Corbyn dithers as Your Party fails to field local election candidates
Local elections are coming in fast, with just over six weeks until over 4,850 councillors will be up for election. Labour is justifiably fearing how they will fare as their lurch to the right has disgusted and alienated more left-wing voters. Meanwhile, Your Party still appears to be dithering.
The West is witnessing the rise of the far-right. Billionaires are eagerly funnelling funds into hateful parties like Reform, Advance, and Restore in the UK—all cut from the same cloth as the Canary has long been reporting. As a result, it is more critical than ever that communities have a socialist candidate to cut through the noise of the racist misinformation spread by right-wing politicians.
Despite announcing its formation nearly a year ago, Your Party is dragging its feet, risking leaving communities without a candidate to support. With far-right parties rising rapidly, fielding candidates is clearly achievable in this time frame—but the new party continues to dither.
This begs the question: is this really the best Corbyn and his team can do?
A likely sign of impending disappointment for its members, is Your Party’s failure to back Scottish candidates in the Holyrood elections:
This is so outrageous. I dont even know what to say. Its almost like YP wants to destroy the party. Solidarity @NiallChristie1 this cannot be the way YP is run @jeremycorbyn https://t.co/zdsEWYNqyE
— Anwarul Khan (@TPleicester) March 23, 2026
Missed opportunity
The Canary has contacted Your Party and Central Executive Committee (CEC) member Louise Regan to ask whether the party will field official YP candidates in the upcoming local elections. On May 7, there will be 4,850 councillor seats up for election, set against the backdrop of an increasingly divisive political atmosphere.
Far-right parties like Reform and Restore UK have been hard at work inflaming divisions in our communities, actively targeting minoritised communities. Socialist groups across the country stand ready to challenge the far-right on the doorsteps. However with a seemingly silent and inactive YP they are left isolated as independent candidates with no party machine behind them.
Despite numerous groups and candidates appealing to YP for endorsement, they have received no response.
Mike Forster of PACE in Huddersfield believed he had Jeremy Corbyn’s support as a candidate. However, after requesting an endorsement over a week ago, he has received no response from YP. Nevertheless, they have registered with the Electoral Commission at their own expense, and will be able to stand candidates under the banner of PACE.
This failure on behalf of the CEC and the leadership of YP has had a devastating impact on morale among members.
We wrote yesterday about the formation of socialist pressure groups in response to this silence:
Despite the desperate need for unity, solidarity and compassion in British society, the reported behaviour of the CEC has been to silence or intimidate socialist voices into compliance.
Members are feeling increasingly concerned that Your Party will not work to empower them or listen to their communities. Instead, branches are left ignored without access to resources or guidance which has seen local members abandon the party all together in disappointment.
Change of tack from Your Party following uproar
Your Party faces harsh criticism from members, who are pressuring the executive committee to stay true to being an inclusive, socialist party@MaddisonW92 https://t.co/2ZRkeOkA5g
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) March 23, 2026
The Canary has now seen an email issued to Your Party members in Scotland. This email follows the widespread anger after Niall Christie’s recent post confirming Scotland would not see candidates in the Holyrood elections. Christie blamed ‘inaction and decisions taken at a UK level’ for this abandonment of Scottish members.
NEW: Your Party will not be standing candidates in the upcoming Holyrood elections, the party's leading Scottish representative has said ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/RYuyYk2Zv0
— The National (@ScotNational) March 23, 2026
Signalling a potential change of tack, YP are now offering members a choice in the matter:
A ‘Jeremy Corbyn fan club’
Nonetheless, time is flying, and if YP keeps dragging its feet, candidates will have even less time to campaign.
After all, wasn’t this meant to be an active, participatory democracy party?
So far, all the real action is happening at the grassroots, where socialist groups are organising themselves in the absence of Your Party. The executive, meanwhile, seem either unwilling or unmotivated to step up.
Your Party is literally just the Jeremy Corbyn fan club. It's clear that he's just not a very competent leader, whether or not you think he was treated fairly by the British media during his term as Labour leader https://t.co/EPBRYGjMkF
— Mac 🌹🔰 (@GeorgismFan) March 23, 2026
Toxic from day one
Your Party has been toxic from the very start—that’s undeniable. Yet the leadership blame whistleblowers and critics for these divisions, revealing the same predictable lack of humility and accountability.
