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Today in Focus

Your Party: leaderless or just hopeless?

Today in Focus

The Guardian

Daily News, News

4.65.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Geraldine McKelvie reports from the ground at the inaugural Your Party conference, while Peter Walker talks to a number of insiders about the divisions that have beset the party until now. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is The Guardian.

0:09.0

Today, we're in Liverpool to see if your party can get it together.

0:25.7

Now is the moment you've all been waiting for. It's taken five months, countless regional assemblies and a lot of bickering.

0:31.6

But finally, this weekend, in a conference hall in Liverpool, it came down to a vote.

0:35.9

We have principles, and above all, we have a name.

0:39.2

17,000 people have spoken and the permanent name for the party temporarily known as your party is...

0:46.0

Your party is the name of your party.

0:50.2

The next big question was, who should lead it?

0:53.3

Jeremy Corbyn, Tsar al-o Sultanah, both of them at once.

0:57.2

You voted for a collective leadership.

1:02.1

Ultimately, members decided they wouldn't have a single leader at all.

1:06.5

The party will be led by committee.

1:08.9

But will it end the chaos?

1:14.3

Guardian Repres. party will be led by committee. But will it end the chaos? Guardian reporter Geraldine McKelvie was in Liverpool on the weekend for your party's conference,

1:19.4

and you found members disappointed but determined to make your party work.

1:23.4

So what do you think about the fact that your party has had a fairly chaotic start to life? I mean, I think the organisers have made a right mess of it. I do think a lot of the organisational mistakes have been very regrettable, and I don't want to see the same people in charge of the party. So one of my friends, she describes the process of creating a new party, a bit like giving birth to a child. Like the process is very difficult and by the end of it you've got something that you sort of love

1:47.7

and nurture all the rest of it.

1:49.2

I think it's a moment. You know, I think this is a really historic moment.

1:58.0

But can a party so mired in disagreement really unite the left, especially with Zach Polanski and the Greens on the up?

2:05.6

And when its inaugural conference began with one of its founders boycotting proceedings?

2:10.7

From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in Focus.

2:14.1

Can a leaderless party really hope for electoral success?

...

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