Your Party kicks off final leadership vote

The final election phase to decide Your Party’s collective leadership has begun. And for many, it has become a race to determine how much member empowerment and control there will be. As one candidate for Yorkshire & The Humber told the Canary:

This party and its growth and its development shouldn’t be down to what a few people—who have found themselves at the top of it before any democratic structure’s been put in place—think it should be like.

‘Open Your Party up to the hundreds of thousands of people who need it’

Chris Saltmarsh is on the Grassroots Left slate in the Central Executive Committee (CEC) elections. And while he called this slate “really diverse,” he described how everyone participating broadly shares:

A political vision and understanding for what we want the party to be.

That centres around “maximum member democracy”.

Saltmarsh explained why this is so important for him, saying:

Most people have seen the [Your Party founding] process and thought: ‘oh, this doesn’t feel like a welcoming space where I can come and express my politics and learn and develop and contribute to building this project. It feels like a space where I have to come and pick a side in a factional feud and I’m expected to care about this very detailed and, probably to most people, irrelevant stuff.’

I think people don’t want to be involved in a party where it appears that it’s the source for people to litigate these personal feuds. And I think they don’t want to be involved in a party where it doesn’t feel like they have any say.

Statistics seem to back that up. Because while around 800,000 people initially expressed interest, only about 1% actually became full members who participated in the votes at the Your Party’s founding conference. Something that deterred hundreds of thousands of people. And for many, it’s clear what that was.

Saltmarsh called for an open, inclusive culture going forwards, stressing:

We should open this up to the hundreds of thousands of people who have a stake in this party existing. If I want the party to be eco-socialist… then it’s not for me or anyone else to say that that absolutely has to be the case. What we need is a genuine democratic structure so that we can organise around those ideas openly and transparently.

Reflecting on the challenges that Your Party has faced and the possible election results, he said:

For all the demotivation that people might have, this is an incredibly important moment. And I would just plead that people – even if it’s just voting – do get involved and do participate in this. Because I think what the British left looks like in 1, 5, 10, 20 years really could be quite different, depending on how this election goes.

Whatever the outcome, though, he believes there is democracy in Your Party and there will still be space for people with differing views to make their cases.

Your Party or the Greens?

Saltmarsh previously co-founded Labour for a Green New Deal. And because he believes climate politics is ‘a question of justice, inequality and oppression’, he thinks it’s important to bring:

an environmental or climate perspective into left spaces, but also a kind of socialist politics into climate spaces

The wealthiest 10% of people in the world have been responsible for the overwhelming majority of global warming. And while richer countries do the most damage, the poorest countries suffer the most as a result of climate breakdown.

Saltmarsh isn’t in the Green Party, however, because he thinks an explicitly socialist mass organisation on the left is necessary. And while the Greens are already “up and running” and have a leader in Zack Polanski who’s “clearly very skilled at communicating”, he said:

A cynical interpretation would be, it’s like a really good Instagram account.

While asserting that communication is definitely important, he also thinks Your Party is about taking “a longer view” than just elections. Its mission, he stressed, is to:

build in communities, to organise hundreds or thousands of socialists in any given town and city, not just to win elections when that’s expedient but also to coordinate campaigns, to raise consciousness, to build socialism through social infrastructure.

That means building a “collective political life” in communities, with things like:

socialist schools, where members and supporters come along and learn about socialism

And it means having a party where, from the beginning, members agree on a socialist, anti-imperialist platform.

“An incredibly important moment”

Saltmarsh isn’t the only person who thinks the CEC elections are “an incredibly important moment”. Because the Canary has interviewed a range of candidates who want a member-led party that breaks with top-down, personality-driven politics.

Candidates have emphasised the importance of transparency, accountability, and a collective leadership that focuses on solidarity, bringing people together, and empowering as many people as possible. This message has shone through from everyone who’s spoken to us.

There absolutely have been questions surrounding accountability and transparency during the founding phase of Your Party. And whether you think this messy start was avoidable or unavoidable, countless members and candidates want that to change, and hope the CEC elections will help to overcome these challenges.

If you’re a Your Party member and you want to vote:

1. You need to log in on the top right of the party’s website.
2. On the Your Party Members Area page that will pop up after logging in, you will see “EVENTS” on the right hand side. Below this, you will see “VOTES AND ELECTIONS”, and two options: “CEC Election – Public Office Holders” and “CEC Election – [the name of your local section of the party]”.
3. If you click on each of those ‘CEC Election’ links, you’ll be able to see the candidates and their statements. You then need to put a number next to all the candidates you want to support (1 being your favourite, 2 your second favourite, and so on).

Featured image via the Canary