Widespread reports show that Karie Murphy, Corbyn, and his allies strongly opposed Zarah Sultana’s involvement and the idea of co-leadership. As often happens when certain individuals dominate or bully, new groups formed, aligning more with shared principles and values than with the original central leadership.
Nonetheless, YP has seriously undermined how the experience of people across the country who have long been shut down or shut out. This no longer diminishes us into silence but fuels our drive to move forward.
Grassroots groups across the country are bursting with energy, collaboration, and solidarity—it’s truly inspiring. The collective efforts show us that socialism isn’t just an idea—it’s a much needed path towards national healing.
Featured image via the Canary
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Didn’t know this. Hope they get it together. We need it.
I’s the Canary saying vote Green
Corbyn is first and foremost a parliamentarian, he likes being an MP and the power it affords, as in fact does Sultana. The problem we face is that all elective systems are by definition hard right, as they concentrate power, are hierarchical, focus on personality and are therefore cultush (and in many ways provide the possibility for fascism). Parliaments are contradictory. We’re told they represent the people, yet parties develop manifestoes that people vote for, and often articles demand politicians with “vision”. With Corbyn, his vision was nationalisation, some more progressive taxes and so on. This is far from emancipation. Political vision seems always to be largely economic, uninspiring, unoriginal, requiring no special ability. So, it’s no surprise that Your Party members are discovering that a political party centres on ego and a power struggle. Research tells us that being elected has a powerful self-justifying effect, forms a key basis for hubris, the severing of empathic connection, and so on. MPs are also being paid and after a term will want to keep being paid, so this further distorts their priorities. (Elective) government is the cause of inequality, disempowerment, poverty, the mental health crisis, and much else problematic. Besides, since it is the legislator, it provides the structure and framework in which society operates. Only by dismantling centralised government will we find a way out if this mess. Hoping to vote for the right candidate, one day, is an object lesson in the triumph of hope over evidence. Politics is quotidian, it doesn’t require some central executive to make the “tough decisions”, it is not too complex for “ordinary” people, or needed to protect us from the imaginary “mob” (look at what the polls say, the electorate want to care and be cared for, they want a mutually supportive system – hardly a mob – and what looks”hard right” is simply people under economic threat with all that that entails. With social security, that threat dissolves and so does the hard right). Without hierarchy there’d be no Farage, Starmer, Jenrick, Streeting, etc. There’d be no bullshit personality focussed political media, no Kuenssburg, no Robinson, no Davies, no Toynbee, the end of punditry and the whole circus of PMQs, elections, scandal and corruption. Parliament was created as a mercantile reaction to the monarch and aristocracy, to push back against their autocratic and rentier power. Those in parliament were only interested in their own wealth and power, and sought to regulate and control the population for their own interests. The same is true today. The worthy words get people and party elected, but once there, the entitlement (I’ve got myself here, I’m special) will be largely complete. MP’s X feeds and what they say about the electorate in parliament give us a truer picture of what they think, as does policy and legislation. For many in parliament, their policies will even harm their friends and wider families, yet they still enact them. This is a systemic problem. Your party, as will the Greens, for instance, will ultimately fail those of us who need a transformation, and things will continue to worsen. The only route out is collective governance, deliberative, granular, co-ordinated, where anyone can be involved with making the decisions that will affect them directly, and that forms the basis of their entitlement to do so.
The correct analysis of past and present and possibly (Greens Party) future governments. Parliament is past its sell by date forcsome decades now.
No more centralised govèrnments not fit for purpose.
I do not want to abandon YP tor the Greens. We need a real socialist alternartive, but it seems the grassroots members and proto groups must step forward, link upand move forward without Corbyn and Murphy, who have proved increasingly toxic. This appears to e deliberate pokicy on their part, rather than just incompetence. I have no understanding of their motives, and really don’t care any more.
The old saying about breweries and ‘pissups’ springs to mind.
Anyone left in Your Party that hasn’t gone to the Greens must be blind and deaf.
