There are serious threats to “Your Party” from those attempting to exert undemocratic control, and they attack as trying to destroy the party, anyone who tries to improve things.
The Labour Party is now centre-right and the large majority of us to the left of it were delighted when Jeremy took the plunge to launch a new party. It is not that parties of the left did not exist; it is that only Jeremy Corbyn has the stature to break through into mass voter support. That seems to me undeniable.
My own view is that it would be crazy for anybody other than Jeremy Corbyn to be the first leader of Your Party.
Of course, “left” is a broad concept, and like most of my friends I have signed up for the new project in order to take part democratically and endeavour to shape a party whose policies I can broadly support. If that does not materialise, I can leave, but I do not expect to agree with every single policy. Any party whose members all agree with every policy is deeply unhealthy.
I have friends in Scotland who will not join on the assumption it will be a unionist party. That of course can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I do not think it will be.
The rumours circulating about tensions at the top of “Your Party” are broadly true and often remarkably accurate. I could write a great deal about individuals and their positions, but I want now to issue an urgent alert and call to action, without names.
Simply put, I believe most of us had assumed that Your Party would be a one member, one vote democracy with major decisions taken by all members with online voting. That includes major policy decisions and election to all the main positions in the party, both central and local.
In fact, those in charge are actively working to limit, to an extraordinary degree, one person one vote democracy in the party. That is the major reason why “Your Party” is still not actually a political party and still has zero members. It only has 850,000 people who have signed up to express interest, many of whom have paid money, but none of whom have any legal standing, democratic rights or say in how the money is spent – or crucially whom it employs.
This is not an accident and no, it does not take months to set up a structure to convert these people into members. The delay is absolutely deliberate, preventing any locus standi for democratic control of the establishment process.
Incredibly, this is not an issue that divides the different factions at the top of the party. One thing that unites them is a desire to run the party through easily manipulated structures; they just differ over who should control those structures.
There have been a number of formative meetings held around the country. There is no area in the entire UK where all of those who have signed up and joined the list, or even all those who have paid money, have been invited along to a meeting to discuss setting up the local branch. In every case local members of small political parties and groups within trades unions have hand-picked whom to invite.
The only time that all those in an area who signed up have been invited, has been to a small number of leadership rallies with Jeremy Corbyn.
If I may just give Glasgow as an example. Your Party has 42,000 people signed up in Scotland. We can therefore estimate those signed up in Glasgow as over 5,000 people. But the “founding meeting” of the party in Glasgow was of 120 people, invited by “word of mouth”.
The other 5,000 people who had signed up had not the slightest idea the founding meeting was happening.
On a larger scale this control by selective invitation is to play out at what is billed as the party’s “Founding Conference” in November. Ordinary members will not be able to attend the conference. It will consist of delegates selected by tiny political parties and local groups, most of which the large bulk of the members in that locality will never have heard of.
There will be no way for a member simply to put themselves forward for election by all the other members in their region as a conference delegate. It is entirely a self-selecting process among established left wing factions, just like the Glasgow meeting writ large.
Let me try to bring home to you the vast gap between the membership and those who are manipulating the system. The main organising component in Scotland is a small party that initially stayed (rightly!) loyal to Tommy Sheridan after he was traduced by Murdoch, as part of the split between the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity. This group then split again as a smaller splinter off from Solidarity.
I can’t even recall what they call themselves now – the Socialist Party of Scotland or something – and I have no reason to doubt they are great people. But they and a couple of groups of similar size – groups which without the Corbyn name would not combined be able to fill Blairgowrie town hall for a meeting on a wet Tuesday evening – are attempting to lead by the nose 42,000 people who would like to have a say in the matter.
Those 42,000 in Scotland deserve the rights and privileges of members. Now. As do those who signed up throughout the UK.
I cannot stress to you enough that this is not a glitch; it is a feature. Nor is it a teething problem. Those who currently hold the reins are determined to make sure those reins cannot be voted out of their hands. I have had a number of conversations with people actually in charge of instituting all this, and the prevention of direct democracy and the structuring of the party instead through controlled committees and caucuses is for them a given.
Part of this is because, far from being a fresh start, most of those actually running the putative Your Party come from the byzantine world of the Labour Party. Others come from small parties which are avowedly revolutionary vanguardist and entryist. Large putative memberships willing to pay money are a resource to be exploited and turned to the purpose of the group, rather than comrades to be considered as equals.
Which brings me to the second, and to me more worrying, aspect of Your Party, which is conduct of meetings. Aside from the careful selectivity of who gets to be at the meetings, those currently directing Your Party seek to avoid normal democratic rules of debate and – above all – to avoid votes at their meetings. This is how the local meetings are actually being conducted.
The first method to disempower the membership at a meeting is to disassemble them, into “working groups”. Each working group is led – and the word “led” is important here – by a “moderator” who has been chosen in advance and trained. That “moderator” gives an impression of communitarianism by asking the group what they wish to discuss from a list of prepared topics, or to some degree participants can choose the topic group to join.
The conversation is then led by statements introduced by the moderator. In Glasgow this was done on the basis of WhatsApp messages allegedly sent in – though who had selected the people who sent the WhatsApp messages to this unadvertised meeting was not plain. The moderators then distil the collective view of the participants through a process of alchemy, and later the moderators amalgamate the view of the meeting.
This method of “consensual” discussion of policy, avoiding debate and opposition, echoes the strategies employed within groups like Occupy! and Extinction Rebellion. It draws those who arrive full of idealism into a novel and apparently communitarian process, and anybody wishing to express a radically different opinion – or to challenge the methodology – is immediately not a legitimate member putting an opposing view in debate, but a disruptor and an outcast.
When I gave a talk to the Occupy! encampment at St Paul’s many years ago, I wrote afterward that these trendy methods of decision making actually did the opposite of what they said on the tin. They empowered charismatic individuals to lead the group much more effectively than the structured rules of normal debate, and effectively created a cult following. I was unsurprised shortly afterward to discover that encampment had, precisely through the control of charismatic individuals, seen sexual abuse of female members, resulting in convictions.
The notion that normal debate, with speakers for and against and proper votes, is bourgeois or undemocratic is entirely wrong. The great E P Thompson opened The Making of the English Working Class with the insight that the structure of the London Corresponding Society was in itself an act of working class assertion. An equal subscription and one member one vote was a revolutionary notion in an era where public gatherings consisted of listening to the priest, the magnate or his underlings.
The democratic conduct of meetings is actually embedded in common law, and represents the accumulated achievement of popular control. There is nothing outdated about proper debate and one person one vote.
There is now the opportunity to update this, with online debates available to all members, and online voting on all issues available to all members. When Your Party spoke of a new and modern form of popular democracy, I presumed mass online debate and online one person one vote is what they meant. I did not for a second imagine that replacing voting with New Age cult metaphysics was meant.
I want to emphasise this to you. I have spoken to scores of people, including some very directly involved. The avoidance of debate and of votes is a deliberate policy to maintain the control of a small group of people. In what would already be the UK’s biggest political party if they had allowed people actually to become members.
I am not mentioning names because my motivation is to heal this and make Your Party the force it should be.
I signed up immediately, to support Jeremy, and paid a small sum. I have never at any stage been invited to any of the meetings, steering groups or other activities involved in organising the party. I have never received anything from them except one vague email asking me to suggest the party’s name.
This can all be rescued. But those who have signed up need to get active now. Do these things:
a) Write to the party (reply to the email about the name) asking that formal membership be opened up immediately and stating that you wish to become a member.
b) State that you wish to attend the founding conference or at least to have a vote for delegates to attend the founding conference, with a right to put yourself forward for election if you so choose.
c) State that you wish to be invited to any meetings of the party in your area.
d) If meetings happen without you, kick up a fuss.
e) At those meetings, insist on some general discussion and the right to vote upon things. Resist the splitting up into small groups and manipulation of consensus.
f) In writing, make absolutely plain that you expect Your Party within this calendar year to have online one person one vote elections for all major positions, local and national, within the party. That includes the General Secretary or equivalent position.
g) State that going forward you expect Your Party to enact direct democracy, with one member one vote online on all major policy issues.
A popular movement depends on the people and we have the people. We now need to empower them.
———————————
My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.
Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.
Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.
Click HERE TO DONATE if you do not see the Donate button above
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
PayPal address for one-off donations: [email protected]
Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address NatWest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a
“The democratic conduct of meetings is actually embedded in common law”
What does this mean?
It’s best not to get involved in “Your Party”. The parliamentary road has always been bullshit.
Trotskyists in particular are turds – icepick-head, cultist, red-fascist politicos who think the Makhnovists and the Kronstadt workers were White Guards, and who enjoy nothing better than stitching up meetings and pre-arranging votes. That’s these saddoes’ element.
Best to keep an eye out (voting Your Party if thought useful) and possibly participate independently in some of their street events (but acting outside of their control).
As for Tommy Sheridan, this is the guy who called for grassing up those who participated in the London poll tax riot, and who condemned those who were subjected to repression afterwards as “middle class”. A big net should be thrown over people like Sheridan and Paul Ferris. Sheridan is well known scum. The idea that he is some kind of popular hero John Maclean messiah is for his braindead thug supporters only (who will try to give you a good kicking if you speak less than respectfully about their beloved grass of a Leader.)
At least neither the UK regime nor the SNP local regime have killed all the autonomous resistants yet. Sheridan would.
Pretty well everything you state about Tommy Sheridan is factually untrue. Please stop this nonsense.
Brian ‘Red’ (formerly ‘N_’) not only reads unpleasant Telegraph trivia, but sees it as worth opening a forum about:
The Telegraphās list of 16 things that make a person ācommonā in Britain
@Clark – IIRC you think I’m rightwing pretending to be leftwing because I opposed mass house arrest in 2020-22, which according to the rulers’ lies was to “protect public health”, opposed “anti-Covid” vaccination, and don’t believe in the danger of a “fifth mass extinction”.
That Tommy Sheridan called for naming names after the poll tax riot is far more serious than differences in attitude towards finding humour in Torygraph scribblings, and is a matter neither of opinion nor taste.
Sheridan would have people like me shot.
Brian Red, just before you posted this you earned considerable respect from me with your evidence-based 17:12 comment below.
If I can bring myself to do so in the near future, I shall discuss the scientific matters you’ve placed in scare quotes on your ludicrous Torygraph forum thread.
Brian hasn’t produced any evidence Clark. He’s just made an allegation against Sheridan, the evidence for which he claims is being restricted to YouTube account holders, for some reason. Here’s what Militant had to say about it in 1995:
‘It was necessary to make this statement because, quite shamefully, Steve Nally and Tommy Sheridan had been accused after the demonstration by the some small groups of threatening to āname namesā of those who deliberately set out to disrupt the demonstration. The implication, repeated ad nauseum in the months that followed, was that Militant supporters would collaborate with the police and supply to the state names of their opponents who they believed were involved in āviolenceā.ā This was totally false. Steve Nally and Tommy Sheridan were both overwhelmingly re-elected as national officers of the Fed despite these unscrupulous allegations.’
https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/97869/23-06-1995/the-riot/
By the way, in case anyone’s wondering, I’m no fan of Sheridan or Militant/Socialist Alternative.
Sounds like one of those lies that’s been around long enough to earn the status of truth.
Re-lapsed Agnostic, thank you. I took Brian Red’s claim to be in good faith. It seems my trust was misplaced.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. The story is reported on Sheridan’s Wiki page, but no citation is given. I occasionally wonder how many widely-accepted historical facts (e.g. The Gunpowder Plot) actually happened.
—-
No problem, Clark. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Sheridan actually did say those things but, if footage existed, surely it would have been seen by Militant’s top brass and resulted in him being kicked out of the party before he eventually left to join the Scottish Socialists in 1998. If I were Brian and wanted to traduce Tommy, I would concentrate on his behaviour during the libel trial he brought against the News of the World in 2006, which forced a young woman he’d already taken advantage of to have to leave the country she loved.
” I occasionally wonder how many widely-accepted historical facts (e.g. The Gunpowder Plot) actually happened.”
So do I, history being written by the victors.
Tommy Sheridan threatened to name names after the London poll tax riot. This is a fact. He and Steve Nally did exactly that, and they did it in public.
Footage of them doing it used to be on Google’s Youtube, but it seems the company now restricts access to poll tax riot videos to its accountholders. If there are Google accountholders reading this, they can check. My guess would be that most who organise their “opposition” through Facebook’s Whatsapp groups have Google accounts already, perhaps ones they’re permanently logged into, so they shouldn’t have a problem finding the incriminating evidence.
Militant were furious that the poll tax riot got out of their control, and they sided with state repression afterwards. [*]
Once upon a time, Sheridan admitted he called for “naming names”. He even defended himself in a book in which he said the identities of those arrested showed that they were mainly middle class (sic!) with the implication that they were agents provocateurs. IIRC he and Nally said when pushed that oh they didn’t mean names of individuals, perish the thought, they meant names of organisations.
They basically took the same line as the police – that the riot was caused by “Class War types”.
The authorities considered proscribing Class War at the time. Militant showed what side they were on. Curiously, they lost a LOT of their membership to Class War within a year.
And BTW I was one of the people charged and tried for alleged offences committed during the London poll tax riot, and I also lived in Glasgow for several years, so I know very well what I am talking about.
Half of the Glasgow anarchists were well-sussed about Sheridan. The other half were under his allure. The Belfast anarchists, however, were all extremely well sussed about him and they even did a leaflet entitled “Tommy the Tout”. They were shocked to think that some Glasgow anarchists actually supported Sheridan.
Also I know a number of people who had violence threatened against them by members of Sheridan’s outfit for disagreeing with them politically.
Trotskyists aren’t really much different from Stalinists in how they hate autonomous radical class struggle.
Note
*) Even plantation owner Tariq Ali didn’t side with repression in October 1968. He did lead protestors away from Grosvenor Square to have a picnic in Hyde Park, but that’s not in the same category as calling for naming names.
Craig, thanks for the heads up about Brian, and thanks for alerting us to the dangers present in forming a new party. Please keep telling us about the inside action in the new party as we will need to know this if we do not want to end up making a decision we might regret.
Good morning Craig, and thank you for this warning.
“Large putative memberships willing to pay money are a resource to be exploited and turned to the purpose of the group, rather than comrades to be considered as equals.” This reminds me of a joke about the Soviet Union. A person pays for a bus ticket.
‘Here’s your ticket, Sir.’
‘You should call us Comrade.’
‘Are you crazy? Comrades don’t ride in buses, they ride in those big black cars.’
It also reminds me of the history of Communism, when Lenin insisted that a small elite direct everything and everyone else obey without question. See page 11, issue #6 of the comic This godless Communism:
https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/communism/This%20Godless%20Communism/
The emerging party elite or oligarchy seem like the pigs in Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, of which an animated version is on Youtube, though the ending is changed to be more hopeful than the novel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKJvwWyq2z0
Quoting far right, Taliban grade fundamentalist comic rag “publication” on communism? You might as well skip beating around the bush and quote Goebbels directly, seeing this is where these people got their ideas (aka propaganda) on the subject. Seriously?
You are writing nonsense. However, for the benefit of those who might need the information I will say that the series This godless Communism in Treasure Chest magazine originally had a foreword by J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI. It can be read here:
https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/godless/godless2.jpg
This foreword is worthy of note, because it illustrates the difference between free societies, where the way to fight adversaries is to gain knowledge, and Communist societies that rely heavily on censorship. We see this most acutely today in North Korea where the death penalty is imposed for consuming foreign culture.
The comic will provide a good basic knowledge of the history of Communism. However for further reading I would recommend R.N. Carew Hunt’s The theory and practice of Communism, which can be found on the internet archive. A good evaluation of the ideology from the Catholic perspective can be found in F.J. Sheed’s Communism and Man.
“We see this most acutely today in North Korea where the death penalty is imposed for consuming foreign culture.”
and that from someone who kicks off their comment with “You are writing nonsense.” If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, I suppose.
