23.07.2026

Rebellion that never was

Opposition forces on the CEC might actually constitute a small majority now. But they have neither the organisational cohesion nor the politics required to carry out the revolution that is needed, explains Carla Roberts

It is telling that the only mention of Your Party in the press recently has been around Joshua Kerry, the alleged killer of Ann Widdecombe. He had signed a petition drawn up by Our Party,¹ which campaigned to take YP’s founding conference out of the hands of the (unelected) Karie Murphy - and put it into the hands of an (unelected) ‘interim leadership’. Bourgeois journalists have been sniffing around the South Yorkshire left, but we are pretty certain that Kerry never joined YP or attended any meetings of the Rotherham YP proto-branch - the local comrades we have spoken to had never come across him. Small mercies.

At this stage, it would take a genuine revolution to transform the floundering Corbyn project into an organisation that would be worth attacking in the press, something underlined by the latest meeting of YP’s Central Executive Committee on Monday July 20.

The notice and agenda were sent out with less than 24 hours’ notice; long papers about ‘governance’ issues were emailed an hour beforehand. The only amendment was rejected, because it was “submitted too late” - you couldn’t make it up. Not that it mattered.

No confidence

The whole meeting was occupied by YP chair Jenn Forbes trying her very best to ignore the fact that there had been a ‘special CEC meeting’ on July 12, which had voted in favour of no confidence motions against Forbes, secretary Dawn Aspinall and membership officer Cassie Bellingham.² Fourteen out of the 22 CEC members were present and between 11 and 13 voted in favour of the motions, which means that, on paper, they met the requirements demanded by the CEC standing orders.³

They state that CEC ‘special meetings’ may be convened “at the request of 50% of all CEC or OG members”; that CEC meetings are quorate when 50% of members attend and that “a 2/3 majority of members present and voting will be required for the vote of no confidence to pass”.

No matter. In true Kafkaesque manner, Forbes (having disabled the chat) brushed off various points of order that argued that she should make way for an alternative chair. We hear that, in backing her up, Jeremy Corbyn bizarrely suggested to take the points of order after the agenda had been completed. How absurd is that?

Forbes insisted that the July 12 meeting did not meet the requirements of the convoluted and contradictory standing orders, because those also state that “the CEC will hold an annual general meeting, at which a vote of no confidence may be taken.” There was no AGM, so ipso facto there cannot have been a successful vote of no confidence … This is an utter nonsensical clause, seeing as all officers would surely serve only until an AGM anyway, as this is where elections for officers’ posts take place. But then these standing orders are there to serve the ruling bureaucratic clique, not make things clear. Bureaucrats love long constitutional documents - they can pick the bits that suit them best (which is why communists favour rules that are as short as possible and only as long as absolutely necessary).

The GL members argued that, following the Corbyn clique’s claim that the special meeting was illegitimate, Forbes should have scheduled a no confidence vote. Had it been successful, the meeting would have had to close and an election for a chair scheduled. But Forbes would not take the motion.

Another reason given by Forbes for rejecting the July 12 results was the fact that Scotland representative Jim Monaghan had not been officially invited. That much is true - because there is no official way he could have been invited. The Corbyn clique has refused demands to set up a communication channel for CEC members, so, when Jo Rust (originally elected on the Corbyn slate) called the July 12 meeting, she seems to have copied in those email addresses she had access to, from the one single time when Forbes forgot to blind-copy everybody! That was before Monaghan joined the CEC, though he certainly knew of the meeting and posted about it on Facebook beforehand.

The YP ruling clique are clutching at straws. Their bureaucratic micro-management of YP was ‘no problem’ - as long as they had a clear majority. Forbes usually just rushed through the packed agenda and The Many waved through the various documents that had already been decided either by the small officers’ group or by Murphy herself - including the ridiculous standing orders.

But no longer. The botched July 4 suspension of three CEC members elected on the slate of the Grassroots Left was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back: YP is staggeringly unsuccessful, the ‘branches rollout’ is a slow-motion joke, the organisation makes no impact in any election and it remains solidly at 0% in the polls. Some CEC members clearly do not want to continue carrying the responsibility for this failing project.

Since that July 12 meeting, ‘independent’ Sam Gorst has resigned from YP and at least one attendee seems to have been there only to spy. But we understand that there are still four or five CEC members (in addition to the seven GL supporters) who continue to demand that Forbes, Aspinall and Bellingham should step down - and three of them are members of the YP officers’ group. In a meeting of the YP Connections Network, they were named as treasurer Fadel Takrouri, spokesperson Noor Begum and political officer Louise Regan - we believe that is correct. The OG group is now down to seven, after the earlier resignation of vice-chair Laura Smith.

On the CEC (currently 21 members) there is now a slim, but clear enough majority against the current trajectory - but it cannot exercise this majority. This is partially down to the tight control exercised by Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s right hand woman and de facto general secretary of YP. We hear that in CEC meetings Forbes mostly reads out scripts, which no doubt have been prepared by Murphy. Sometimes she appears to receive direct messages from Murphy in the actual meeting, ‘reminding’ her of this or that particular interpretation of a rule.