Yes I agree entirely with you, have thought the same for a long time. Yet this viewpoint is often regarded as eirher completely bonkers ‘wot no government you mad’ or while desirable in theory not possible in the ‘real world’ pie in the sky utopianism which would never work. The challenge is to make it work and convince enough people especially those disaffected from and disillusioned by electoral politics. A network of people’s assemblies from grassroots and community levels feeding into a federation of assemblies operating self governance for example. Engaging with cooperatives too those that really work and scaling up. Anyway lots of truly participatory democratic alternatives to explore out there.
Wasn’t it that “bastion” of Democracy Churchill who said” if putting an ‘X’ on a piece of paper made any difference, we wouldn’t let them do it”? QED…
He is also quoted as saying ‘…that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’.
“Meanwhile, Your Party still appears to be dithering.”
I’d have thought the author would have learned their lesson after their last anti-YP article got roasted, but obviously not.
YP policy on the upcoming local elections :
“At Your Party’s founding conference in November, members agreed an approach to the local elections with two pillars. Firstly, we will support existing community independent groups aligned with our values and rooted in their communities. Your Party is in touch with several groups.
“Secondly, we will pursue a targeted strategy, getting behind candidates who can meaningfully contest for seats, rather than standing everywhere and spreading our resources thin. That could mean supporting independent socialist candidates or standing official Your Party candidates.
“Your Party candidates will be campaigning for no-cuts People’s Budgets in opposition to government-imposed austerity, defending public services, standing for expanded social housing and pushing for full divestment from Israeli apartheid.”
They add that :
“If you are interested in standing as a Your Party-backed candidate and are not already involved in existing community independent groups, we want to hear from you! Candidates should usually be embedded in their community, supported by trade unions or community organisations, with a commitment to socialist politics!
All individual candidates standing under the Your Party banner will need to be selected democratically by members. And they will need to pass due diligence checks and demonstrate they are able to mount a credible campaign. They must also share the party’s aims and values as expressed in Your Party’s Political Statement.”
Silence ? Dithering ? Failure to stand local candidates ? Doesn’t look like it to me !
The author is what’s known as a ‘concern troll’. Appearing to express concern about YP, but actually seeking to spread disillusionment. In this case on behalf of the newly trendy Green party, packed full of ex-Labour councillors – how many of them will be ‘campaigning for no-cuts People’s Budgets in opposition to government-imposed austerity, defending public services, standing for expanded social housing and pushing for full divestment from Israeli apartheid.’ ?
“Your Party has been toxic from the very start—that’s undeniable” — says one of your journalists who has some sort of vested interest in killing a new born party. I was shocked by the sniping, factional tone of yesterday’s article by Maddison Wheeldon who sounded like a Daily Mail Journalist. I have no issue with you publishing factual reports but MW is so biased I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s being paid by Murdoch!
Thank you Red Star2000, for speaking up for those of us who actually WANT YP to succeed. “The author is what’s known as a ‘concern troll’. Appearing to express concern about YP, but actually seeking to spread disillusionment. In this case on behalf of the newly trendy Green party, packed full of ex-Labour councillors” Spot on- exactly how I think.
This is not a simple case of disagreement- it means that the Canary is trying to sabotage our main hope for the future.
I will now cancel my subscription to the Canary and mark any emails as spam
YP is not the democratic socialist party we were promised. The Many slate have shut everyone else out of the decision making process. Many members are so disappointed as this was supposed to be a member led party but we are being dictated to by a secretive authoritarian hierarchy. Its no wonder so many are leaving or rebelling.
“The Many slate have shut everyone else out of the decision making process.”
They must have missed me then, because I’ve been taking part.
Members voted for the CEC to guide the early stages of party building. Members voted for the members of the CEC.
Candidates of The Many slate (which I didn’t vote for, although not because of any imagined factional in-fighting reasons) may be in the majority but that doesn’t mean they’re somehow out to sabotage everything.
So as a matter of interest, HOW exactly have you been shut out of the decision making process ? I’m assuming you are a YP member – if you’re not, then obviously you wouldn’t have a say anyway.