For those who actually want to know, here is the website of the UN story, with links both to an downloadable interview with James Heenan, head of the N. Korea office of OCHCR and the report itself:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/dprk-un-report-finds-10-years-increased-suffering-repression-and-fear
You don’t think that an organisation that is mainly funded by countries hostile to North Korea might not just be a teeny bit biased? From the report:
In preparing the present report, OHCHR consulted widely with victims, civil society
organizations and thematic experts and reviewed their public reports; engaged with Member
States; and conducted interviews with 314 victims and witnesses who had left the country
during the reporting period
Do they didn’t actually go to North Korea, but only talked to people who had fled the country? These people are not exactly going to be unbiased are they, nor is there any guarantee of their honesty.
On North Korea, for those who want to know, another book worth reading is The Accusation (ISBN 1781257558), a collection of short stories based on a manuscript by an North Korean author still living in the country called Bandi, the name meaning firefly.
A book based on non-fictional interviews is Barbara Demick’s Nothing To Envy: Real Lives In North Korea..
Oops, looks like its going down the same route as the Alba party – meaning it doesn’t do what it says on the tin.
I attended a Your Party meeting in Cambridge last week. Not by personal invitation, but by seeing the meeting advertised on facebook. I had missed the first two meetings, so when I arrived there was already an interim chair and minute taker. On a positive note, a lady who had met Zarah and Jeremy had a formal motion ready to vote on. It was, roughly speaking, to attract as many members as possible and make sure that they could vote on proposals. It got a majority vote. I spoke in favour citing the delagate only voting system of the Labour Party, and the way in which they ignore there own conference with that limited system. Everything went down hill after that. A few vanguards, trots and control freaks from Labour stated that we had paralised the meetings and one suggested we get rid of the motion within that meeting. Fortunately that did not happen. I was pleased with this article, because I spoke at the meeting, mostly to the Lady who brought the motion, asking her to recommened to JC and ZS, that we register the party immediately and start an email contact system for all members. I stated that I had been a ward organiser for Labour, and was therefore immediately aware of the problems with communicating meetings etc. This is essential for access to democratic processes. I used to encourage people to attend meetings in the Labour Party, and I know that Your Party needs an email system that immediately connects to any new signed up member. Other wise they become disengaged and leave the party. We need something akin to Labour’s “Organise” email. If avoiding this process is deliberate, it is a very worrying situation.
Anyone who thinks an England-based, Corbyn-led, neo-left party has any relevance to Scottish independence needs their head examined
100% agreed. The very fact that Scotland is an afterthought speaks volumes.
The relevance to Scottish independence is that if a strong left party does not establish itself soon, England looks likely to turn fascist, after which Scotland is the first place it will have to subjugate.
I’d be interested to know which party you think does have any relevance to Scottish independence.
its very complicated to start a new party with lots of democracy, if every member tries to vote and its on zoom or something, is that really so democratic. maybe local groups who can discuss things and then make a collective decision.
Yes, if every member votes it is really so democratic. By definition,
I have no problem at all with local meetings, as long as everybody is invited and they are run on proper, normal democratic lines.
@Craig, that you have to point this out speaks volumes. Will this party boycott Westminster like the Shinners until there’s a democratic voting system?
If an issue is very big in the Party, online voting could be implemented. Physical meetings to vote could be broken down to ward meetings, no need for massive venues and long travelling. But the problem at the moment is that there is no knowledge of members within wards, and no ward organiser to bring people together. That requires the party to register urgently, and to set up an email system similar to Labour’s “Organise”. If there is a deliberate attempt to prevent this, it does point to sabotage.
It is very dispiriting that the new party seems to be replicating the backroom factions of Corbyn’s Labour years, with a lot of the same people. Anyone involved in student politics in former years will recognise the cadres, the ‘delegate’ system, the core of people who determine major policy decisions, presented as party policy, the taking of members for granted as cannon fodder for their schemes.
Look no further than the Sturgeon SNP, for instance! Of Farage’s limited company Reform. Right and left have similar factions who have decided their way is the way, and opposition, or desire to be involved, is a threat to their sinecures.
Corbyn, in his eighties, might be a figurehead, but hardly a leader for the future. Which is why the alliance with Zarah Sultana seemed like a good move to me. But the whispers are that she is being sidelined already by the Corbyn faction, some of whom are favourable to zionism, incredibly, in this current genocidal climate.
There is a huge vacancy for a left wing party which can appeal to the broad social democratic consensus, and which would not be afraid to call out the rise of the right, Israel, Trump etc, and can offer some kind of economic rebalance in favour of ordinary people. Your Party has enthused a lot of people, it is very disappointing that it is not being open and inclusive to them. We can but hope, let’s see what happens.
To my mind Zarah Sultana is the obvious candidate for party leader, maybe with Corbyn as some sort of elder statesman figurehead. I certainly do not agree with everything she says and there may be some unsaid skeletons lurking but she is eloquent and appears to have an idea of what she wishes to achieve. Corbyn f*cked up last time and gives every impression he is going to do the same this time, so time to step aside I’d suggest.
Here she is in action at the Beautiful Days festival on 17 August.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/will-corbyn-allow-zionists-sabotage-him-again/50914
go and search out the socialist party of Great Britain. it was founded 1904 and is going strong!
Not sure that the SPGB can really be said to be ‘going strong’, seydlitz – though its bank balance certainly is:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66607841
“The Labour Party is now centre-right….”
Far right, if you please.
Extreme right would be more accurate.
So how would you classify Reform or Advance UK?
I don’t follow British party politics too closely since there’s so little difference between the parties, but I suppose the answer is that it depends on whether they support the genocide in Gaza. That’s how I classify a lot of parties and politicians, including Orban in Hungary, not on things like opposition to mass immigration.
Same old shite from the same old shites. Pujadism for the Daily Heil reader.
“Far right” is just a term of abuse. Calling party “far right” is a bit like calling someone a ‘bastard’, it really just means you don’t like them.
A more descriptive term for Starmer’s Labour Party might be “Thatcherite”. It’s not perfect (Margaret left the railways and the Post Office in public ownership, for example, and she didn’t publicly support genocide), but it’s impossible to find a perfect term for something with as many aspects as a political party.
OK then, let’s just settle on fascist bastards.
Sounds good to me š
Thatcher supported apartheid in South Africa which was potentially genocidal if allowed to progress.
On the contrary, Thatcher’s government pressed for the release of Nelson Mandela, and invited Mandela to lunch at 10 Downing Street (the lunch meeting between Thatcher and Mandela at No.10 was on 4 July 1990).
Now, Britain could have done much more to end the abomination of apartheid. But to compare apartheid South Africa with Israel – which is murdering Palestinian civilians daily, has killed about 100,000 in the last 3 years and has announced its intention of murdering many more, the total might well end up in the vicinity of a million before Netanyahu is done – is grotesque.
And maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see any news of Starmer inviting the leader of Hamas to lunch. He loses no opportunity to call the Hamas party “terrorists”, when by any reasonable definition of terrorism, the terrorists in the Middle East are the IDF.
I said potentially and if you read history thatcher only gave in after pressure
Sophistry, their policies are far right; racism, antisemitism, collusion with zionazi apartheid and genocide, stamping on free speech against the zionazi genocide and looking the other way when racist thugs threaten refugees, press censorship, co-option of suprstitious mumbo-jumboists for social control, starving kids and freezing pensioners. Verily they fit the agent theory of fascism.
You probably know, but Thatcher had covert British special forces aiding the Guatemalan military during the Maya genocide in 1982. So Thatercherite is pretty accurate.
Was East Timor not also under Thatcher ?
So it’s all turning to ordure already?
Depressing but not surprising.
The Green Party operates as a democracy with all policy being decided by members’ single transferable votes. It is left libertarian rather than authoritarian left[1]. The problem is not that the “wrong” people are in charge, the problem is that individuals are placed in positions of power. Hierarchy is harmful.
[1] https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2024
Quite agree, you can’t legislate against bad faith.
Oh well, another exercise in futility then. These tactics are just parasitic. I won’t be spending any money or joining up any time soon.
Direct democracy of the flavour you describe sounds very attractive, I can’t see Jeremy Corbyn doing this but possibly Zarah Sultana
Well, they’ve stated an intent to have mass democratic participation, but it has to be a process and thus it requires a digital roadmap with goals they can be tested against. Because good server infrastructure including websites; secure authentication and voting, and then securing it all from hackers, adding server redundancy etc, costs serious money. The party may one day have a million members judging by interest, that’d be helluva lot of data traffic. Money they haven’t got yet obviously, They could get union support too. Union support is more likely if Labour renege on their Workers’ rights legislation, as Unite have hinted at.
