“Feel Good or Win?” The Brutal Internal Election That Will Make or Break Your Party

A political party is not a debating society. It is the voice of the people shaped to make change.

Your Party stands at a crossroads that will determine whether it becomes a serious threat to the right-wing and Starmerite establishment or merely another footnote in the tragicomic history of British left-wing failure. The choice facing members in the upcoming Central Executive Committee elections is not about personalities. It is about physics. Do we build a machine capable of exerting force, or do we build a sanctuary for our own consciences?

Labour Heartlands is unequivocally endorsing The Many slate, alongside the independent socialist Sam Gorst. We do so not with starry-eyed enthusiasm, but with the cold calculation of observers who have watched too many movements devour themselves from within.

This is not a beauty contest. It is an autopsy of a movement that has not yet died, but is currently deciding whether to swallow the poison.

The Luxury of Chaos

Let us be ruthless with our terms. The opposing Grassroots Left slate, heavily populated by the Democratic Socialists of Your Party (DSYP), offers a platform of “maximum member democracy.” On paper, this is seductive. In political reality, it is a suicide pact.

The Grassroots Left slate is backed by Zarah Sultana, whose politics Labour Heartlands has criticised extensively. Sultana’s advocacy of gender ideology over material reality, her role in what we have described as a “purity spiral,” and her apparent preference for ideological litmus tests over coalition-building represent precisely the kind of liberal creep that has infected modern leftism.

The DSYP’s own literature reveals the problem. The Weekly Worker reported that during the formation of the Grassroots Left slate, the DSYP presented a “detailed logistics plan” at a stuffed meeting in January 2026 that had “the various posts on the ‘campaign team’ firmly sewn up: most of them members of the DSYP, plus James Giles as head of comms, and Zarah Sultana’s husband Craig Lloyd and Max Shanly as joint ‘campaign directors.'” This “surprise” plan alienated other left groups, leading Counterfire and the Platform for a Democratic Party to withdraw. The DSYP talks about democracy but practices bureaucratic manoeuvring.

The DSYP’s intellectual architect, Max Shanly, claims in his biography to have “eighteen years’ experience in the workers’ movement.” Given that Shanly is in his mid-thirties, we must assume this experience began in the playground. But the bravado masks a dangerous ideology: “process socialism.”

According to reports in the Weekly Worker and the New Statesman, the DSYP vision involves decision-making by sortition (lottery systems) and a “party republic” structure designed to paralyse leadership. This is the politics of the student union. It prioritises the individual activist’s right to endless debate over the collective’s need to strike.

When you strip away the radical aesthetics, this is liberalism in disguise. It elevates procedure above outcome. It is a structure designed to make its members feel virtuous rather than to make the ruling class tremble.

The Material Reality Check

Contrast this with The Many. This slate is not a collection of theorists; it is a cabinet of veterans. Look at the names. Jeremy Corbyn. Laura Smith. Louise Regan. Shockat Adam. Ayoub Khan.

These are people who have held office. They have stared down the media. They have run national unions. They understand that a political party is not a therapy group; it is a machine.

Take Laura Smith. She did not just tweet about socialism; she served as the MP for Crewe and Nantwich, defeating a Conservative minister by 48 votes in a seat Labour had lost years prior. In 2018, she called for a general strike from the conference floor, a move that terrified the party right. By 2024, she was suspended from a Labour council group for the “crime” of voting against an austerity budget. She understands the cost of principles because she has paid it.

Look at Fadel Takrouri. A former Labour regional director, he was the only senior Palestinian official in the party machine before being sacked by Keir Starmer. Skwawkbox reported his removal was a targeted purge by the right to retake control of the West Midlands. Regional directors do not write essays on “democratic centralism”; they count votes, manage budgets, and deploy resources. We need that competence.

Consider Louise Regan. As National Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a former NEU president, she has mobilised hundreds of thousands of people on the streets. She knows that mass movements require discipline, not just sentiment.

These are people the establishment fears enough to destroy. That is the only endorsement that matters.

The Material Reality Check

We also know some of these candidates personally. Terry Deans (South West) is a Royal Navy veteran who was apolitical until 2017. He is not chasing a career; he is chasing justice. Chelley Ryan (South East) is a carer fighting for SEND provision and navigating the brutal reality of the benefits system.

These are not professional identity politicians. They are working-class socialists forged in the fire of austerity. They do not view politics as a space for “self-expression.” They view it as a tool for survival.

The Grassroots Left slate, backed by Zarah Sultana, represents a drift toward the “purity spiral”, a politics where cultural signalling often supersedes material analysis. We cannot afford a leadership that spends six months debating the gender neutrality of the standing orders while the right wing marches through our towns.

