Has Corbyn won the Your Party power battle? - The Latest

0:00Lucy Hough:This is The Guardian.

0:12Lucy Hough:It's fair to say it's been a very bitter and acrimonious battle. What I want is the party to be outward looking, engaged with the community and able to attract a very broad range of support. we cannot be a narrow inward looking organisation. Can they prove the factional battles are over? Can a healthy culture be created? And I guess the question is, what is your party's distinct offer? What are people being offered that the Green Party isn't?

0:40Owen Jones:Jeremy Corbyn has won out over his rival Zahra Sultana for leadership of the troubled your party. Can this be a new start for the movement? From the Guardian's Today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hough.

0:58Owen Jones:I'm joined by Owen Jones, a Guardian columnist. It's great to see you, Owen. Thanks for dialing in. So we're talking about your party, obviously the grassroots Labour alternative set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zahra Sultana last year. A political project that has sadly been beset by fractiousness, infighting, various financial and legal wranglings. We've now got to the moment we've all been waiting for. I'm sure many people have been waiting for, which is the Central Executive Committee elections. We'll come on to what they are in a sec as well. But crucially, what this means is kind of an end to the battle of ego between Sultana and Corbyn, who has won as parliamentary leader.

1:41Owen Jones:Can you explain what's happened?

1:43Lucy Hough:Yeah. So basically, this is the CEC, as you say, which is the governing body of the new party. And so according to their figures, by the way, it's about 40, nearly 41 ,000 members. Bear in mind, 800 ,000 people originally signed up their interest in the party. So obviously the vast majority of those haven't become members after all the wrangles and all the rest of it. But still, 40 ,000 or so is still a significant size of a party. It's around the size of the Liberal Democrats. And about 60 % of them have turned out to vote. But it's a decisive victory for the many slates. And that's the slate associated with the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

2:19Lucy Hough:it's fair to say it's been a very bitter and acrimonious battle i mean it's been since your party was unilaterally it must be said um launched by zara sultana uh a bitter acrimonious event i mean going back on that without dwelling too much on the details but you know i guess the argument that she made was well jamie corbyn was dragging his feet and not they need to be on the front foot The view, obviously, of Jamie Corbyn and others is this was unilaterally set up without consultation. And actually, Jamie Corbyn had left the Labour Party long before Zahra Tultana, who, after being suspended as an MP over voting against the two-child benefit cap, only left the Labour Party last year.

3:03Lucy Hough:But if you like, there are two different kind of philosophies behind the different slates.

3:08Owen Jones:Yes. Tell me about those philosophies. I mean, obviously, Corbyn has won out as per the results of this election. But what did those two factions broadly represent?

3:17Lucy Hough:I guess this was Corbynism 2.0 from the perspective of the Corbyn slates. They said, for example, there'd be a mass socialist party rooted in a broad social alliance with working class at heart. And they said the other option was a fringe party shouting from the sidelines. So their argument was, well, actually, the other platform had basically become ultra left and was taking a position which wouldn't reach out to the country. that they would instead build alliances across different communities and try and have kind of bread and butter socialist policies with mass support, public ownership of utilities, taxing the rich to invest and so on.

3:56Lucy Hough:From the perspective of grassroots left, that was just reinventing the Labour Party. That's what they wanted. They argued that they wanted a total democratisation of the party where members would run the whole thing. um but they also uh i guess had a a far more sweeping uh approach politically their argument was actually given the success of the green party that kind of what they see is only kind of social democracy is already catered for so they need to therefore be to the left of it now when she was asked herself what kind of policies the party have to reach out to the broader public she said nationalize the whole economy which raised a lot of eyebrows including some trotskyists i spoke to who, you know, that's not even the kind of the platform of most Trotsky's organisations at this point.

4:42Owen Jones:You asked quite a good question about whether that meant boy bands, I recall.

4:46Lucy Hough:I did say boy bands, yeah. And also what they called little tiny little cafes, I've got what they're called, like stalls. Anyway, yeah, I think some people got angry with me that because they thought I was being sneering. To be honest, at your party conference, I thought it was such a mess. I just wanted some political substance to get my teeth into. I'm interested in democratising the economy and how that would work. top-down nationalisation is not something the left has actually normally been advocating for for a very long time. She clarified it was kind of various forms of democratic ownership.

5:14And the argument I think people had was that she was falling into this trap of

5:21Lucy Hough:kind of looking for wedge issues to define herself against the wider left in order to build herself up as a politician. It hasn't worked as a strategy. Your party's members have rejected that approach. They've gone for the kind of more bread and butter socialism, I guess, of Jeremy Corbyn, which is more likely, I think, to work with the Green Party, for example.

