“Liberalism in a Red Dress”: Sultana is Shrinking the Socialist Tent

This is not socialism, it’s liberalism in a red dress. Sultana’s Purity Politics…

Zarah Sultana’s recent interview revealed a troubling authoritarian streak beneath her carefully burnished image of grassroots democracy. Before Your Party has held a single meeting or drafted a single policy, she has already drawn rigid ideological boundaries. “There is no room for socially conservative views in a socialist left-wing party. Period,” she declared, before Nish Kumar sneered that those who disagree should “join the Conservative Party and watch a Ricky Gervais Netflix special.” So much for the democratic part of democratic socialism.

But what she really said was there’s no room for anyone that’s not Pro-Trans…

Sultana's Purity Politics
This is not socialism, it's liberalism in a red dress?
So much for grass roots democracy… #YourParty @zarahsultana #WomensRights pic.twitter.com/IGm8rsDT12

— Labour Heartlands (@Labourheartland) September 9, 2025

The sleight of hand here is plain. The dividing line for entry into her “movement” is not opposition to austerity, nor resistance to monopoly capitalism, nor any of the material struggles that once defined socialism. It is conformity to a liberal position on transgender ideology. Class war has been quietly displaced by culture war.

And listen to the language she uses to enforce it:

“I’ve always stood with the trans community, and I always will. The same forces targeting migrants and Muslims are attacking LGBTQ+ people, especially trans people. Our safety is in solidarity. None of us are free until all of us are free. That’s the new party we’re building. Bigotry has no place in it.”

I’ve always stood with the trans community, and I always will.

The same forces targeting migrants and Muslims are attacking LGBTQ+ people, especially trans people.

Our safety is in solidarity. None of us are free until all of us are free.

That’s the new party we’re building.…

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) August 29, 2025

Stirring words, until you notice the sleight of tongue. In one sweeping gesture, racism, Islamophobia, and legitimate concerns about sex-based rights are folded into the same toxic category of “bigotry.” Women raising questions about safe spaces, fairness in sport, or the Orwellian erasure of language itself are dismissed as indistinguishable from far-right cranks.

This ideological narrowing has real consequences. Entire swathes of women and feminists, many of them lifelong socialists, now find themselves cast out of yet another left-wing movement, simply for defending sex-based rights. They are told they no longer belong because they will not affirm that biological sex is negotiable. Words central to womanhood are being erased from policy documents and public discourse, yet to raise concern is to risk being branded heretical.

The New Heretics: Lifelong Socialists Exiled for Defending Sex-Based Rights

Socialism without women’s rights is not socialism at all; it is liberalism in a red dress. By smearing women’s rights activists and feminists as bigots for defending their hard-won protections, Sultana is not building a movement; she is silencing one before it has even begun. That is not democracy. It is the very Orwellian doublespeak she claims to oppose.

The UK Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Equality Act 2010 offered a lesson in how to navigate such contested ground. It affirmed that “woman” and “man” refer to biological sex, while simultaneously safeguarding protections for transgender people under the characteristic of gender reassignment. In other words, balance is possible. Rights can be defended without erasing one group to validate another.

But Sultana’s politics allows no such nuance. Her approach demands total ideological conformity, as if socialism were not a tradition of debate, but a creed to be policed. This is a profound misunderstanding of Marx’s insight that “social being determines consciousness.” Socialism begins with material reality, the lives and conditions of ordinary people, not with purity tests on contested cultural questions.

History shows where this path leads. Across Europe and North America, left-wing parties that placed liberal cultural signalling above economic populism have watched their working-class support collapse. Voters concerned with inequality and corporate exploitation drifted rightward, seduced by movements that at least recognised their cultural unease, however cynically. The left, meanwhile, busied itself with excommunication.

Sultana is not wrong that right-wing think tanks exploit these debates. Some do. But it is equally true that much of the unease arises organically from people who rightly fear losing hard-won protections. To dismiss all dissent as “funded bigotry” is to miss the deeper truth.

Indeed, few on the left will acknowledge that the very ideology Sultana insists on enforcing has been lavishly bankrolled by American soft power. Stonewall UK’s most significant funder in recent years has been the US State Department’s Global Equality Fund, funnelling more than £500,000 between 2021 and 2025. Imperialism wears many guises.

A mature socialist politics would separate the genuine from the manufactured, address the real concerns, while exposing the cynical manipulations. Instead, Sultana treats all dissent as equally illegitimate, demanding conformity to positions that many potential allies find problematic.

Sultana’s says the right thing on many things but why is her “line in the sand” not about those other things, things like stopping the genocide in Gaza, fighting austerity, or taking back our industries into public hands? Instead, she’s planted her flag on trans rights. And that’s the tell. When a supposed socialist leader makes identity politics the hill to die on, it’s not socialism, it’s liberal theatre. The real struggle is class struggle: housing, wages, jobs, healthcare, and peace. Everything else is a diversion.

The tragedy is that real socialist alternatives remain desperately needed. Corporate power continues its relentless expansion while working people face declining living standards and diminishing security. Climate change demands massive public investment and economic transformation. Inequality reaches levels not seen since the 1920s. These challenges require broad coalitions and democratic movements capable of winning elections and governing effectively.

The tragedy is that socialism’s strength has always lain in its breadth. A real socialist movement welcomes all who oppose austerity and monopoly capitalism, whether they are culturally liberal or socially conservative, so long as they stand against exploitation. Its task is to build bridges across difference, not burn them in the name of purity.

Sultana’s version offers the opposite: an exclusive club of the like-minded, where membership requires not solidarity in the fight against capital, but loyalty to liberal orthodoxy. Such a project may generate applause on Twitter, but it will never challenge power.

I suggested when Your Party was first announced that perhaps the greatest threat to this new party’s success lies not in external opposition but in the internal contradictions that plague left-wing movements. The rapid influx of members will inevitably include not just committed activists but fringe elements, ideological extremists, and potential saboteurs whose presence could discredit the entire enterprise.

The particular danger comes from ultra-liberal factions and identity politics obsessives who, even in good faith, risk painting “mockery all over the face” of the movement. Their tendency to prioritise symbolic gestures over material change, to fracture coalitions over ideological purity, and to alienate working-class voters through cultural signalling could transform a genuinely popular movement into an elite hobby horse that confirms every stereotype about the disconnected left.

Zara Sultana’s vision for a member-led party was exciting, but her pledge to push a “pro-trans policy” risks sinking it before launch. The left has failed to have this debate honestly: women’s concerns on sex-based rights are smeared as “transphobia” and silenced. Ignore the elephant in the room, and Your Party could very well go the way of Sturgeon’s SNP. If this project really wants to do politics differently, it must start by allowing women to speak.

If socialism cannot defend material reality, then it is not socialism at all, it is liberalism in disguise and here’s the sobering truth…The left will not be rebuilt on illusions, only on reality, class, and the courage to speak the truth…

Without doubt, British socialism must rediscover its democratic and materialist roots. That means welcoming all who share commitments to economic justice while allowing debate on other questions. It means protecting women’s rights rather than burning them. Most importantly, it means remembering that socialism’s purpose is not to enforce liberal orthodoxy but to transform the economic structures that oppress working people.

The shame of it all is that Sultana’s vision offers not socialism but its opposite: an exclusive club that prioritises cultural signalling over material change. The working class deserves better. So does democracy itself.