‘Your Party’ Could Be Led By Ordinary Members With MPs Barred From Running
Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana in a discussion on Your Party, their new political party, at The World Transformed conference, Manchester, October 2025 (Credit: PA Images / Alamy)
3 min read
Exclusive: ‘Your Party’, the new political party being started by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, could be led by ordinary members rather than any MP under a proposal to be voted on during its founding conference this weekend.
Your Party, which has amassed 50,000 members but has been beset by internal rows since its founding process was launched earlier this year, will hold its first conference in Liverpool on 29 and 30 November.
PoliticsHome can reveal that the plan is to facilitate a vote among all members during the gathering on whether the party should be led by a single leader or by a ‘collective leadership’ for a period running until late 2027.
The single leader could be any successful candidate – Corbyn, Sultana, or another MP or lay member – whereas the collective option would see the chair and deputy chair of the party’s central executive committee (CEC), both of whom must be lay members, lead the party. Under the latter model, MPs would be barred from running.
It is understood that feedback from the assemblies organised by Your Party across the country showed the single leader model was more popular. But the events of recent weeks, which have seen infighting escalate, may persuade members against the option of any MP leading the party.
The leadership and CEC elections are being brought forward by a month, starting in January and ending in February rather than March as previously planned.
Under new rules drawn up to ensure the party is “breaking with the Westminster mould”, members will be empowered through a new ‘democratic whip’ system, PoliticsHome can also reveal.
The whipping system will give the CEC – a body of lay members – the power to instruct elected representatives such as MPs to vote in line with party policy when crucial votes are held.
If an MP breaks that whip, the consequences will be determined by their local party. The first draft paper setting out party rules already gives members a right of recall, as well as there being mandatory reselection – cyclical selection contests before each election – for all MPs.
As previously revealed by The House magazine, members will also vote on the party’s permanent name – Your Party being only a placeholder – during the conference in an online poll.
Options for the name will be unveiled this week, after suggestions from a consultation were considered, as well as a review of which party names are already registered with the Electoral Commission.
Ahead of the 2026 May local elections, Your Party conference will also debate whether the new party should endorse Independent council candidates or only those standing under the party’s own banner.
A Your Party spokesperson said: “The mainstream parties are failing us because they are run by and for billionaires and corporations, not ordinary people.
“Your Party will be different, relentlessly accountable to its members and the communities we strive to represent.
“Our founding conference will be a festival of democracy, showing how we can build a real alternative to a broken Westminster model.”
PoliticsHome understands that a conference agenda will be released on Tuesday, four days before the conference begins on Saturday.
Your Party’s Liverpool conference is expected to include speeches from both Corbyn and Sultana, as well as MPs Shockat Adam and Ayoub Khan.
The other Independent Alliance MPs, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Hussain, are not expected to attend the conference after both quit the party amid disagreements with Sultana.
Over 2,000 delegates are expected to join, down from an original ambition of 13,000, after rows over money and Your Party sources reporting that organising the conference on a “shoestring” budget has been difficult.
Sultana has announced that she will be holding a rally in Liverpool on Friday evening, bringing together supporters who aim “to push Your Party towards an unapologetically socialist, anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist programme”.
