The Sultana Doctrine: recipe for an ultra-left disaster

Key policies: ditching IHRA and sending Starmer to The Hague

Oliver Eagleton has been quizzing Zarah Sultana, about her plans and motivations for leaving Labour and setting up the Your Party, which she has appointed herself “co-leader” of. With the project already split into two camps — over relations with the Greens, democracy in the formation process, and class vs identity — in this edition of Conflict & Democracy I’m going to look at the implications of what Sultana is saying — for anti-fascists, socialists and the wider labour movement.

In terms of political philosophy, she’s not going to give Antonio Gramsci a run for his money, but it’s worth a deep-dive…

The Early Years

Sultana describes her entry into Labour politics as coming via the Labour community organising group:

“We campaigned on local issues, ran trainings, identified leaders and built community power. From there I had the opportunity to run in the European election and then in the general election of 2019, which is how I became an MP.”

I campaigned with Sultana on election day 2019, so there is more to say: Sultana was the chosen candidate of Unite, selected during via the usual horse-trading that goes on…