Your Party (Working Title)

Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

If I were living in England, I would join Corbyn’s new party, and I urge people in England to do so. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland there are other factors, which I shall come on to.

I also say this with great respect for my friend George Galloway, whose Workers Party kindly hosted my candidacy for Blackburn in the General Election. I think Jeremy has been wrong in pointedly excluding George from the consultation meetings on setting up the new party.

But the truth is this. At nearly 700,000 signups, “Your Party” has already three times as many putative members as the Workers Party got voters at the General Election. Jeremy has the ability to create a juggernaut which the media and Establishment simply cannot ignore the way they shun George.

My advice to Workers Party members is to join Jeremy’s new party. There are many smaller left wing parties which appear to be signing up en masse to the new venture – like the CPGB and the SWP – while having no intention of dissolving their own membership and structures.

It is very possible that the rules of Your Party will permit such dual membership.

I am thrilled by the potentially transformative effect of the public actually getting to hear left wing arguments. This is how Corbyn, even handicapped by the conservative baggage of the Labour Party establishment, managed to get a far higher vote in two general elections than Keir Starmer achieved in his.

The Scottish Independence referendum showed the same effect. Despite massive media bias, the public did actually still get a chance to hear the arguments for Independence that had been kept from them. The result was a step change in support for Independence of 15% or more, which has never been lost since.

Your Party could shift the Overton window, permanently. For the first time in 40 years the public might get some exposure to the arguments of the Left.

We know that privatisation of utilities, better public services and taxation of the wealthy are popular.  When Corbyn led Labour, there was a brief opportunity to vote for those policies with a realistic chance of success, and millions of people took it.

Your Party will not be saddled with the need to compromise with the Blairites, and thus will be able to develop policy platforms of much greater internal coherence.

I think it is safe to assume it will be anti-NATO and favour a pacific foreign policy based on respect for international law. I think it is safe to assume that its policies will not only favour redistribution of wealth, but will challenge fundamental capitalist tenets of the ownership of the means of production.

I have no doubt it will be firmly anti-Genocide and will back BDS measures against Israel including arms sales.

I very much hope it will support a single state of Palestine. It is plain there is no viable two state solution. Palestine has been dismembered, chopped up, separated. The idea that a viable, non-contiguous state can be assembled from the ruins of Gaza, with the West Bank or parts of it and East Jerusalem is plainly nonsensical.

It is a Bantustan solution designed to provide cheap labour to service Israel daily. The fact that all the western government proponents of a two state solution speak of a demilitarised Palestinian state, permanently at the mercy of the genocidal Israeli state, shows how dishonest the plan is.

It has been suggested to me that Your Party will adopt the policy that the Palestinians should decide. I agree with that but with one caveat. That cannot mean the hated Mahmoud Abbas should decide, and the Palestinians cannot decide with a literal gun to their head.

Let Palestine be free from the river to the sea. Then let the Palestinians decide whether they want to agree the creation of a separate Jewish state.

The membership must decide the policy. I am reasonably confident of the result.

What cannot happen is an abuse of the central mechanisms of the party to demonise and/or expel people for false anti-semitism accusations, as the Labour Party did under Jeremy’s leadership.

It goes without saying that the ludicrous IHRA definition equating anti-semitism with criticism of a state that is committing Genocide must be rejected.

If it is really to be a different, bottom-up type of party, then the party leader ought not to have that type of power. The key salaried positions should also be subject to election rather than just appointed at discretion. Decentralisation must be very real and effective everyday.

Which leads me to the nations of the UK.

The left in Scotland is overwhelmingly pro-Independence. Unionism is very heavily a right wing thing. There is a rump of left wing thinkers who oppose Scottish Independence on internationalist grounds with a vision of working class solidarity. But that is a dwindling and far from vigorous strain of thought.

Neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Zarah Sultana has, so far as I can see, said a word about Scotland in talking about the new party. Their vision appears very anglocentric. I hope that this silence is an acknowledgement that the position of the party in Scotland is, as English people, not their concern.

The existence of the SNP and of Plaid Cymru means that Your Party is entering a significantly more crowded market in Scotland and Wales, where not only is nationalism an extra factor, but the nationalist parties already sit well to the left of Keir Starmer (admittedly not a difficult ask).

In Scotland, I think mistakenly, there seems a widespread presumption the Corbyn project will fall flat. But disillusionment with Labour in Scotland is enormous, both nationally and locally. As is disillusionment with the SNP.

Those connected to the Corbyn project in Scotland at the moment appear largely to come from the Old Labour establishment, many of whom have been vehemently anti-Independence.

But I doubt the party will reflect that.

Young people in Scotland are overwhelmingly pro-Independence. Another factor which receives insufficient attention is that opinion polls regularly show between 30 and 40% of Labour voters in Scotland are pro-Independence. Those are important recruiting demographics for Your Party.

I have not seen any figures for signups in Scotland. Pro rata with the UK there would be 70,000, which would make YourParty immediately the biggest party in Scotland. I think it is fair to assume there are at least 30,000. Nobody can know where they stand on Independence.

If Your Party is to be a genuinely decentralised organisation, then its Scottish and Welsh parties should be separate legal entities. They alone should decide their policy on Independence.

I suspect that a fudge will be attempted, whereby YourParty supports “the right of the Scottish people to decide”. That is frankly no use to anyone, and proceeds from an assumption that permission had to be granted.

The right of the Scottish nation to self-determination is established in international law. It is not a policy just to state it.

The support for Genocide in Palestine is not a bug, it is a feature of the rogue British state. That imperialist entity needs to be broken up.

So, where do I stand  personallyon the new Corbyn party?

I have signed up for information. I will make honest and well motivated efforts to shape it and influence its members, and I encourage other people to join at this stage. I shall work for it to be decentralised in its structures, anti-zionist and anti-NATO in its views and for Scottish and Welsh Independence.

Depending on results, I shall decide whether to stick with it. I do hope it will be a broad church and that people will not split over small matters; but on large matters I cannot myself be part of a zionist or unionist party.

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