In the July 20 CEC meeting, for example, after almost two hours of batting away all attempts to install an alternative chair, she suddenly changed her mind and wanted to take a vote on this after all, having ‘remembered’ that it would require a two-thirds majority to be successful. GL members argued that no, a simple majority should be enough, but this was again dismissed by Forbes. We understand that at this stage the GL supporters on the CEC, recognising that they would lose the vote, walked out and the meeting was left inquorate.

Murphy would be a much better target of a no-confidence vote - but, as she was installed by the officers’ group, only the OG can get rid of her. And, on the OG, The Many still has a (small) majority. What an utter mess.

Toothless

The chief reason why the CEC opposition cannot act decisively is because it has no political coherence. There is no clear way forward. The Grassroots Left itself is very ‘diverse’ as a result of a rushed, cobbled-together election process, which means some candidates were chosen without even being known to the groups who elected them. Sometimes, this was down to Zarah Sultana ‘vouching’ for them; at other times it was a lack of any other female candidate in a particular region.

Most of them quickly started doing their own thing and rejected even the limited accountability mechanisms agreed by GL: there were plans for regular public feedback meetings, as well as meetings with the groups that made up GL, to agree on joint positions. We have been called “toxic bullies” for urging them to publish all CEC documents - including those labelled ‘confidential’. Transparency was the only real weapon the left had and it could have helped to give some power to the members and the branches, while cohering GL as an opposition - instead, GL CEC members stuck to Murphy’s rules and GL has now fallen apart.

The Many opposition is even less politically coherent. They do not want their names published, though Murphy had already leaked them to the website, Canary, in an early non-agreed version of the minutes of the July 12 meeting (which were deleted shortly after). Murphy wanted to show that she knows who the ‘traitors’ are - it is YP members who are being kept in the dark. It is not exactly hard to work out who they are, mind, particularly as those who remain loyal to Corbyn are very keen to make their ongoing sycophancy known: Hannah Hawkins and Cath Davies have gone on the Crispin Flintoff show to prove they have learnt absolutely nothing.

As Marxists, we believe that people can change for the better - our vision of socialism depends on it. But that does not mean we should be naive about the role that The Many ‘rebels’ have played. They are rebelling against the current direction chiefly because it is so very unsuccessful and it is harming their reputation, not because they oppose the lack of democracy, transparency or the purging of the left - they all voted in favour of it. Best-case scenario: they might agree with GL CEC members on some limited joint motions, perhaps to amend the standing orders.

But this is no opposition that could see through the kind of revolution it would take to make YP into a useful vehicle for the working class - especially as thousands of members have already voted with their feet and left, including members of the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party in England and Wales.

We can therefore ignore Richard Gerrard and his Socialist Federation, which calls on “the CEC majority to assert their leadership of the party and call on the branches to recognise them as the rightful leadership!” Cloud cuckoo land. For a start, the politically incoherent opposition would not build anything qualitatively much better. He also urges the CEC majority to take “legal action” against YP to get their hands on the money and the data. The CEC minority is now acting illegitimately, don’t you get it?

Actually, we suspect that the majority of the remaining members are probably in favour of Corbyn and Murphy leading the party in any which way they like. It would at best be a legal coup, leaving aside how very unlikely a victory would be - something we should have learned from the many unsuccessful attempts to sue the Labour Party. Perhaps Gerrard hopes his r-r-radical posturing will convince CEC members to join his Socialist Federation. We doubt it. It looks like it is already going the way of YP itself: there were 45 people at SF’s public meeting on Burnham, down from 120 at the first conference and 80 at the second.

Incorporated

The truth is that Murphy could have easily incorporated most of the CEC opposition (from both sides) by throwing them a few crumbs. But then YP was never supposed to become a vibrant, mass working class party. After Zarah Sultana bounced them into launching YP, the Corbyn clique did its very best to make sure it will be nothing more than a tightly controlled vanity project. Corbyn is a Labourite to his marrow and would eagerly return to the fold if invited (he will not be!). He has no interest in building anything other than a fan club that can fund his political travels around the world.

We expect the annual ‘conference’ later this year will agree to some changes that make sure it will remain as such - for example, by doing away with ‘collective leadership’ - not that there ever was one. Still, getting rid of it properly will save Murphy a lot of time and effort.

We suspect that a few more CEC members will resign before that. YP is likely to go out with a whimper, taking the last remnants of Jeremy Corbyn’s reputation with it. And, although general demoralisation is likely to follow, we will fight hard to make sure it can also teach a valuable lesson about the need to fight for the kind of party the working class actually needs: not some vague, halfway house, but a democratic, transparent party with a culture of free speech and a principled programme for communism.

www.ourparty.org.uk.↩︎
See ‘Final death throes’ Weekly Worker July 16: www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1594/final-death-throes.↩︎
docs.google.com/document/d/14F5EXEnhQCy36KUBcVKqqGanmwgjivumDuVTEpHTW18/edit?usp=sharing.↩︎