Hello and welcome to ACFM, the home of the world. Hello and welcome to ACFM, the home of the weird left.

My name's Kea Milbin, and I'm joined as usual by my very good friend Nadia Idol.

Hello.

And my other very good friend, Jeremy Gilbert.

Hello.

And today we're talking about parties. Woo-hoo. Party. Hello. And today we're talking about parties. Woohoo. Party. Party.

Now, guys, why are we talking about parties at this moment? I really can't think of why.

Well, because obviously, for people listening in the far future, listening to this as an archive of radical culture in the 2020s, yes, one of the main preoccupations of people on the British left, and even of finger-waggers on the American left over the past few weeks in, it's now second of

October, 2025, has been the various kind of prevarications and consternations around the

difficult formation of a new political party to be led by Jeremy Corbyn and question mark or or and no one.

So that's the main, and that's the provocation, isn't it, for thinking about this, the idea of the party.

But also, obviously, we wanted to think about the relationship between that idea of the party. Another ideas of the party, but also obviously we wanted to think about the relationship between that

idea of the party and other ideas of the party. So, for example, my much beloved dance party

that I've been organising and hosting and DJing at in London with my friend Cyril and

Tedric had its 20th anniversary this summer. It's now been going for 20 years,

and that is a very sort of unique type of things have been doing with oneself. It's absolutely not

why I ever thought I would be doing with my life from my 30s into my 50s. So there's obviously

interesting things to think about there, given that collective joy is always one of our

themes and in a sort of circular way we might want to think about well can a political party be a site of

collective joy and emotional investment I mean given that quite often I mean we we have sort of

wagged down fingers at people who sort of overly invested emotionally in the

idea of the political party in the form of the Labour Party. So there's a lot to talk about.

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