What is the alternative in the UK? Starmer’s Labour? Swinney’s sad-sack SNP? Badenoch or Jenrick’s Tories, Reform? That’s the context here. I’d rather have Corbyn and Sultana dictating policies than any of that lot.
Online voting i.e. Swiss -style Direct Democracy sounds exciting and it could be democratically transformative, but it’s not as simple as throwing up a server. A party, even one with the highest ideals will have vicious adversaries. A party from the left will face more establishment hostility than the disgruntled Tories that make up the bulk of Reform’s membership do in Farage’s outfit.
“What is the alternative in the UK? Starmerās Labour? Swinneyās sad-sack SNP? Badenoch or Jenrickās Tories, Reform? ”
No, the alternative is not voting for any of them. You don’t have to vote for the big names, just as you don’t have to shop in the big supermarkets, it’s just easier. As Douglas Adams put it “If you don’t vote for this lizard, the other lizard will get in”. None of them are any good, all are offering the same old same old. If you don’t want the same old same old, don’t vote for any of them. Voting for a party because it’s not the party in power that has cocked up massively is what got us Star(ofDavid)mer, the worst PM for a century at least.
Bayard.
Agreed we’re at the stage now that AI can write policies – we don’t need any of those lying deceitful politicians anymore, polices can be fed into AI and they print out the best solutions, already some councillors are using AI to create policies, all that’s required is some person elected in whatever form, to meet and greet foreign heads of state, but that person should have NO powers to make any deals such as trade deals etc.
AI can have so many great benefits for humanity, if used correctly.
I’ve read this three times. Please tell me it’s satire. I honestly can’t tell! (Sorry if I’m just being dim. I’ve got my coat ready.)
Twirlip
What don’t you understand?
Actually, we don’t even need policies. After several thousand years, the problem of how to run a country is a solved problem. All policies are, are an attempt to bugger up the process of government with political dogma.
We are emphatically not at that stage. In fact, at this stage it’s looking more like the current batch of AI contenders are little more than hugely expensive and energy intensive con tricks. Extremely clever con tricks and very enjoyable to collaborate with on ideas and theories, but really their function is to ‘pattern match’, collate and re-present retrieved information in ways that mimic human thought and expression. But they are not capable of thinking as such, so really you’d be no better off than if you’d asked a politics lecturer, who will actually understand what they are saying, rather than just redact and summarise other’s thoughts based on algorithmically defined probability of accuracy. And if you think that AI would be free of bias, well that would only be the case if both the poser of the question and the information accessed is free from bias, neither of which is likely to be the case. AI as it stands is ill-suited and unready for the responsibilities you suggest, and barring a currently unknown and apparently unanticipated new direction, it is predicted to flatline way short of hype and expectation. Their ain’t much stretch left in that bubble.
When you become a slave to the machine, you become a slave to the person who controls the machine
(I think that was Frank Herbert?)
“Extremely clever con tricks and very enjoyable to collaborate with on ideas and theories, but really their function is to āpattern matchā, collate and re-present retrieved information in ways that mimic human thought and expression. ”
Agreed, the basic problem with “AI” is that it is not conscious, so it doesn’t know what it is doing and, like all things that don’t know what they are doing, it doesn’t do what it does very well. It’s like trying to learn a musical instrument with an online written guide. The guide can only tell you how to do it right, not how you are doing it wrong when you inevitably start picking up bad habits.
“ā we donāt need any of those lying deceitful politicians anymore, polices can be fed into AI”
Looks like the Albanians have already gone there:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/albania-appoints-ai-bot-minister-tackle-corruption-2025-09-11/ .
Perhaps we should keep an eye on them to see how they get on.
All that is required is humans to input the parameters on policies and for AI to come up with the best solutions, yes humans can tweak the policies – greatly reducing human error bias corruption etc, and hopefully costs – there are around 650 MPs at Westminster on a minimum of Ā£93k a year, then you have bungs and bonuses second homes etc, it really does mount up – let these MPs sit in their constituencies full-time – instead of once or twice a week – you see its not about advancing what is the best proposals its all about tradition so Westminster will never change.
Republicofscotland:
I’m not sure that even in our present system, politicians (whether deceitful or not) have very much to do with the formulation of policies. For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ2AokZujC0
The UK’s Online Safety Act didn’t come from Parliament or the public – YouTube
(ali mcforever) [8m42s] [Sat 2 Aug 2025]
Nor am I sure that, in principle – setting aside, for the sake of argument, the all-too-real and ever-increasing corruption and authoritarianism of the system – this matters all that much.
Compare, in the philosophy of science, the distinction between “context of discovery” and “context of justification”. In either case, what matters is not so much where ideas come from, as the way in which, once having been proposed, they succeed or fail in becoming established – on the one hand, as scientific theories, or so-called “laws”, or on the other hand as political policies, and all-too-literal laws, such as the Online Safety Act, or the Terrorism Act 2000.
In particular, it may not matter very much (this is still “in principle”) whether a given policy idea comes from an AI or not. Also, even if an idea is originated by mere humans, there is little doubt that even our present-day AI, in the form of large language models, can be of some assistance in formulating policies for governments.
But as I said, what matters is not where policy ideas come from (AI, human, or dubious private foundation or think tank), but the process by which they succeed or fail in becoming law. And that is where politicians matter (and indeed where their deceitfulness matters).
You are surely not suggesting that this role of politicians, too, could or even should be replaced by AI? It did look that way, and that is why I had to read your comment several times, and in the end ask if it was meant to be satirical.
Twirlip @16.24pm.
The system is rigged, politicians will promise this and that in their manifestos – just to win your vote and once in the door they spin round and give you the finger – how many times has this happened – and the public are the losers – as for politicians they serve the public, oh wait a minute that’s not true is it? Anyway they could spent the time in their constituencies dealing with their constituents complaints – as AI could replace their role at Westminster, ideas presented and if accepted, AI could formulate the best outcome as long as the correct parameters are given to it first – of course introducing the human element can lead to corruption – but surely it would be far less than it is now, and is going to be in the future, in anycase its already taken tentative steps in at least one country.
Think Tanks are a no, no especially Tufton street and Charlotte Sq think tanks
I’d go as far as to say, I trust AI if used properly – far more than I would certain politicians – however politicians won’t vote themselves out of a job, even for the betterment of the masses, most politicians are into self -preservation in a political sense.
—————
“You are surely not suggesting that this role of politicians, too, could or even should be replaced by AI?”
On the above – as I said politicians won’t be replaced due to Westminster traditions – the system in their eyes must be protected it gives them power and sway over the masses – for me at least a new system is required.
“A new minister has joined the cabinet of a small European country. Her name is Diella. She doesnāt eat, drink, smoke, walk, or breathe ā and, according to the prime minister who hired her, she doesnāt take bribes either. Diella isnāt human, and sheās not quite a robot either: sheās an algorithm. And as of September, she is officially Albaniaās minister for public procurement.
For the first time in history, a government has given a cabinet-level post to artificial intelligence.
Sounds like sci-fi, but the appointment is real and has set a precedent.
Are you ready to be governed by AI?
The Albanian experiment
Until recently, Diella lived quietly on Albaniaās e-government portal, answering routine citizen questions and fetching documents.
Then Prime Minister Edi Rama promoted her to ministerial rank, tasking her with something far more important: deciding who wins state contracts ā a function worth billions in public money and notorious for bribery, favoritism, and political kickbacks.
Rama has framed Diella as a clean break with the countryās history of graft ā even calling her āimpervious to bribes.ā
“as AI could replace their role at Westminster, ideas presented and if accepted”
Not that they have much of a role at Westminster any more unless they are part of the government. In the days before entrenched political parties,debates were needed to sway the largely independent MPs into voting for the motion under debate. Now we have “pairing off” and MP’s speaking to a largely empty House.
Republicofscotland [16:56]:
[I hope this comment isn’t badly garbled. I lost a previous version of the text, and had to reconstruct it, but hardly had the heart to try!]
