I thought things were quietening down, but no, here we have a display of a tantrum from the resentful and twisted who didn't get what they wanted. It feels reminiscent of a Trump-like call for an insurrection.
I'm not sure who the twisted and resentful are: the majority at the Liverpool and Dundee conferences that voted for grass-roots organisation and dual membership, or the people in Your Many who lost those votes, ignore the conference, and are still not organising branches while last year's 800,000 names grow cold in a database. Either way, it seems that more democracy would have avoided what we've seen in Scotland, where YP paid for the conference, Jeremy and Zarah spoke at it and launched its organisation, and now the Scottish executive is forced to resign because it has been blocked at every attempt to implement the conference decisions.
Great summary comrade, as a (now former) member of ISEC I couldn't have summarised things better myself.
I'm afraid I disagree on the urgency of a (re)founding conference, though: the obvious question is "with what money", but another question is whether members really want to rehash founding documents two months after they already ratified some. To my mind, we should just proceed using the existing documents - amended slightly to reflect the realities of the new party - and focus on delivering the things members have been clamouring for: an elected Scottish leadership, a membership system allowing local activists to connect, branch recognition and funding.
Only once all of that is in place, ideally by autumn, does it make sense to hold a new conference, and that conference should focus primarily on policy rather than procedure so that we have a clear message to take into our communities and can hit the ground running in the 2027 local elections.
The treatment Scotland is being subjected to is disgusting. I found it particularly horrifying that Niall was threatened with disciplinary action for raising points of order - which he has a perfect right to!
May I please make a note on sortition here, though? Carried out properly, random selection (or, more sophisticatedly, sortition and stratification according to demographic criteria) is a good instrument of collective intelligence because it provides a representative cross-section of the membership. It is very democratic also, in that sense.
(There are technical reasons to question the process for membership organisations, and demand transparency on it, because (i) random selection is only representative for high sample numbers, and (ii) the demographic characteristics of the membership must be known in order to be able to stratify correctly, since they will likely be different from the general population. But this is not the issue here.)
We have seen in other other reports, like Inacio Vieira's, that Karie Murphy has interfered in the process and sieved out members who were selected by sortition whose political views she doesn't like. So we cannot have confidence that the sortition process has been performed neutrally, that it has not been interfered with to provide a subset of members who will provide the 'right' decisions, i.e. decisions acceptable to the YP leadership.
In my view, the YP leadership is giving sortition a thoroughly bad name because they are using it in a way that cannot be trusted.
I'm not opposed to sortition in itself. However, in Your Party, it has been gerrymandered and imposed to overrule more authoritative decisions of the Scottish membership.
Thank you very much indeed for such a clear and hard hitting analysis, which I completely agree with.
A sad post-script, and a good example of the mood in Scotland. The resignation letter of other comnrades in my branch: https://x.com/Sofasofa8/status/2054137082096840908/photo/1
Your Party officials are resorting to pathetic gaslighting: https://thoughtsofaleicestersocialist.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/cassi-bellingham-on-your-party-democracy-the-case-of-scotland/
You chose to leave. Stop lying.
Sharon, I'm not sure who you are speaking to. I've not left anything.
I thought things were quietening down, but no, here we have a display of a tantrum from the resentful and twisted who didn't get what they wanted. It feels reminiscent of a Trump-like call for an insurrection.
I'm not sure who the twisted and resentful are: the majority at the Liverpool and Dundee conferences that voted for grass-roots organisation and dual membership, or the people in Your Many who lost those votes, ignore the conference, and are still not organising branches while last year's 800,000 names grow cold in a database. Either way, it seems that more democracy would have avoided what we've seen in Scotland, where YP paid for the conference, Jeremy and Zarah spoke at it and launched its organisation, and now the Scottish executive is forced to resign because it has been blocked at every attempt to implement the conference decisions.
Great summary comrade, as a (now former) member of ISEC I couldn't have summarised things better myself.
I'm afraid I disagree on the urgency of a (re)founding conference, though: the obvious question is "with what money", but another question is whether members really want to rehash founding documents two months after they already ratified some. To my mind, we should just proceed using the existing documents - amended slightly to reflect the realities of the new party - and focus on delivering the things members have been clamouring for: an elected Scottish leadership, a membership system allowing local activists to connect, branch recognition and funding.
Only once all of that is in place, ideally by autumn, does it make sense to hold a new conference, and that conference should focus primarily on policy rather than procedure so that we have a clear message to take into our communities and can hit the ground running in the 2027 local elections.
The treatment Scotland is being subjected to is disgusting. I found it particularly horrifying that Niall was threatened with disciplinary action for raising points of order - which he has a perfect right to!
May I please make a note on sortition here, though? Carried out properly, random selection (or, more sophisticatedly, sortition and stratification according to demographic criteria) is a good instrument of collective intelligence because it provides a representative cross-section of the membership. It is very democratic also, in that sense.
(There are technical reasons to question the process for membership organisations, and demand transparency on it, because (i) random selection is only representative for high sample numbers, and (ii) the demographic characteristics of the membership must be known in order to be able to stratify correctly, since they will likely be different from the general population. But this is not the issue here.)
We have seen in other other reports, like Inacio Vieira's, that Karie Murphy has interfered in the process and sieved out members who were selected by sortition whose political views she doesn't like. So we cannot have confidence that the sortition process has been performed neutrally, that it has not been interfered with to provide a subset of members who will provide the 'right' decisions, i.e. decisions acceptable to the YP leadership.
In my view, the YP leadership is giving sortition a thoroughly bad name because they are using it in a way that cannot be trusted.
Christie's report:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lZ19ndGVGfJstDlc5UewEXud2tz-9EUhmkCpy4sizfY/mobilebasic?fbclid=IwdGRjcARJb8JleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEe35YcOHdt9fcOPCtS2SEkK25TcriDBAM5PraUVMdrgZWqzvq935C9dTi1ens_aem_d2HKrX2Fz2krzUb0cjXlXg
I'm not opposed to sortition in itself. However, in Your Party, it has been gerrymandered and imposed to overrule more authoritative decisions of the Scottish membership.