Your Party sticks to original name as conference ends

After what has been described as a "chaotic" event, the two-day inaugural Your Party conference has officially come to an end, with the party now officially named and its makeup announced.

After months of speculation as to what the party's name would be, from the "Popular Alliance", "For the Many", Jeremy Corbyn announced the party would retain the name Your Party, much to the audience's delight.

"We have a party, we have rules, we have a constitution, we have enthusiasm, we have commitment, we have principles, and above all, we have a name," Corbyn said to the cheering crowd.

"' Your party' is the name of Your Party." Over 37 percent of members voted to keep the same name out of four shortlisted candidates.

The 1,200 attendees were also excited to hear the results of how the party would be led and the official rules on who could be a member, with conference opting for collective leadership and the allowance of dual membership.

A collective leadership model

Following internal discussions on whether the party would be led by one person or a group of members, Your Party members voted in favour of a collective leadership model by a margin of 51.6 percent to 48.4 percent.

The Party's new executive, led by its members, will take the big decisions around the party's management and strategy, with the lay-member Chair, Deputy Chair and Spokesperson helping to provide public leadership.

Sultana, who was fighting for the collective model, while Corbyn was hoping for the former, expressed her delight at the outcome.

"Amazing results for membership democracy," Sultana told The New Arab as she was entering the ACC Liverpool.

" It shows that we have a party of over 55,000 members that are going to take the reins, and they will not sit back and let MPs and bureaucrats run the show and make undemocratic, unaccountable decisions that come at the cost of democracy."

While speculation suggests Corbyn may have been dismayed by the result, Independent MP Ayoub Khan said the votes need to be respected.

"As someone who champions the people on the ground and respecting people's views from grassroot communities, I will always respect the democratic vote," Ayoub Khan said to The New Arab. "People have that choice, and people want a particular policy, you've got to respect it."

At the same time, Independent MP Shockat Adam shared the same sentiment, saying that, as a democratic and grassroots party, these are the results they have to abide by.

"We're going to have a discussion now on how we can work cohesively to bring the next step of this party to the people," Shockat Adam tells The New Arab. "So, we've made our decisions, this was just the first conference, now we need to look at the next stage."

"Now that we have decided on a particular format of leadership, let's get those members elected."

Dual membership

While yesterday's debacle stemmed from members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) being expelled from Your Party, its members nonetheless voted in favour of allowing members to hold membership in other national political parties, provided they align with the party's values.

69.2 percent voted in favour, in what was seen as yet another key victory for Sultana.

In her first opening speech to the conference, the co-founder was very frank in blaming the party's higher-ups for expelling its members, highlighting the need for member control.

"The expulsions, bans and censorship on conference floor are unacceptable. It's undemocratic," Sultana said in her opening speech. "It's an attack on members and on this movement. And these were decisions made at the top, not by you."

Along with condemning the current UK government's favouritism towards the rich, advocating for, and committing to, being an anti-Zionist party, Sultana had also noted past factional disputes, admitting she had a part to play.

She apologised for causing some of the "hiccups" that occurred within the party, emphasising her desire to ensure the party is led by its members, not MPs.

"You may have noticed the process of setting up this party has admittedly had some hiccups. Some of that is my fault. For that, I am sorry," Sultana noted.

During his closing speech, Corbyn did not really mention the outcome of the votes, he focused on the need for inclusive branch structures, social issues, including combating racism and discrimination, and the importance of community engagement, campaigning, and contesting elections.

"We can build a society that helps each other," Corbyn said in his speech.

"We can build a society that unites each other, but you can't do it at the same time as a grotesquely unequal economic system that rewards billionaires every hour of every day that impoverishes the poor at every hour of every day and destroys our environment and takes us to war around the world and we're the alternative."

In another nod towards far-left groups that have gravitated towards Your Party, the conference also voted to explicitly signal that the party is working-class at its heart, with 77.85% in favour. Along with this, there was a final vote on whether the party should explicitly identify as a socialist party, resulting in 80.26% voting in favour and 19.74% against.

Overall positive outcome

While both co-founders barely mentioned each other in their speeches, with Corbyn immediately leaving the stage after Sultana's speech, and the pair not displaying a united front on stage, attendees shared a positive sentiment about how the conference unfolded.

"It was a lot better than I expected," Josephine Mclaughin told The New Arab, being happy with the outcome of the votes but wishing it could have been done with a lot more discussion from the floor rather than the speakers, also noting members weren't given a lot of choices about various things.

"Once that vote came through, I felt a lot better about that."

Attendee Sabbir Lakha also shared the same viewpoint. "I'm feeling positive," Lakha told The New Arab. "What this conference showed me, with all its limitations and caveats, is that there is the will to do that, and there is the organisation and the energy in the grassroots to do that, and that's what I'm hoping we'll take forward."

While also thinking that some of the discussions and the votes were limited and not as democratic as they could have been, he believed it should have been an event full of political debate and ideas and also found the outcome of the votes to be positive.

"I hope that we can see that unity in practice, basically, and reflecting the membership views, and that we get more member participation in the leadership to take this forward in the way that people want it to be."

"I think the members are going to come away from this invested in the party structures," Delegate Ammar Kazmi told The New Arab. "Now those sort of minutiae have been confirmed in the party's founding documents, and that provides a good structure to take the party forward."

Surprised at the vote for collective leadership being "so tight", noting we have not seen a leadership model like this before, believing the topic may not be totally settled and may come up again, he says he is quite optimistic for the future.

"Hopefully now we can move on to the more substantive issues, issues that really affect the country, and not be navel-gazing and looking inwards into the party," Kazmi says.

"I hope that now we can focus on actual capital P politics, rather than the sort of office politics we've been doing for the last few months."