So you were indeed serious! Suppose, then, that an artificial information-processing system is to be given actual power over people. This does indeed happen already, not only in Albania, and not only with “intelligent” systems. Even before AI reached its present state of development, algorithms had increasing power over our lives. (Books have been written about this problem, but I haven’t actually read any of them.)
(Indeed – please forgive this possibly insane digression, which I actually hope is insane! – I think the problem goes back even further than that. I have long felt that autonomous, exclusively profit-seeking corporations, which decades ago were given many of the legal rights of “persons”, thus became virtually artificially intelligent psychopathic robots, with almost unlimited power over us. The advent of effective AI potentially increases the already terrifying power of such corporations beyond all imagining.)
By “actual power over people”, of course I mean decision-making power, contrasted (as in my previous reply) with the mere ability to draft policies for human politicians (or the largely obscure and unaccountable social and financial systems which control those politicians) to evaluate and decide upon.
How can such an information-processing system be made democratically accountable?
You don’t seem to have addressed this problem, but surely it is of the highest importance.
Twirlip @18.47.
Firstly your comment is fine, no need for any form of apologies – you make fair points, the one below interests me most.
“How can such an information-processing system be made democratically accountable?”
Indeed AI is a cold calculating tool that does not take into account shall we call it the human condition, meaning one policy wouldn’t fit all, as for democratic accountability, do we have that now? I think not – so the civil servants that work closely with AI, would have to be trustworthy, and be allowed to make minor changes to AI policies to fully accommodate society, of course there will always be some corruption due to human nature, but, much less than their is now, for me if AI if used properly and honestly – it will benefit mankind, of course security around the AI systems would need to be top notch.
AI is not a panacea for all of mankind’s woes – but it can help if used properly in certain areas – however as I said in a previous comment, the Westminster system will never break tradition.
Did someone control the kleroteria (devices making random choices) in ancient Athens?
Lysias.
Well someone had to pull the tokens out – in a similar fashion as to the sortition – it doesn’t make it a corrupt system – because of that.
No, it doesn’t. If there are a million members and each one visits the website once per day, that works out at around 30 hits on the website per second, say 100 per second at peak time. That’s not a heavy load for a modern multiprocessor CPU and SSD storage. You can rent a couple of VPSs for about Ā£300/year each, tops, that will handle that (2, just for redundancy). Building a basic website (member login, some pages only available to members etc) requires knowledge and experience but there’s no shortage of people capable of doing it. (I’ve done it for several different clients.)
That’s not what is envisioned though. If using that infrastructure to hold /stream live democratic debates and live membership voting, it’d be a far heavier load. It would probably have to be on-site too i.e., purchased servers and business grade dedicated 10Gig fibre. Simply renting VPS infrastructure may not meet legal and electoral compliance: auditable data records and data protection requirements etc. I’ve not looked into it. I agree VPS are fairly cheap to rent, even for high-spec servers. But it can’t be something an amateur tech enthusiast within the party could manage due to legal liability. It can’t be done on a shoestring.
They’d need to pay a professional network administrator and/or a security officer too. It’d need a big membership paying in, to make this possible.
Streaming live debates would be very different, true (by orders of magnitude). But is that really envisioned? IMHO it’s too ambitious. It’s not clear to me how a debate involving even 10,000 members could be managed.
Circulating proposals, allowing comments, and then giving members the chance to vote for or against within a fixed timeframe like a week, would be much simpler and would not require additional server capacity.
“If using that infrastructure to hold /stream live democratic debates and live membership voting, itād be a far heavier load.”
That’s just the “now” culture at work. There is absolutely no reason why people need to hear and vote on debates contemporaneously. Such things could be written down, people could read the transcript on line and then vote once they had done it. Internet voting has the problem of being easily able to be falsified, though.
@Townsman
It’d need to be scalable solution based on actual demand – numbers wishing to participate – and therefore likely involve locally hosted and cloud (AWS). They’d need to employ a qualified server administrator to scale up as per their requirements.
They might not even go down this route, but I think if the membership becomes as big as the interest indicates it could become, they can’t simply exclude the membership from decision making like the other parties do. One of the major reasons support for the big-two has collapsed, is because members feel like unwelcome bystanders watching what has become a uni-party system.
@Bayard
It’d be cool to try something different and there is no technological reason any longer why voters can’t have vastly more say in how they are governed, for good or ill. Our votes, given one day, every four/five years simply aren’t a sufficient mandate in an age where everyone is connected and expressing an opinion. Direct democracy is the future and this new party could lead by example.
“Our votes, given one day, every four/five years simply arenāt a sufficient mandate in an age where everyone is connected and expressing an opinion. Direct democracy is the future and this new party could lead by example.”
Agreed to that, but using a system of voting vulnerable to evil-doers is not the way to achieve that. On the internet, no-one knows you’re a dog.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg/220px-Internet_dog.jpg .
If we want direct democracy, we will just have to get off our arses and vote in the traditional way, in public.
Bayard
I share that concern around fraud – the solution is simple : digitally stored, member voting records – accessible to an individual member and independent auditors. These would make auditing a simple task. And there’d be no incentive for bad actors to even try to manipulate votes, when members can simply review their own voting records and reconcile the tallies.
The general election and Scottish referendum postal voting has been mentioned here previously in relation to suspected fraud. The problem with the current arrangements : you lose all custody of your vote the moment it’s sent and have to assume it wasn’t either changed by someone, or simply not counted.
Network terms. It’s a problem like UDP/TCP at the Transport layer – UDP is classed as unreliable – think, fire and forget, the other TCP is classed as reliable because it uses acknowledgements between sender and receiver to ensure reliable delivery. Since they have postal vote openings prior to election day, there should be a tick box that allows voters a receipt, legally acknowledging their vote and their party choice. This would create an audit trail you can opt in to be part of. This may break the principle of ballot box secrecy, but that’s already broken in postal votes by someone opening and validating/counting. Anyone trying to commit fraud wouldn’t know who’d opted in so fraud would be much harder. If everyone opted in it’d be impossible. Since you aren’t physically using a ballot box, the ‘ballot box’ secrecy argument isn’t applicable anyway.
Lesser-evilism is another thing that’s got the working class into this mess.
A beginning is a very delicate time… or so the prologue to Dune goes.
I’m not dismissive of Craig’s concerns around the fundamentals; making sure internal democracy and transparency are baked-in from the start should be a no-brainer. I do however think we need to have faith in the individuals involved and take into account the context of our current political plight in the UK. Today, we’ve got a major far-right rally and we’ve seen the cross of St. George being weaponised as a faux patriotic test to intimidate across the country; many of these individuals bizarrely support Israel to the hilt – as if paid advocates? For Israel, whipping up western anti-Muslim feeling to detract from what’s happening Gaza and the West Bank would be logical, and also despicable. You can wager the security services in the UK (MI5) know what is happening in terms of Israel – far right groups leaders’ financial linkage, and are either turning a blind eye or worse, are complicit in this stoking of UK division.
” I do however think we need to have faith in the individuals involved and take into account the context of our current political plight in the UK. ”
There really is no point in replacing one top-down party run by a small clique with another. In any case, England is default Tory. The only two Labour victories since Maggie Thatcher have been when Labour presented themselves as a better class of Tory compared to the Conservatives. Now Reform is doing that. Your party can’t compete with Reform on that level, so needs to appeal to voters as something completely different on a fundamental level. If it presents itself as a caricature left-wing party run by a small clique of comrades, it’s going to fail miserably. Corbyn already reminds too many people of an elderly Wolfie Smith. He doesn’t want to make the resemblance any closer.
Reform are just disgruntled, very RW Tories, with shitty policies on the NHS; ending social support; supporting Trump and Israel’s expansionism and pushing for UK mainland fracking. I honestly believe that demolishing their support won’t be all that difficult if ‘Your Party’ can put together an attractive policy package.
As I’ve said before … the big issue with the masses is Immigration. The policy on this will win or lose the next GE. I wait to see what ‘Your Party’ comes up with, though I’m not optimistic.
The problem may solve itself by the time of the next GE if, as expected, Labour and the Tories adopt Reform’s policy of not granting asylum to anyone who enters the country illegally. With no prospect of asylum, word will travel and those thinking of making the journey wouldn’t bother, with no prospect of asylum other than through legal routes. What really infuriates people, is how they know many are economic migrants and not genuine refugees due to the fact they’ve have traveled through multiple safe countries on their way to the UK. It’s a difficult question for leftist parties for sure.
