx 2000 members, all with limited rights although they pay the full membership fee] this could be said to be taking money under false pretenses. If the aim of voting is to elect one of the above parties to govern, then voting in Northern Ireland is futile. Instead Catholics and Protestants or people of no religion have a stark choice, one of the Unionist parties, DUP, Ulster Unionist etc or one of the Nationalist parties Sinn Fein or SDLP etc. In other words, of the available seats in NI, those largely sectarian parties usually elect 5 or 6 seats each, that number is insignificant at Westminster [650 seats] only in the rare event of a hung parliament are votes from NI even considered important. This is not democracy, even Palestinians living within Israel proper have more voting rights than any resident of Northern Ireland, since they can vote for Netanyahu’s party, Likud] They don’t of course, but they could.
The English are the only part of the UK who don’t have a right of self determination.
Of course Your party is unionist. It is a child of the Labour movement in Britain which itself, is wholly unionist
A sad day
Many leftist former Corbynistas seem to be throwing their full backing behind the Greens, for example: Owen Jones, Aaron Bastani; Matt Zarb-Cousin et al. And polling suggests they are well placed to capitalise on Labour’s declining support.
However, I’m not entirely convinced by Zack Polanski. It’s no more than simply skepticism at this point. But his history; things like jumping on the antisemitism bandwagon to bash Corbyn c.2018. And then his attack on BBC’s Question Time a few weeks back, against Reform’s Zia Yusuf, over alleged historic links to Russia, make me think he may not be quite the radical he presents himself as. Anyone on the left who is totally trustful of the U.S. while being deeply hostile to Russia and China, is immediately a bit sus imho. Most genuine leftists have a jaded view of Ukraine and Zelenskyy; they know about the western interference that drove the Euromaidan revolution. And they know about the bad faith and rejectionism that surrounded the Minsk I&II negotiations. As for China, there is no reason for any leftist to have a hostile opinion or see them as our adversary. Even the hawkish UK, under pressure from the U.S, struggled to justify the adversary designation. As the collapse of the spy case revealed.
If you want to know if someone is really a leftist, ask them their opinions of Russia and China.