The leadership issue may be settled, but Your Party’s struggle for electoral relevance has only just begun
At 11am on the dot, about 1,000 Your Party members, along with a few lurking journalists, were waiting online to find out who would lead the party after a bruising two-week election campaign,“One minute to paradise!”, joked one in the comments alongside the YouTube livefeed,In the end, they had time to make a brew,A Your Party official entered the comments to inform those waiting that the results would, in fact, begin half an hour later than planned,“I blame Thatcher,” one comrade grumped.
When the results finally came – after a significant amount of detail about voting procedures, mandated organisational strategy and the number of physical ballot papers returned (43) – they were decisive.Jeremy Corbyn’s The Many slate had taken 14 of the 24 available places on the party’s central executive committee (CEC); the MP for Islington North would, despite the collective leadership model adopted at its chaotic inaugural conference, become Your Party’s de facto leader.In a statement issued almost immediately after the results had been declared, Corbyn was emollient and determinedly outward-looking.“We are at a dangerous moment,” he said.“The fear, divisiveness and racism of Reform should not be appeased.
It must be opposed,There is only one way we will defeat them: by working together under a common cause of redistribution and peace,”But, in private, insiders recognise that Your Party’s ability to oppose anything effectively has been decimated by the incessant infighting that has plagued it from the moment of its inception,Can it now move beyond the far-left fringes and appeal to a wider voter base in the hope of becoming a competitive electoral force?On current polling, that looks unlikely,Just before Your Party’s first conference at the end of November about 12% of Britons said they would consider voting for it, down from 18% when it launched in July 2025, according to YouGov.
A survey by Find Out Now this week put the party at 1%.“A lot of people on the left are like ‘fuck this’,” said one former member.“There’s a lot of disillusionment and people are just sick of the fighting.”In the hours after the election result, there was little sign of an end to Your Party’s eternal Squid Game.Zarah Sultana issued a pugnacious statement warning there must be “no more witch-hunts or stitch-ups” and calling for the reinstatement of members who had been expelled.
What now for Sultana, who was elected as a Labour MP in 2024 but has since moved to the “ultra-left” according to some critics,Sources close to the MP for Coventry South said she had no intention of stepping back from Your Party,“She will stay and fight,” said one,“She’ll be fighting with the other seven women that have been elected from Grassroots Left to make sure that the party is as democratic as it can be and to give as much power to the members as The Many will allow,”While some “headbangers” had been elected, they said, there were some “marginally more reasonable” that Grassroots Left could work with.
“One would hope that a line can be drawn and everyone can come together to build a party that the country desperately needs,” they added,A source close to Corbyn said the election marked the “end of the road for that politics”, adding: “They can row behind members’ decision or they can alienate people as a minority on the CEC,”Whether the 76-year-old Corbyn has the stomach for the likely fight ahead is unclear,When Sultana announced she was starting a new party with the veteran socialist, Corbyn said only that discussions were ongoing on what would happen next,“For a lot of people he has this symbolic representation,” said one longtime watcher.
“But how much does he want to keep spending his life being the leader of a political party?”Corbyn’s victory will hearten those who believe You Party must have a big tent and appeal to pro-Gaza voters including the “social conservatives” that Sultana previously said were not welcome.“If the party is to be viable in any way it’s going to have to appeal in areas that could be won by an independent,” said one.But the surge in Green party membership represents a real threat because it attracts many younger voters who could have found a home in Your Party.Owen Jones, a longtime leftwing activist, is one of those who has switched to the Greens.He said: “The individuals responsible for the Your Party debacle didn’t seem to understand that the vast majority of left-inclined people looked at it with increasing horror and thought: this has been a truly interesting and riveting car crash to watch in Technicolor and slow motion, but life is too short.