No, immigration is not the ābig issueā, it is an artificially manufactured ābig issueā designed to scapegoat other working class people in order to divert attention from the real causes of the crisis. If Reform or whoever stop all the boats tomorrow will your life be any better? Of course it wonāt, because at the same time Reform will be privatising the NHS and cutting public services so they can cut taxes for the rich. So they will need to move on to other scapegoats, most likely black and Asian people who have lived here for decades. The far right thugs are already bullying people from ethnic minorities now, and that will only get worse. Wake up and stop being such a gullible mug.
“No, immigration is not the ābig issueā, it is an artificially manufactured ābig issueā designed to scapegoat other working class people in order to divert attention from the real causes of the crisis.”
The fact of it being artificially manufactured doesn’t stop it being the big issue that large numbers of people care about. They may be wrong, but that really doesn’t affect the way they vote.
” I honestly believe that demolishing their support wonāt be all that difficult if āYour Partyā can put together an attractive policy package.”
I don’t. The secret weapon of the Tory party is loyalty. Tory voters vote Tory or they don’t vote at all. That’s why Corbyn lost the election. Tory remainers voted Tory before they voted for Remain and Labour leavers voted for Leave before they voted for Labour. As I said before, since Maggie, Labour have only got into power by being Red Tories. Very few Tories are going to vote for a party that is unashamedly not Tory.
A problem for these party’s, IMO, is that they’ve just become refuges for outcasts from the main two party’s. Reform is stock full of Tories who have deserted the Conservative party; whereas, ‘Your party’ is attracting the Labour Party rejects. Real change isn’t about the same old people in a different setting. New blood is needed and career politicians are certainly not needed, or wanted. One member, one vote democracy is the only way to break this chain.
You have to hand it to the people behind Your Party: most political revolutions start democratically and become authoritarian, as the usual suspects slide back into the positions of power and consolidate themselves into position, but with Your Party, it seems that they are dispensing with that process and starting as they mean to go on. I think that’s what’s called chutzpah.
An interesting account of Your Party’s Sheffield meeting last Thursday
https://www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/getting-the-party-started/
—
[ AI summary:
Emerging from left-wing discontent with Labour, Your Party is a new political initiative gathering momentum in Sheffield, aiming to offer a socialist alternative rooted in trade unionism and workers’ democracy. The party faces challenges of internal division and managing relationships with various leftist groups.
ā¢ Your Party’s inception and support: Initiated by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, Your Party has quickly attracted around 800,000 email subscribers and held its first Sheffield meeting with about 180 attendees in person and 50 online. Local groups like Sheffield Left are organizing its development.
ā¢ Internal tensions and risk of factionalism: Organizers acknowledge that communication channels, such as their WhatsApp group, can be “toxic” with frequent disagreements, reflecting a historical pattern of left-wing splits over ideological differences.
ā¢ Socialist Party’s involvement and vision: The Socialist Party, with roots in Militant, is actively influencing Your Partyās direction, advocating policies like nationalization of banks and credit controls, and emphasizing the need for a socialist transformation by overturning capitalist structures.
ā¢ Cautious optimism among former Labour members: Some former Labour councillors express enthusiasm about Your Party as a fresh political option, citing dissatisfaction with Labourās recent policies on welfare, immigration, and climate crisis, though they recognize the difficulty of building a new party.
ā¢ Challenges from other left-wing groups: Your Party must navigate the influence of various leftist organizations like the Socialist Worker Party, Alliance for Workersā Liberty, and RS21, which have differing approaches and histories of discord.
ā¢ Concerns about vote splitting: Critics worry that Your Party might divide the left-wing vote, potentially benefiting right-wing parties such as Reform and Nigel Farageās movement, though supporters argue that Labourās own policies have already alienated voters.
ā¢ Emphasis on workersā democracy and trade unionism: The Socialist Party stresses that Your Party should be built on the foundations of organized labor and workers’ democracy, cautioning against overreliance on other parties like the Greens, which they do not consider truly socialist or worker-oriented. ]
” Emphasis on workersā democracy and trade unionism: The Socialist Party stresses that Your Party should be built on the foundations of organized labor and workersā democracy, cautioning against overreliance on other parties like the Greens, which they do not consider truly socialist or worker-oriented.”
I am now even wary of using the trade union movement as a foundation for a true party of the people. After all that happened recently with Labour targeting the elderly and the poor because they are not workers, I do not want a party that is dominated by the trade union movement. Read what GBS said about the trade union movement. Their main purpose is to fight for their own members only and they do so by becoming a firm part of the establishment.
Trade unions have become part of the military industrial complex as well, with many of their members employed in the ‘defence’ sector, and will become more a part of it as military spending is increased.
In our local Your Party group, we have both Socialist Party (Militant) and SWP, along with loads of Old Labour (like me) and a gratifying number of younger people. Some of the Mils are the very same people I remember in our Labour Party branch going on forty years ago. We outvoted them then and we can do it now, when they propose batty things. That’s the way it works unless you’re going to purge and purge and purge until there’s nothing left. Labour’s current plight started with Kinnock’s Militant purge.
Zara Sultana is quite open about it. She is a anti Zionist. When Jeremy Corbyn was asked was he anti Zionist he refused to answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8hf4tyiUTI In the on antisemitism in the Chakrabarti Report she advised “members to be careful about using the term Anti Zionism My advice to critics of the Israeli State and/or Government is to use the term “Zionist” advisedly, carefully and never euphemistically or as part of personal abuse”. There you have it, Corbyn will be tarred and feathered again, is he accepting once again the conflation of criticism of Israel and/or anti Zionism with anti Semitism?
Zionism is a philosophical belief, a protected characteristic under the UK Equality Act 2010 and therefore you are allowed to be critical of it https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68211872
Ali Abunimah says that Corbyn can be very tough on his friends when talking about anti Semitism but he will never attack his enemies,here is the Electronic Intifada with the Sultana, Corbyn dispute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIlpJCR7e0Q
I think that would follow in law from the tribunal position, though the tribunal position was that anti-Zionism is a protected characteristic.
I recall seeing this elsewhere. Corbyn commands my great respect, but I wonder if he is leaning into the antisemitism claims too enthusiastically, even to the degree he is welcoming historical claims that he knows were exaggerated or manufactured. I wonder whether this explains why he gave way on the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which (whether intentionally or not) had tied the hands of anti-Zionists to such a degree they have to tiptoe around a genocide.
I’ve been taking a slightly different position to Craig, which is that I think Corbyn should be fully involved in the party, but Sultana should lead it. She is unequivocal about anti-Zionism, and I wish Corbyn was less embarrassed about it.
Jon, Prof Miller claimed his belief that Zionism is “inherently racist, imperialist, and colonial” was a philosophical belief, a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Therefore Professor Miller’s ‘Anti Zionist’ description was completely within the law.
“is he accepting once again the conflation of criticism of Israel and/or anti Zionism with anti Semitism?”
That ship has sailed. The meaning of words is not fixed, but varies according to the use to which they are put. You might as well campaign for “gay” to mean “carefree” and only that, once again. “Anti-Semitism” now ineradicably includes criticism of the state of Israel and, by now, criticism of Zionism, too. As a term,it never was fit for purpose: not all Jews are Semites and not all Semites are Jews. High time it was replaced by something more precise.
Hi Craig, I’ve just sent an email with a few of your recommendations (reworded)
Let’s hope they reply.
Interesting that the BBC is currently leading with a report that over 100 000 people have attended a far right rally in London. The BBC and mainstream media never accurately acknowledge the size of the national Palestine demonstrations habitually referring to them as being in the ten’s of thousands and only going over the hundred thousand mark out of fear of ridicule when the real size of the demo is inescapable or incontestable. I would welcome some independent footage to review the size of this far right march as I suspect their numbers may be artificially boosted to exaggerate its support. I remember some time back of a national Palestine march which was held on a Saturday with there being a pro -Israel demo the following day at Trafalgar. Both demos reported by MSN and BBC to have ten of thousands of people(which was an underestimate of the Palestine march) and when I checked footage on a well social media platform posted by the few banner displaying counter protesters there was not more than a thousand ( and this is likely to be an overestimate) of the pro-Israel demo.
