Corbyn

Ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana has accused Jeremy Corbyn and other members of a new left-wing party of “baseless attacks” on her character and said she is consulting lawyers.

It follows an email sent to supporters inviting them to sign up for membership of the new party at the cost of £5 a month or £55 a year.

Sultana had posted on social media encouraging people to join and claiming more than 20,000 people had done so.

But ex-Labour leader Corbyn posted a statement signed by four other independent MPs involved in the party in which he claimed the emails were “unauthorised” and said any direct debits set up should be “immediately cancelled”. Corbyn declined to comment on Sultana’s latest claims.

The row over the membership portal has revealed deep splits in the fledgling party, which was launched in July and is due to hold its founding conference in November.

Members will vote on its official name but it is currently using “Your Party” in campaign material.

On Thursday, Sultana described Corbyn and others as running a “sexist boys’ club” and claimed she had been sidelined by other members of the party’s working group.

She said the membership portal was “in line with the road map set out to members”.

The party said it had referred the matter to the UK’s data protection watchdog.

In a statement posted on X on Friday night, Sultana said that “a number of false and defamatory statements have been published about me concerning the launch of Your Party’s membership portal”.

The Coventry South MP said that they were “baseless attacks on my character are politically-motivated and I intend to hold to account those responsible for making them”.

“To that end, I have this evening instructed specialist defamation lawyers,” she added.

Sultana said that at “no point was members’ data misused or put at risk” and that “all funds received from members were ringfenced and protected in the appropriate manner”.

Ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana has accused Jeremy Corbyn of overseeing a “sexist boys’ club” locking women out of the founding of a new left-wing party the pair announced earlier this year.

In a statement on social media, Sultana said she had been sidelined by other members of the party’s working group – despite an agreement that she and Corbyn would jointly authorise key steps.

He comments come after Your Party supporters got an email on Tuesday offering £55 memberships only for Corbyn to later dismisses it as “unauthorised” – telling supporters he was seeking legal advice.

Sultana said she had launched the membership website “in line with the road map” set out by the party officials.

Before her statement, Sultana had been posting on social media throughout the morning encouraging people to sign up at cost of £55 for full membership.

Sultana had claimed more than 20,000 people had signed up – meaning the new party could have raised more than £1m in a single morning.

In her statement she said: “My sole motivation has been to safeguard the grassroots involvement that is essential to building this party.

“Unfortunately, I have been subjected to what can only be described as a sexist boys’ club: I have been treated appallingly and excluded completely.

“They have refused to allow any other women with voting rights on the Working Group, blocking the gender-balanced committee that both Jeremy and I signed up to.”

Before her statement, Corbyn put out a conflicting statement alongside Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain, Iqbal Mohamed and Shockat Adam – members of the Independent Alliance of MPs who are founding the new party. Sultana’s name was conspicuously missing.

The statement supporters on Wednesday morning that an “unauthorised email” had been sent promoting a membership portal under a new domain name.

They urged backers to ignore the message and cancel any direct debits that may have been set up.

The row is the latest falling out at the top of the new group that has yet to be named or hold an annual conference.

In July, has announced she is resigning from the party, saying she will be founding a new party with Corbyn. A move that took Corbyn and others involved in the project by surprise.

LONDON — Former British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said Thursday he is forming a new left-leaning political party to advocate “mass redistribution of wealth and power” and take on his former colleagues at the ballot box.

The new formation has a website — yourparty.uk — but does not yet have a name.

“It’s your party,” Corbyn said. “We’re going to decide [a name] when we’ve had all the responses, and so far the response rate has been massive.”

Corbyn said he hoped the new party would have its inaugural conference in the fall.

Corbyn, 76, led Labor to election defeats in 2017 and 2019, but the veteran socialist campaigner remains popular with many grassroots supporters. and the new party has the potential to further fragment British politics. The long-dominant Labor and Conservative parties now have challengers on both left and right, including the environmentalist Green Party and hard-right Reform UK.

