6 hours ago
9
Start as you mean to go on. Your Party has had a fair few ups and downs in its short lifespan. Some might call it chaos. Its two most prominent members, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, seem barely able to stand being in the same room as each other. Allegations of financial misconduct over membership fees and donations. A party conference which Sultana refused to attend on the first day. Accusations of corruption and sexism. A Boys’ Club.
The briefings and counter-briefings from the two factions never let up. Its hatreds seemed to be what gave Corbyn and Sultana a sense of purpose. A reminder that the left often prefers to pick a fight with other groups on the left rather than the rightwing parties. A misplaced Marxist dialectic or some other thought crime of false consciousness seemingly far worse than threatening to deport hundreds of thousands of foreigners.
But one way or another, Your Party has survived to a point where it has held an election for its 24 leadership posts on its central executive committee. And the results were supposed to be livestreamed on its YouTube channel at 11am on Thursday. Except they weren’t. Because why break the habit of a lifetime? Once you’re addicted to chaos, it rather comes to define everything you do. It’s now part of Your Party’s corporate culture.
Come 11.10 the YouTube channel was still silent. Not a word of apology to those who had tuned in. No hint of when the announcement might be forthcoming. The 1,400 or so Your Party members who had been waiting online started to look for other ways to amuse themselves by posting on the comments sidebar. “This is like a Molière farce,” said one. “They are still trying to find ways to disqualify people they don’t like,” said another. No one seemed to have much faith in the voting system.
Ten minutes later someone chipped in with the news that the announcement might be around 11.30. This prompted one person to announce she was going to have a bath. There was only so much excitement she could take. The comments got progressively more dark. We weren’t a long way from despair. “They’ve forgotten the password for the YouTube channel,” said one. “Zarah has smashed the streaming equipment in her ongoing battle against ‘The Man’,” said another. This sounded as likely an explanation as any other.
The howls got louder and louder. “We’ll get the results of the Gorton and Denton byelection before we get our own.” “The voting system is so complex they’ve no idea who has actually won.” “There’s been a punch up in the studio.”
And through all this came a single lament: “Is it too much to ask for competence as well as democracy?” I’m afraid that ship has long since sailed. Still, no one could complain they hadn’t been given ample warning.
Eventually, shortly after 11.40, the screen came alive to reveal two people apparently on a Zoom call. Andrew Jordan, the returning officer, went first, having chosen to broadcast the news from what appeared to be a cupboard. Or the smallest bedroom imaginable. He said it was a tremendously exciting moment in the history of a mass socialist party, before handing over to Steph Pike, one of the five members of the oversight committee, who had been observing the election process.
Steph started with a disclaimer. The voting system had been nothing to do with her. She didn’t seem particularly thrilled with life. She read out the names of the other members of the oversight committee. Bar one who wanted to remain anonymous. That seemed curiously opaque for a mass participation party. “I opened all 22 postal ballots myself,” she said, before getting bored and switching off her camera.
It almost felt as if we were watching a sketch show. A parody of how Your Party might make this announcement. Only it was happening in real time. We cut back to Andrew. There had been 23,347 votes out of a possible 40,000 verified members. This cut to Your Party’s tragedy. When the idea for a party had been first mooted there had been 800,000 expressions of interest. But people got bored of the inertia and the squabbling and started to look elsewhere, as the Greens under Zack Polanski became a viable force.
Four individuals had been excluded for voting twice and some candidates had been removed from the ballot for failing to submit their expenses properly. Realising he was losing his audience, Andrew cut to the chase and read out the results. Corbyn and Sultana, along with Laura Smith and Grace Lewis, had been elected as public office holders. A further 20 others had been elected from the regions to serve on the committee. At which point, Andrew’s job was done. No explanations. No speeches from the winners. Just a return to a blank screen.
It took a while to work out just what this all meant. Andrew had omitted to tell us to which faction – Corbyn’s The Many and Sultana’s Grassroots – each candidate was affiliated, so there was no hint online of what direction the party had chosen. Which you might have thought was the key piece of information.
It was left to each of us to figure it out. Corbyn had won with 14. Sultana had seven. There were independents. So while at a national level Jezza and Zarah would be jointly in charge, Corbyn would be the leader in the Commons.
This was a work of some genius. Because Corbyn officially identifies himself as an Independent MP, Sultana is the only MP who claims to represent Your Party. So Jeremy is now the leader of a party to which he doesn’t belong. Politics as a piece of inspired performance art. It makes you proud to be British.
Within 30 minutes Corbyn had released a statement. He was thrilled to have won. He didn’t sound as if he was extending a hand out towards his opponents. It was going to be his way. “I will take the fight to Starmer and Farage,” he said. Glad to see he had his priorities right. First we take Keir, then we take Nige. Never change.
Sultana was quiet for a couple of hours. Considering her options. She’s not one to readily accept defeat. The establishment conspiracy extends even into the inner circle of the Your Party elite. But she wasn’t quite ready to throw her toys out of the pram just yet. She would work with Corbyn, she said, just as long as he steered the party in a direction of which she approved. Mark my words. It’s only a matter of time before it all kicks off again.