The MSN is boosting the right significantly and hard lines are being increasingly drawn. It is concerning.
“to disassemble them”
If you’d ever worked with your hands you’d know that in British English the verb is “dismantle”.
I think you put that rather well.
Thank you Craig for advising. I have heard similar noises in my local area in east Scotland, with local revolutionaries raising questions about who should lead “Your Party”. I dismissed it as nonsense as they are not in any position to derail the Corbyn/Sultana party.
Is Andy Burnham going to challenge Starmer – for the leadership?
“Many Labour MPs are suggesting swapping calamity Starmer out for Andy Burnham. The Guardian runs an extensive piece teeing this up today and there is clearly a briefing operation. Burnhamās new group Mainstream is seen as his campaign.
Burnham is not an MP – he left Westminster more than eight years ago. If he managed to win a seat at a by-election (the plan, e.g in a Greater Manchester seat) he would lack any personal mandate at a general election.
Moreover, Labour only enjoys 33.7% vote share – the lowest for a majority government in UK history. And that on the lowest turnout for 20 years.
One of the underlying factors that explains Labourās crippling unpopularity is the simple fact that 66% of voters actually voted against Labour at the 2024 general election.
So – Labour cannot easily swap in a new Prime Minister – not when the party is so unpopular and the country in turmoil. It would trigger a complete crisis of legitimacy, and is a very different set of circumstances to when the Conservatives repeatedly changed leader, which they are able to do rapidly with a straightforward mechanism.
There would have to be an election. Excellent.”
The Telegraph has the story on its front page.
https://nitter.poast.org/ThatTimWalker/status/1966631111448002647#m
Liarbour did not get a 33.7% vote share, that takes no account of the abstainers, you should quote the % of the electorate who voted for these fascist pigs. Oh and Liarbour has been in a crisis of legitimacy since “In Place of Strife”.
“Liarbour did not get a 33.7% vote share, that takes no account of the abstainers, you should quote the % of the electorate who voted for these fascist pigs. ”
While it is not true to say that Labour were voted in by 33.7% of the electorate, it is still true that 33.7% of the votes cast were for them and that 66% of the votes cast were for other parties, although not necessarily “against” Labour, as that implies that all these people wouldn’t have voted how they did if there wasn’t a Labour party at all, which is manifestly false. The %age of the electorate who voted for these fascist pigs is 20%. I wonder how many of that 9 million odd voters are now thinking they made a mistake?
Republicofscotland
Watch out for Andy Burnham doing the media rounds.
I hear that someone is standing down at the next GE in order to provide him
with a seat.
Burnham has a lot of credibility within the Labour Party and if he does take up
the Leadership he is a brave man.
What’s required with Labour are brand new non racist/non Tory/Reform policies.
But that was why Starmer was selected – not just as non boat rocker but. a facilitator of Austerity V2.0
In line with Europe of course – Brexit or no Brexit.
Re: Democratic processes :
As Craig writes: ” An equal subscription and one member one vote was a revolutionary notion in an era where public gatherings consisted of listening to the priest, the magnate or his underlings.”
It’s become a sort of revolutionary act now – never mind then.
The priest has become Facebook/ Fox News/BBC etc
The magnate is X
The underlings are the Media.
The problem for the left in general is its sectarianism.
I’ve probably bumped into many of the 57 varieties off the left that exist in the West
and they will work with people on issues.
The problem is the issues they will work on have to be their issues.
It is not dis-similar to The Life of Brian satire in general.
The problem with The British Western left is that they honestly believe that due to the Industrial Revolution emerging in Britain and the Proletariat that was spawned by it and the Trades Unions that followed that they are the genetic inheritors of Revolution.
A bit like Sir Kier’s Toolmaker Father or Michael Gove’s fish expertise.
The reality is that the UK is now 80% services and around 15 -20% ( if you’re lucky) some kind of manufacturing so, you will really struggle to find as many proletarians as existed in the ‘ Good Old day’s ‘ of Queen Victoria.
Meanwhile, while they are waiting for the spark ( Iskra) the real world is turning fast around them and The Marxist Chinese government is doing some very good things and raising living standards dramatically.
You may not like the CCP ( many on the left in the UK don’t) but China’s influence and real power far outshines the proceeds from a Saturday Paper Sale of any left Grouping.
The fact is with Your Party is that first it need policy debates and votes on the outcomes of those debates.
The Bureaucracy can be decided much later ( you have three years yet – unless something really major happens) so politics and discussions there of lead to agree policy.
Policy is everything not who gets the best pen or the comfiest chair.
For now instead of self selection – the ranks as it were need to agree to Norms and Constitution.
Ironically you could use the old Labour Party rules from the past to have a template to work with.
True- Corbyn was stitched up by those rules but the Old Constituency and Branches that nearly got Benn to Deputy leader might be worth a re-visit.
Only an opinion though but, let’s be real here- this is an alleged democracy and it’s going to crap true so, all the more reason to have a shining light of an example from Your Party.
That way you can then boast to the public that; ‘ We are not all the same.’
MR MARK CUTTS
I can’t recall the Labour MP name, that’ s standing down to allow Burnham to run – but I do recall the guy is standing down – due to health issues.
Republicofscotland
It’s Graham Stringer a good friend of Burnham and I think somewhat of a mentor.
Use to run Greater Manchester from memory.
Soft left, but better than the centre right if they want to succeed in keeping reforme out.
Thanks I couldn’t recall his name.
I was at an event yesterday with a Labour MP. Off the record he said he expects Starmer to be gone by Christmas. His view on Burnham’s chances wasn’t sought, but I doubt the mayor will seek to replace the PM so quickly. While there is a Labour-held seat in Manchester where the MP could be persuaded to stand down, and said seat was formerly considered safe, there’s no certainty it’s safe any longer. Burnham risks a humiliating defeat there and I think he knows it.
In two weeks there’s a Manchester council by-election in what was formerly a safe Labour seat. The Greens won it last election, a surprise result. The feeling among Labour party activists there is that they won’t win it back. It’ll go to Reform and in that event I think Burnham’s mind will be made up to stay as mayor.
It seems rather premature to me to discuss how a political party that is not yet a political party should conduct its affairs as if it was a political party with all the organisational trappings that being a political party requires. “Your Party” is only at the beginning of its forming stage but some people are clearly leaping ahead and assuming that a political party that isn’t yet a political party is already at its storming stage of being a political party. Any events so far are little more than the equivalent of brainstorming. For heaven’s sake give it space and time for an envisaged “Your Party” to become a political party and reserve criticisms to the correct stage of its development.
Isn’t it advice like that that has got us into this mess?
Bollocks to all that, I’m sticking with the People’s Popular Front of Judea. SPLITTERS!
Where are they now?
He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.
A new party with Corbyn and his crew in charge will merely replicate their behaviour from his leadership days in Labour. They’ll expel leftists, bow to Zionism- oh yes, they will- and seek to placate the corporate forces that hate them. I’m sorry to be so blunt and so pessimistic, but there’s no reason to expect anything from that circle other than more of the same.
This sounds like back-room stories about both ALBA and the SNP.
Musk is calling for the British parliament to be dissolved, i.e. for a white-power movement to grow until a white-power government is installed.
Here’s how it goes.
1. It’s obvious parliament won’t be dissolved just because Musk asks, because otherwise Musk would ask privately and we’d hear it from Starmer in a prime ministerial address, standing in front of a Union flag or two.
2. The idea is to have a goal that can be pushed for, using physical force, against the government. “This is what the people of this country want, and the government won’t give it to us”, etc. “We voted for Brexit but the P***s are still coming here. White people are afraid to go out”, etc.
Whether there’s any way of getting a reliable figure for the number of participants at today’s “we’re just fighting to protect our girls from asylum seekers” London demo, or “multiculturalism has gone too far” demo, or whatever they’re calling it, I don’t know. Usually the police underestimate the numbers attending leftwing demos and overestimate the numbers at rightwing ones.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/13/elon-musk-calls-for-dissolution-of-parliament-at-far-right-rally-in-london
It’s obvious with the flags that serious money is being put behind this – and that Musk regardless of whether or not the money is coming directly from him is certainly singing to the same hymnbook. One understands he owns an online micromessaging service too.
