Zarah Sultana has denounced the party she is setting up with Jeremy Corbyn as a “sexist boys’ club”, following a row about membership today.

This morning, an email was sent to supporters of “Your Party” saying that a “membership portal” was now open, offering membership for £5 a month or £55 a year. In the afternoon, a further communication was sent, declaring that the earlier email had been “unauthorised”. The message stated that the membership offer should be “ignored by supporters” and that any direct debits should be “immediately cancelled”. It added that “legal advice is being taken”, and was signed by Corbyn, as well as independent MPs Ayoub Khan, Shockat Adam, Iqbal Mohamed and Adnan Hussein.

Sultana, whose signature was notably absent from the message, responded with her own statement on X this afternoon. In it, she claimed that she had been “sidelined by the MPs named in today’s statement and effectively frozen out of the official accounts”. She also stated that “I have been subjected to what can only be described as a sexist boys’ club: I have been treated appallingly and excluded completely.”

The Corbyn-Sultana vehicle was announced at the end of July, with “Your Party” serving as a placeholder name before supporters vote on a long-term replacement. The Coventry South MP claimed in this afternoon’s statement that she had taken the decision to launch the membership portal “so that supporters could continue to engage and organise”. She added: “my sole motivation has been to safeguard the grassroots involvement that is essential to building this party.”

Sultana, who was a Labour MP until her resignation in July, argued that Corbyn and the other MPs involved were “undermin[ing] the democratic principles we agreed to uphold”, and insisted that a company called MOU Operations Ltd was supposed to manage members’ funds. She accused Karie Murphy, formerly a senior official during Corbyn’s time as leader of the Opposition, of “having sole financial control of members’ money”. Sultana stated: “This, to be clear, is members’ money — and our members must decide how it is spent.”

Rather than announcing her departure from the party, Sultana today said that she was “calling on Jeremy to meet with me and agree to make public all agreed structures, processes and decision-making protocols”, and that a founding conference would take place in November. She added: “This party is more important than any one person, and we owe it all to the movement to deliver a truly democratic and socialist party.”

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is UnHerd’s Deputy Editor, Newsroom.

RobLownie

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