May I remind you that it was the membershp of Your Party who voted mainly, but not exclusively, for candidates from The Many slate. In what sense is that The Many “Shutting everyone else out”? You don’t agree with the results of a democratic election? Or do you go along the Trump lines and say that the election was rigged? – just listen to yourself!
The first votes we cast were for the name. I did not vote for, nor do I like, Your Party, as a name. If I thought like you, I would now be saying there was a powerful faction dictating the name of the party to us!
There was never going to be time for YP to field a full set of council candidates. To believe otherwise is absurd. If they’re lucky, they will field a few hundred, and endorse independents and Greens as appropriate.
I’m pretty tired of this Kautsky vs Luxemberg infighting. The eternal curse of the socialist left.
In the interests of full disclosure, is Maddison Wheeldon, the author of this and other attacks on Your Party the same Maddison Wheeldon who in the 2024 general election intended to stand as the Green party candidate in Warrington North ?
Yes it is.
Who then lost the support of the Greens due to claims of anti-semitism against her ?
Putting that last bit aside (anti-semitism claims long ago lost any credibility), the fact reamains that the author of these hit pieces against Your Party was a Green party member with parliamentary ambitions. She did apparantly leave the Greens when they disowned her – is she back in the fold ?
It might explain a lot …
Probably just as well. It gives people a change to vote for Green, without splitting the left vote. It’s not as if there is a great deal of difference, except that “Your Party” Still needs to figure out what it’s purpose is.
It seems any new participant in a seriously flawed electoral/Parliamentary system will be wracked with similar ‘leadership’ conflicts and personality contests that reflect the existing political culture. ‘The Parliamentary road to socialism’ is an endless mirage but meanwhile Parliament is what we have. With no voice in it, or in local govt, YP can be safely ignored.
I see there has been another influx from the troll farm, whose main purpose is to attack this exemplary journalist for speaking the truth, while simultaneously denying they support the TM/Corbyn Cult. I couls say pathetic, but no it is strategic: the Canary is the biggest outlet scrutinising whats going on in YP so you want to silence it….
Those of us who get the real news direct from YP know that at best this journalist (a past Green party election candidate) gives out half-truths, twisted to show YP in a bad light.
This ‘exemplary journalist’, and The Canary however fail to even mention the tensions within their newly beloved Greens – for example their owngoing transphobia debate.
“As the 1600 members-strong Green Party Women’s Declaration has formally commenced legal proceedings against the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) for discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, newly recruited members may wish to take a closer look at the internal document which is central to their claim.
“How the ‘Guidance to Identify Queerphobia’ adopted by a show of hands by elected representatives serving on the Green Party Regional Council (GPRC) in 2023 ended up as part of the GPEW’s Code of Conduct should in itself have raised major concerns.This is because whilst it took three years of debate for Conference to finally agree to a definition of anti-semitism – Green activists used to take such matters seriously – this ‘Guidance’ was quietly added as an Appendix to the Code of conduct and the Disciplinary process without any debate, nor approval by Conference.
“In a leaked 53-pages internal dossier produced by the Party’s own lawyers, the ‘Guidance’ was flagged as carrying a serious risk that it unlawfully discriminated against members with gender-critical beliefs. This ought to have been a warning to the Party’s Executive that to continue suspending or expelling members because of their view that sex is biologial and not to be confused with gender was against the Equality Act of 2010 and as confirmed by the Supreme Court in April 2025.”
That’s from The Green Light blog. Surely these sort of internal tensions are worth reporting on – except of course they make the alledged YP internal tensions, even when misrepresented, seem mild by comparison.
How about the Green party members suspended by the party for expressing doubt about the transphobia question ? One of them is a 100-year old guy who has been involved in the Green movement for over 50 years. Now imagine if that was YP – The Canary would be all over it like a rash. As it is – no mention at all.
Luckily for you, some of us read a wider range of subjects than those considered trendy by The Canary, so I can give you the link and you can read it yourself. And then ask yourself : shouldn’t The Canary be reporting on these stories too ? They are after all being discussed by ‘real’ Green blogs…
https://thegreenlight.blog/2026/03/08/why-the-green-partys-definition-of-transphobia-is-illegal/