‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles

At an early meeting to set the path for what would become Your Party, participants quickly agreed on one thing: given the cliches about leftwingers forever falling out, at all costs they must avoid a descent into factionalism.

Six months on and the Liverpool venue hosting this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference has been warned to expect potential disruption, including stage invasions by disgruntled members representing particular wings. Extra security guards have been hired.

How did an idea with so much potential traction and reach – hundreds of thousands of people signed up to support the idea of a movement spearheaded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana before it even existed – become so quickly and comprehensively bogged down in power struggles and infighting?

The slightly simplified answer, one agreed on at least in private by people from all sides, is rooted in escalating tensions between Corbyn, portrayed as indecisive and at times ambivalent about yet another political venture at the age of 76, and Sultana, the combative former Labour MP who has enraged colleagues by making major decisions unilaterally.

The ground zero for a split so comprehensive that, insiders say, Sultana has for the past three months mainly communicated with her supposed colleagues through lawyers, came on 3 July, or “terrible Thursday” as one calls it.