5:45Owen Jones:OK, so with all that in mind, do you think Corbyn's victory is broadly a good thing for your party? Because I guess there are some that would say, you know, that your party now could look pretty close to his sort of 2017 Labour Party when there were hopes, maybe amongst some, for something much more new and radical?

6:04Lucy Hough:I think this is the best result probably for the All Party, to be honest, because there are lots of existing groups which take a very ultra-left line, which is full-fat socialism immediately or nothing, and a total break with capitalism immediately, and they haven't won any significant support at all. Whereas there is mass support for kind of radical left ideas, as the Green Party are currently showing. So I think this party is more likely to reach outwards to not be obsessed with what I think a lot of people regard as quite fringe positions, which most people on the left aren't interested, let alone broader society.

6:45Lucy Hough:But will it be an end to the factional battle? I don't know about that.

6:49Owen Jones:Yeah, and those disputes are unlikely to end, given that Sultana does still have seven seats on the CEC compared to Corbyn's 14. So it seems like that will carry on. But you mentioned the huge influx of support to your party when it was conceived last summer, 800 ,000 people that signed up. I mean I'm just wondering the types of conversations you're having with people who have been involved in your party who've been so frustrated so disappointed by the infighting that's happened in the months since that the fact that whilst 40 ,000 people is still a really sizable amount of people they have also lost a lot of people's interest a lot of that interest has gone to the Greens what are people telling you about all of that?

7:35Lucy Hough:Well, a lot of those people who are very interested in your party, who spoke to at the start, have just gone to the Green Party. I mean, what happened? It was the worst possible timing, I suppose, for this to happen because your party showed with those 800 ,000 people that there is mass support for a kind of left politics which rejects the Labour Party. That's a huge number of people to get to sign up with interest to any political project. But you've got a charismatic leader being elected, you know presenting a kind of populist case for left-wing policies to the left of where corbynism was i have to say in the 2010s as is um at the same time you get this very bitter acrimonious battle i mean you saw that with the cec elections where you you know you had battles for example about racism uh our claims of racism uh being bandied being thrown at each other um over the slates, for example.

8:30Lucy Hough:And so, you know, a lot of people looked at this and thought, you know, I could be part of a kind of party with a lot of energy and excitement, which is out there trying to win by-elections and has mass support, or I could, you know, damage my mental health by being involved in a very acrimonious, bitter, factional battle. The Green Party is not the natural home for a lot of people on the left. That's not how they they see themselves. A lot of people worry that's a kind of middle-class radical party originally. And the Green Party, you know, now they're fielding kind of Spencer, he's a plumber.

9:02Lucy Hough:That kind of softens that particular edge. You know, the Green Party could try and start presenting themselves as kind of, we're talking about class politics in a way they would have done before. So I guess now the question for your party is, can they prove the facts and battles are over? Can they work together? There's a thumping mandate there for Corbyn Slate, but can that acrimonious bitterness be put aside? Can a healthy culture be created? Because at the moment most people have just walked away and they've just zoned out. And how are they going to work with the Green Party in our first-past-the-post system?

9:35Lucy Hough:Because the danger is obviously you get elections where if you have both the Green Party and your party standing, neither get elected. And I guess the question is, what is your party's distinct offer? Why is it different from the Green Party? What are people being offered that the Green Party isn't offering? That was a kind of, you could say, a legitimate critique from Zahra Sultana's slate, even if the answer I don't think was there. But I think the question is, a lot of people have just turned off now on the left. How will they be reengaged when there's so much energy going on with the Green Party and so much excitement?

10:10Lucy Hough:That's the question they have to ask.

10:12Owen Jones:But I guess, you know, the question will be, can they be ready in future by-elections? Can they be ready enough for the local May elections? And will they be ready even by 2029?

10:22Lucy Hough:Yeah, and the local elections, we can write those off, I think. They'll just back existing candidates because obviously that's two and a half months away.

10:28Owen Jones:Yeah, well, thank you so much. We'll speak soon. That's it for today. Thanks again to Owen Jones, Guardian columnist. You can keep up with his work over at theguardian.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest, the new evening edition of Today in Focus. Today in Focus will be back on your feeds as usual tomorrow morning, and the latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. The producer was Bryony Moore. The senior producer was Ryan Ramgoban. And the lead producer was Zoe Hitch.

11:03Owen Jones:This is The Guardian.