“They thought – there’s a viable alternative, which is winning mass support, so I think I’m going to redirect my precious time and energy over there,”
Subsidies for Rolls-Royce might seem a bit rich, but they are inevitable | Nils Pratley
Rolls-Royce, the engine-maker and defence firm that is spitting out so much cash it can shove £7bn to £9bn towards buying back shares over the next three years, would like UK taxpayers to find a few quid – reportedly up to £200m as a first slug – to help fund one its big bets. The company would “appreciate” financial support from the government to smooth work on a new engine, says its chief executive, Tufan Erginbilgiç.Outrageous? Well, corporate welfare for Rolls is obviously absurd in the abstract. If there is a definition of a company that can afford to pay for its own research and development, this is it. One might also say Rolls owes us a favour since it was the recipient of billions of pounds worth of loan guarantees from the UK’s export finance agency when the Covid wolf was at the corporate door in 2020
Drax to stop burning controversial Canadian wood within next year
The owner of Drax power plant has started reducing the amount of Canadian wood pellets it burns, and will stop burning trees from British Columbia entirely within the next year.The FTSE 250 company Drax Group said its Canadian wood pellet plants, which once supplied millions of tonnes of biomass to be burnt in its North Yorkshire power plant, had cost the company almost £200m in financial impairments last year.The company said the pellet production plants, which have come under criticism from environmentalists, faced a “challenging outlook” after a decision in the second half of last year that, from 2027, the Drax power plant would burn pellets sourced only from the US.Despite the writedown, Drax shares soared to 20-year highs to give the company a market value of about £3bn after it reported better than expected full-year earnings of £947m for 2025 and raised shareholder dividends by 11.5%
Met police to pilot facial recognition identity checks, mayor confirms
Metropolitan police officers are to start scanning citizens’ faces using automated facial recognition technology to check their identities, in a move backed by the mayor of London but described as “alarming” by opponents.The pilot was revealed on Thursday when Sadiq Khan said 100 officers would use the roaming technology – commonly deployed on smartphones – for six months. The mayor was responding to questioning from an opposition politician amid rising concern about the rollout of AI-powered policing tools. The Met’s website still states it “does not presently use the so-called operator initiated facial recognition”.Face scanning has already been deployed by police with cameras on vans and in fixed locations including in Croydon, Manchester and South Wales
Instagram to alert parents if teens repeatedly search self-harm terms
Instagram will start alerting parents if their kids repeatedly search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm.The announcement on Thursday comes as Instagram’s parent company, Meta, is in the midst of two trials over harms to children.A trial under way in Los Angeles questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm minors. Another in New Mexico seeks to determine whether Meta failed to protect kids from sexual exploitation on its platforms.The alerts will only go to parents who are enrolled in Instagram’s parental supervision program
Brady Tkachuk decries White House’s AI video of him insulting Canadians after US gold
US ice hockey star Brady Tkachuk has said he does not appreciate an AI video released by the White House that shows him insulting Canadians.Tkachuk played in the Americans’ victory over Canada at the Winter Olympics on Sunday, which secured the US men their first gold medal since 1980. In the wake of that win, the White House’s TikTok account published video of Tkachuk saying: “They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple syrup eating fuckers a lesson.”Tkachuk never said those words and the video, which has had more than 10m views, is labelled as AI-generated.“Well, it’s clearly fake, because it’s not my voice, not my lips moving,” Tkachuk said on Thursday
Golfer Andrea Pavan ‘thankful to be alive’ after reportedly falling down lift shaft
Italian golfer Andrea Pavan is “thankful to be alive” after reportedly falling three floors down a lift shaft.The 36-year-old, a two-time European Tour winner, was scheduled to be playing in this week’s South African Open Championship at Stellenbosch Golf Club but was forced to withdraw after the incident on Wednesday.According to reports the accident, which happened in his private accommodation, occurred when the lift doors opened but there was no lift car in the shaft and Pavan fell, sustaining multiple injuries.Italian media reports say he underwent a six-hour operation to reduce several vertebral fractures and implant a plate in his shoulder and is in a serious but not life-threatening condition.Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhone or the Google Play store on Android by searching for 'The Guardian'
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