But hey, let’s all wait until the next general election and then we can all vote for Jeremy Corbyn.
Tommy Robinson may well stand for a Commons seat at a by-election soon.
He is on record as saying he’s surprised he has stayed such a big political figure for so long, because he would have expected that being from the lower orders he’d have been replaced by a middle class person. Some things are “only in Britain”. It’s very interesting that he said that, but few commentators will think so.
I would say Robinson is pretty damned bright stategically, far brighter than well-connected, graduate, middle class-accented, mainstream political party types who enjoy debating and muttering about the latest opinion poll.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/13/unite-the-kingdom-far-right-rally-london-tommy-robinson-police-assaulted
“One man waved a sign saying: āWhy are white people despised when our tax money pays for everything?ā Another had a placard that said: āCall centres: speak English.ā
The rally began with music. Members of the Destiny Church in New Zealand performed a traditional haka dance for the protesters, which was followed by a song with the lyrics āMaking the west look like the Middle Eastā. They then displayed the flags of the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State and Palestine to boos from the crowd, before tearing each of them in half to loud cheers.
Robinson then took to the stage and said āBritain has finally awokenā and that āthis is never going awayā. He claimed that British courts ruled that the rights of undocumented migrants supersede those of the ālocal communityā, referring to Epping councilās failed case against the Home Office.
āThey told the world that Somalians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, all of them, their rights supersede yours ā the British public, the people that built this nation.ā
He then played a video that included images of convicted members of a grooming gang followed by a video of a white woman crying.””
I suppose we’ve got a re-enactment of the Battle of Cable Street to look forward to.
How many hospitals have immigrants closed? Schools? Factories? Offices? Fire Stations? Bus routes?
There again, how many hospitals, schools, factories, offices, fire stations, new bus routes have been built to address the nearly five million increase in the population in the last decade? The problem is the numbers, ‘you cannot place a quart in a pint pot’! Basic arithmetic.
The PFI fraud has quite caringly knocked down 400-bed hospitals and built 85-bed hospitals in their place.
The number of births per live woman is down to about 1.75 and falling. It is already patently obvious that there are not enough native British children to replace and pay taxes to pay the pensions of the native British who are becoming OAPs. There are two solutions to this, apart from mass euthanasia of the old, immigration and the switching the tax base from labour onto land. Given the choice, even right-wingers would probably go for immigration.
You don’t solve one problem by creating a new one.
The pension system needs to be reformed and moved away from the current Ponzi scheme.
‘Everyone’ knew about the post WW2 baby boom and it’s a fact that most babies grow up to become old people, plus we have a census every 10 years so that the government can plan ahead. The current ‘crisis’ has been allowed to happen, it’s not an accident.
Moreover, is there any evidence that the current immigration spike is producing more benefits than it’s actually costing the country ? Some reports suggest that an immigrant has to be contributing for at least 10 years before there is a cost benefit.
It’s not a Ponzi scheme. As far as the basic pension is concerned there is no connection between what you pay in and what you get out. The problem is having a shortage of labour in a country where the main tax base is labour. Labour currently has up to five separate taxes on it, employee’s NI, employer’s NI, Income tax, compulsory pension contributions and VAT. There is no way that a shrinking tax base doesn’t equal a shrinking tax income.
“āEveryoneā knew about the post WW2 baby boom and itās a fact that most babies grow up to become old people, plus we have a census every 10 years so that the government can plan ahead.”
And how would they do that?
“Some reports suggest that an immigrant has to be contributing for at least 10 years before there is a cost benefit.”
Seeing that a working age immigrant who is recruited to do a job that is vacant because of a labour shortage starts paying tax immediately, whereas a native Brit leaving education has the cost of their education and healthcare in childhood plus child benefit and the lost tax due to one parent having to be home to care for them when small to pay off, I call that bollocks.
For every person who goes out to a protest, there is probably at least 10 more who sympathise but don’t join protests. So, if there was 100,000 at this demo that means almost a million may be in the shadows but ready to vote for the cause. ‘Your Party’ needs to take note else oblivion awaits. So said this gullible fool.
On the previous thread I asked – who paid for the flags that were tied on every lamp post by groups of aggressive men. My guess is that it was the same people who paid for all the Palestinian flags that were waved at the Corbyn led Labour Conference a few years ago. Our support for the Ukrainian people likewise saw Ukrainian flags everywhere. Flags matter. They carry a lot of agendas. There are significant inferences in terms of where and how they are placed.
Algorithms have us quite separated ideologically. If we donāt talk to each other in person our online activity has us neatly pigeon holed down a quiet cul de sac. This march was the largest since the war in Iraq had a million people saying āNot in my nameā. And we didnāt know about itā¦. Tommy didnāt call us to attendā¦
Musk’s speech to the demo in London today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSETb5QRLW0
He says immigration has been 100% about the left importing people who will vote for them! It’s all about “voter importation”, he says.
“He says immigration has been 100% about the left importing people who will vote for them! Itās all about āvoter importationā, he says.”
He must be either lying or deluded. Hard to say which, given it’s Musk.
Curious, wasn’t it Enoch Powell that imported people from the West Indies to take jobs that couldn’t be filled by locals because the pay and conditions were rubbish….
Hmmm, perhaps not “After his speech on immigration in 1968, Powell’s political opponents sometimes alleged that he had, when Minister of Health, recruited immigrants from the Commonwealth into the NHS. However, the Minister of Health was not responsible for recruitment (this was left to health authorities)[110][nb 29][111][nb 30][112][nb 31][113] Powell did welcome immigrant nurses and doctors, under the condition that they were to be temporary workers training in Britain and would then return to their native countries as qualified doctors or nurses.[113]”
Thank GOD for you Craig. Once again, the sane voice in the room. I had already become worried that this was what was happening, I had no idea it was this bad.
Sultana is behaving as if she is defacto leader, and has conducted herself AWFULLY since day 1, when she unilaterally announced the initiative and name dropped Jeremy, clearly before he had agreed to go public about it.
Since then she’s called anyone with a different opinion on gender theory, bigots; refused to acknowledge a class war focus is what’s necessary; excluded anyone who diverges from her views as persona non grata; swore on stage like a teenager trying to impress her mates; and made zero mention of these democratic processes which you rightly describe as presumed inevitable given the initial rhetoric.
So, so disappointing. Is she just that egotistical, or is she actively trying to sabotage it? Very strange.
” Sultana is behaving as if she is defacto leader ”
She has competition in the form of Fiona Lali, a leading member of the Communist Revolutionary party.
Splits are already evident with the Muslim contingent over LGBTQ+ issues; something they’re never going to agree on.
Now that you mentioned Occupy…
The crisis of 2008-9 gave birth to 2 popular ideas in the US. One was “Blame the Big Government!” and the other was “Blame the Big Business!” The former resulted in the creation of the so-called Tea Party; the latter gave America the Occupy [Wall Street] movement.
It is interesting that Tea Party was an overall success. Although the Tea Party Caucus in the House became inactive eventually, with some members drifting to more conservative Freedom Caucus, the Tea Party Caucus in the Senate is still alive with 9 active and 5 former members. The movement’s ideology is still wildly popular and spread into the MAGA movement, Trumpism and so on.
However, the Occupy pretty much vanished w/o a trace. Not that the ills of the society that caused its birth had been cured, the share of wealth held by the top 1% keeps on growing. But the ruling class is very skilled in suppressing the Left. They will place their people into the key positions and hijack any Left party to serve their agenda. So, to sum this up, I do not expect any revolutionary changes coming from the Left. If any changes in Europe will be coming, they’ll come from the Right, from parties like AfD, National Rally, Fidesz, etc.
” If any changes in Europe will be coming, theyāll come from the Right, from parties like AfD, National Rally, Fidesz, etc.”
That’s only because the primary political dynamic in Europe is not Left versus Right, but Nationalists against Federalists and Atlanticists. Nationalists are the ones driving change, as Federalism and Atlanticism are the current status quo. Nationalist tend to be Right Wing, to the extent that that term still has meaning.