Solidarity Steve

It has now been some time since Zarah Sultana was pushed out of the Labour Party and announced the birth of Your Party, and even longer since the Collective have been manoeuvring for it – but what is happening?

When sign-ups finally were announced, the party hit the ground running, and we were happy to bang on about the 800k sign-ups – no small feat, but that momentum has well and truly died.

Instead, it looks like the big debate is about a superficial name, like that is the most important issue facing the people who signed up, or the most important aspect of setting up a political party.

There is also a planned founding conference in the future, which seems to have completely skipped the step of growing anything from the grassroots. Instead, sign-ups have been left to their own devices, meaning a completely and utterly uneven distribution and level of activity.

I messaged my local ‘Your Party’ page, asked them about meet-ups – absolute silence. I know there are meet ups happening across the country, but shouldn’t the people busy debating over the name of the party be spearheading a push for the grassroots?

How are we going to fit 800,000 people into the founding conference? There is going to have to be some form of lottery or delegate system, but how can we choose delegates when there is very little grassroots infrastructure in place?

If we are going to create a party that truly reflects the grassroots and has a bottom-up power structure, we need to do that from the very beginning.

The focus needs to move away from small sects behind closed doors arguing about what the future of Your Party should be, and there needs to be a growing and empowering of the grassroots.

They threw out seeds, and yet they have not watered them, they have not given them room to grow, and instead they are going to returf the lawn with a founding conference.

What the people at the top of Your Party need to do is give the grassroots room to grow is: regional and local meet-ups set up with those sign ups, so that the grassroots can begin coordinating and growing authentically, from the bottom up.

If that doesn’t happen, we will get a founding conference imposing on everyone else what should happen, with little to no consultation or debate.

Your Party needs to announce a day of meet-ups for signees, whether that is at a regional level, or ideally at a more local level – It has to be the first step in growing the party, otherwise, we risk the same people, doing the same stuff, facing the same problems, making the same mistakes, and expecting a different result this time.

Time is running out for us, if not us, who, if not now, when?