The Sam Gorst Factor

Finally, there is the matter of integrity. Labour Heartlands strongly endorses Sam Gorst, standing as an independent for the North West.

Gorst was reportedly approached to join a slate before being manoeuvred out in favour of another candidate, the typical, sordid horse-trading of factional politics. Instead of retreating, he stood alone.

His statement is a breath of Bennite fresh air: “My loyalty is to socialism, not to any individual, faction or internal grouping… I do not believe slates strengthen our movement.”

A serving councillor and trade unionist who helped break a twenty-year Labour stranglehold in his ward, Gorst represents the “honest broker.” He is accountable only to the membership and the working class. He is exactly the kind of independent thinker a healthy executive committee requires to prevent groupthink.

And then there is Naomi Wimborne-idrissi. If you want to talk about courage, look at the woman who walked into the lion’s den of Starmer’s National Executive Committee and refused to flinch. A lifelong trade unionist in the NUT and NUJ, and a founder of Jewish Voice for Labour, she was elected to Labour’s ruling body by a landslide of member votes, only to be purged on her 70th birthday.

Why? Because as a Jewish socialist, her very existence disrupted the establishment’s narrative. She does not deal in the theoretical “identity” politics of the student union; she deals in the hard, unglamorous work of anti-racist solidarity. She has faced down the most sophisticated smear campaign in modern British political history and remained standing. She brings the kind of steel that Your Party desperately needs.

Piara Mia… (North West)

Piara Miah represents exactly what a Central Executive Committee should be built from. Not careerism, not factional manoeuvring, but lived experience, moral clarity, and serious community roots.

As Interim Co-Chair of Your Party Wirral, Piara helped build a functioning local group from scratch in just six months. Not on paper, but in real life. Events organised, people brought together, collaboration made practical rather than rhetorical.

She left Labour not for convenience, but for conscience. Labour’s complicity in the Gaza genocide was a line she would not cross. That refusal to compromise is not a weakness. It is the bedrock of trust.

Her experience in community outreach, health settings, and support work is not abstract. It is forged through hardship, including years spent in Alder Hey during her daughter’s leukaemia treatment. She knows, personally, what collective care looks like when it works, and what society owes to families when it fails.

Piara understands that politics begins long before election day. It begins with listening, with showing up, with earning trust in marginalised and disengaged communities. On the CEC, she would bring integrity, accountability, and a relentless focus on empowering local groups to win people over before the campaign even starts.

For Labour Heartlands readers, Piara Miah is not a symbol. She is substance. A serious candidate for a serious moment.

The Liberal Trap

The “Grassroots Left” slate represents a creeping liberalism that has infected modern leftism, a belief that “structure” is inherently oppressive. This is false. Structure is the only thing that protects the weak.

Without strong, central leadership, a party becomes dominated by the loudest voices, the most online, and the most privileged—those with the leisure time to attend endless meetings. That is not working-class politics; that is hobbyism.

The working class does not need “maximum member democracy”. It needs rent controls. It needs a wealth tax. It needs an end to the slaughter in Gaza. It needs a party that is outwardly focused, disciplined, and deadly serious about taking power from the billionaires.

The Many understands this. Their platform is rooted in material reality: public ownership, peace, justice. They are proposing a “broad social alliance”, not a narrow sect. They are the only slate that looks like a threat to the Establishment.

A Duty to Win

Endorsements for Your Party’s leadership elections are now open!

Together, we can build a mass party that unleashes the power of our communities everywhere.

With @TheManyYP, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Get your endorsements in now!pic.twitter.com/Ahlh9CmEGK

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) January 22, 2026

Some will say we are being too harsh. That there are good comrades on the other slate. Perhaps there are. But intention is irrelevant in politics; consequences are everything.

Do you want ideological purity tests, or do you want a broad coalition that can actually threaten the establishment?

If Your Party elects the Grassroots Left, it will become an irrelevance within a year. It will fracture into warring cliques, consumed by heresy hunts and procedural wrangling. It will be a gift to Keir Starmer and the other right-wing parties.

If you elect The Many and Sam Gorst, you have a fighting chance. Build a fortress. Create a political home for the millions who have been disenfranchised.

The choice is stark. The consequences are real.

The fundamental question is: “Do you want to feel good, or do you want to win?”

Vote for The Many. Vote for Sam Gorst. Vote for a party that looks outward, not inward.

The time for purity is over. The time for discipline has arrived, and to build Your Party, you will need it.