Plans for a new party emerged earlier this month when lawmaker Zarah Sultana, who has been suspended from Labor for voting against the government, said she would “co-lead the founding of a new party” with Corbyn.

At the time, Corbyn did not confirm the news.

On Thursday he denied the party launch had been messy, saying the process was “democratic, it’s grassroots and it’s open.”

A longtime supporter of the Palestinians and critic of Israel, Corbyn was suspended from Labor in 2020 after Britain’s equalities watchdog found anti-Jewish prejudice had been allowed to spread within Labor while he was leader.

He was suspended after failing to fully accept the findings¸ claiming opponents had exaggerated the scale of antisemitism in Labor for “political reasons.”

Corbyn was reelected to Parliament last year as an independent.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer succeeded Corbyn as Labor leader in 2020 and dragged the party back toward the political center ground. He dropped Corbyn’s opposition to Britain’s nuclear weapons, strongly backed sending weapons to Ukraine and stressed the party’s commitment to balancing the books.

Starmer won a landslide election victory a year ago, but has struggled to maintain unity among Labor lawmakers as the government struggles to get a sluggish economy growing and invest in overstretched public services. He has been forced into a series of U-turns by his own lawmakers, including one on welfare reform that left his authority severely dented.

Lawless writes for the Associated Press.

New party set to challenge Labour from the left as government’s popularity wanes over welfare policy, war in Gaza.

United Kingdom lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn has announced he is launching a new political party to run to the left of the Labour party that he previously led.

On Thursday, Corbyn and Member of Parliament Zarah Sultana, who both became independents after leaving Labour, announced the new party, which did not yet have an officially registered name but was temporarily dubbed “Your Party” on its website.

In a joint statement, they said it was “time for a new kind of political party” focused on righting social injustices and combating a “rigged” system.

“The system is rigged when the government says there is no money for the poor, but billions for war,” the statement said, envisioning a party “rooted in our communities, trade unions and social movements”.

It further laid out broad policy objectives, including “mass redistribution of wealth and power” and a commitment to a  “free and independent Palestine”.

It’s time for a new kind of political party – one that belongs to you.

Sign up at https://t.co/0bhBHhWvVa. pic.twitter.com/UwjHBf4nZQ

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 24, 2025

The statement called on supporters to sign up to “be part of the founding process”, adding that an inaugural conference would be held to determine the party’s structure of leadership, direction and policies.

While the timeline of the party’s launch was not immediately clear, the announcement comes when Labour leader Keir Starmer has been haemorrhaging support after his party ended nearly two decades of Conservative rule in last year’s July general election.

Starmer has faced particular criticism for failing to unify his party behind signature legislation seeking to pare down the country’s welfare spending. In the end, Starmer passed a softened version of the bill, later suspending a handful of the Labour rebels who led opposition to the proposed cuts.

Starmer has also faced pressure to more firmly reset ties with Israel amid its war on Gaza and to recognise a Palestinian state.

The 76-year-old Corbyn, who took control of the opposition Labour party in 2015, had stepped down as leader after a trouncing by the Conservatives in the 2019 general election.

The Labour party under Starmer then suspended Corbyn in 2020 after he refused to fully accept the findings of a probe into claims that anti-Semitism had become rampant within Labour’s ranks under his leadership.

Corbyn maintained that anti-Semitism had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.

The avowed socialist, who was one of the most left-wing Labour party leaders in decades, ran as an independent in last year’s general election, winning his Islington North seat handily.

Sultana, meanwhile, has been a member of parliament for six years, and had been a member of Labour’s young, left-leaning flank.

She was also suspended from the party in 2024, after she broke from the party in her opposition to a cap on benefits for parents with more than two children.

In a post on X on Thursday, Sultana addressed the naming of the new party, which has generated some confusion.

“It’s not called Your Party!” she wrote.

Ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana has announced she is resigning from the party, saying she will be founding a new party with her former leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Sultana, the Coventry South MP stripped of the Labour whip last year for backing a move to scrap the two-child benefit cap, said the new party would be formed with other independent MPs and activists, aiming to challenge a “broken” Westminster system.

Corbyn has been contacted but has not confirmed his involvement to the BBC.

However last night, he had hinted he may form a new party, telling ITV’s Peston “there is a thirst for an alternative” and that a “grouping will come together”.

In a social media post, Sultana said the government is “an active participant in genocide” in Gaza – and highlighted growing poverty, the government’s position on welfare, and the cost of living as reasons for establishing her new party.

“Labour has completely failed to improve people’s lives. And across the political establishment, from Farage to Starmer, they smear people of conscience trying to stop a genocide in Gaza as terrorists.

“But the truth is clear: this government is an active participant in genocide. And the British people oppose it.”

Israel has strenuously denied accusations it is committing genocide or genocidal acts in Gaza.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has described the situation in Gaza as “appalling and intolerable” and repeatedly called for a ceasefire, as well as the release of hostages.

But some MPs want him to go further and describe the situation in Gaza as a genocide, claims currently being examined by the International Court of Justice.

Sultana also referenced the government’s welfare bill that passed this week, adding: “The government wants to make disabled people suffer; they just can’t decide how much.”

“We’re not an island of strangers,” she says, referencing a speech given by the prime minister in May about immigration, which he has since said he regrets. And she says at the next election, “the choice will be stark: socialism or barbarism”.

Asked for a response to her resignation and comments, a Labour Party spokesperson said: “In just 12 months, this Labour government has boosted wages, delivered an extra four million NHS appointments, opened 750 free breakfast clubs, secured three trade deals and four interest rate cuts lowering mortgage payments for millions.

“Only Labour can deliver the change needed to renew Britain.”

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told Sky News that Sultana had “always taken a very different view” from the Labour government on a range of issues.

Cooper rejected the Coventry South MP’s accusation that Labour was failing to improve people’s lives.

She cited falling waiting times in the NHS, the announcement of additional neighbourhood police officers, extending free school meals and strengthening renters’ rights as areas where the government was acting.

“These are real changes (that) have a real impact on people’s lives,” Cooper said.

Alastair Campbell, the former director of communications under Prime Minister Tony Blair, told the BBC he would not underestimate “how much the government’s handling of Gaza has really played into this sense of what is Labour about?”.

He said: “There feels to me to be a gap between the scale of the challenges facing the country as the public feel them, and the sorts of policy responses coming forward.”

Sultana was elected as a Labour MP at the 2024 general election but was suspended not long after, and has since sat in the Commons as an independent.

She was suspended with seven other Labour MPs, including former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, for defying the government over its two-child benefit cap.

Four of the rebels have since returned to Labour, but Sultana and McDonnell remain independents.

Despite her suspension, she had remained a member of the Labour Party.

Responding to Sultana’s announcement, McDonnell posted on social media: “I am dreadfully sorry to lose Zarah from the Labour Party.

“The people running Labour at the moment need to ask themselves why a young, articulate, talented, extremely dedicated socialist feels she now has no home in the Labour Party and has to leave.”

The BBC understands McDonnell will not be joining the new party.

Labour MP Kim Johnson, who sits on the left of the party, voted alongside Sultana to oppose the government on its welfare bill and its decision to ban the Palestine Action group.

She said it was “sad that the party is losing a young and passionate politician” but added that she was committed to remaining in Labour.

Last year, Corbyn united with four other MPs elected as independents to establish an alliance in the House of Commons.

All five of the group beat Labour candidates in July’s election with their pro-Palestinian stance in constituencies with large Muslim populations.

Speaking to ITV’s Peston programme, he said he and fellow pro-Gaza independents would “come together” and “there will be an alternative”.

He said it would be based on “peace rather than war”.

His alliance includes MPs Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain, and Iqbal Mohamed.