The New Statesman

After months of deliberation, it's been decided.

It's not our party, it's not their party, it's your party.

This weekend, thousands of the new left party's delegates flooded into a conference centre in Liverpool

to try and decide the future

life and fate of the movement. But in keeping with the last five months of trials and tribulations,

infighting and spats between the co-founding camps of Zara Sultan and Jeremy Corbyn, things

didn't run smoothly. In fact, Sultana ended up boycotting the first day of her own conference. So, is it her party or is it his party? And is this really what the left in Britain want? I'm Olly Dougmore. This is the New States from podcast, and I'm joined now in the studio by our political correspondent, Megan Kenyon, who spent the weekend in the throes of the socialist spectacle.

Megan, sum it up for me in three words.

Um, chaotic.

Mm.

Uh, surreal.

And, I guess, um, sort of hopeful.

Yeah.

Tell me about surreal. As in, you didn't necessarily expect it would ever actually happen.

No, definitely not. And I was sat there in the conference hall waiting for Jeremy Corman to speak, looking at the banners that said your party on the stage, looking at the fact that sort of they'd got this packed out conference hall.

And I was like, oh my goodness, sort of five months ago, this was kind of a Twitter post that I got sent when I was standing outside the pub having a pint that Zara Sultanah had posted.

And now it's a party that's hosting a conference.

And, you know, you can sort of say what you like about how chaotic it's been. They did actually manage to put on an event and also now have a constitution and standing orders

and members who are participating in the creation of this new party and a leadership structure.

So I just was sort of like, oh my goodness, there were so many times I wrote stories that

was like, is this the end of your party? And it wasn't.

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