Recently, two groups operating within Your Party have announced they are refounding outside it. The Members’ Charter has become the Socialist Federation. Similarly, Democratic Socialists of Your Party have become Democratic Socialists, with the intention of launching a ‘Campaign for a Democratic Socialist Party’. 

Both are attempts to salvage something for socialists who remain in and around Your Party, by comrades who have been at the centre of fighting the absolute shambles from Corbyn and his cabal. 

However, I find myself watching the process with some bemusement. A whole manner of Substacks and position papers are being written, listing in detail the ideal features of a new organisation, its relationship to class struggle, and what it would aim to do. Far less attention is paid to the realities of bringing such an organisation about. There seems to be no strategy for engaging the rest of the organised left, a real assessment of what can be done with membership in the tens, or an assessment of what links can be forged with the workers’ movement. At its worst, this looks like a set of very online people taking turns building castles in the sky. 

The actual split from Your Party occurred in slow motion over the last year – the movement of a mass of initially enthused members into the Greens, back into local ‘independent’ campaigns, and in the worst case out of political activity entirely. These were the socialists and militants who made not only Your Party viable, but also any subsequent split.

And who can blame them for leaving? In fact, the opposite question must be posed. Why would I take my political direction from people who are only leaving this failed project now?