Last week Rats in a Sack reported on internal rumblings within Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party over its apparent unwillingness to do one of those traditional things that the boring, old mainstream parties have always done: field candidates in elections.
The party of which Corbyn is now parliamentary leader – despite the fact that the House of Commons website still lists him as an independent and only regards Zarah Sultana as a Your Party MP – is not standing a single candidate for the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections next month, nor for the 4,850 local council seats up for grabs in England.
In Wales, it is endorsing a single candidate for one of the nation’s new super-constituencies, while in England’s council elections it is giving its backing to 46 individual candidates and 14 independent groups, none of which will sit as Your Party councillors if elected.
And in Scotland it is neither standing nor endorsing a single candidate – leading the leadership of the party’s Scottish branch to today resign en masse, citing what they described as the “consistent disrespect” shown towards members by the organisation south of the border.
Niall Christie, the sole Scotland representative on Your Party’s Central Executive Committee, has also resigned with immediate effect. It all comes just two months after Your Party Scotland’s founding conference took place in Dundee.
In a statement Your Party’s Interim Scottish Executive Committee (ISEC) said: “As a result of this consistent denial of autonomy for Scotland, and a willingness by the UK leadership to sideline an entire nation by withholding funding and mailing lists and refusing to engage, we have, after careful thought and consideration, taken the collective decision to resign our positions on ISEC, having found ourselves completely blocked when we attempted to carry out the clear mandate set for us by members from across Scotland.
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“Despite this generational fumble of the left in Britain, the need for a new party on the left in Scotland couldn’t be more urgent, and it is our clear intention to continue working towards this.”
Christie, a former candidate for the Scottish Greens, said: “It has become clear the party has run out of road. This is in no small part down to the consistent disrespect shown to Scotland and Scottish members, with decisions about us being made without our input, and on our behalf.
“I’ll be continuing the essential work needed to build the party we were all promised in summer 2025, but I will be doing so outside of Your Party.
“With an election on the horizon, it is time to take stock of the political landscape in Scotland and work to bring the left in Scotland together – truly – and move towards something new in the not-too-distant future.
“My own main takeaway having been involved in Your Party is that whatever comes next must be built in Scotland, by Scotland, for Scotland. Anything else is doomed to fail.”
And the dear leader’s reaction to his grand political project falling apart already? Er… nothing. In the last four days his only public comment as such has been to repost on social media a Novara Media article about Cuba. Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!
