Jeremy Corbyn's Fruitcake Party: How a Liverpool Conference Descended Into Complete Chaos (2025).
A brutally honest look at Your Party's shambolic founding conference.
Anyone who’s been reading this blog for any length of time will have discovered that I do research - otherwise people would get the impression I didn’t know what I was talking about. Which is generally the case.
Also, for those who don’t know, when I start doing homework, it taxes my brain so much that I usually take half a bottle of paracetamol and lie down afterwards for some considerable time, just to get over it. Because I’m not used to research, or homework, as they call it. It taxes what’s left of my brain cells, which are being reduced by the million every time I write another blog article.
So it brings me to the latest head explosion from reading the news. And what’s left of my brain cells are dancing around like they’re on MDMA at some crazy rave, before somehow stumbling back to their original positions so I can function again. You know, like a normal person.
Now, is it just me, or is the world becoming more ludicrous by the minute?
And if anything I write after this makes sense, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
So what brought on this latest cerebral catastrophe? Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party held their founding conference in Liverpool this weekend, 29-30 November 2025. And it was a complete disaster.
The Fruitcake Party Is Born.
Anyway, so here I am in the wee small hours of this morning, and the name Zarah Sultana popped into my head. Now, whenever I hear the word “sultana,” I think of a fruit cake. And I’m liking the idea of Jeremy Corbyn’s new party as a band of random ingredients, with a Sultana to make the fruit cake. That sounds perfect to me. But as we’ll see from their Liverpool conference this weekend, throwing random ingredients together doesn’t guarantee you’ll end up with anything edible.
Apart from the Sultana, it’s probably got a quantity of nuts - the conspiracists who think everything’s a plot by the establishment. Some mixed peel - the perpetually bitter and aggrieved who nobody really wants at the party. And a few cherries on top - the media-friendly faces they wheel out for interviews who look decorative but serve no actual purpose.
All mixed together into a cake that ends up half-baked.
They were looking for a name for their new socialist party, apparently. Well, now they’ve got one. As far as I’m concerned, they’re officially the Fruitcake Party.
The Liverpool Conference: What Actually Happened.
This inaugural conference was supposed to be the Fruitcake Party’s big moment. Over the course of two days in Liverpool, Corbyn and Sultana’s new left-wing party were meant to decide an official name (Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance, or For The Many), choose between single leader or collective leadership, vote on founding documents, debate whether to even call themselves “socialist,” and decide whether to back independent candidates in the May 2026 local elections.
Expected attendance? 13,000 members selected by lottery. Actual attendance? About 2,500. They started with four Independent MPs and lost two before the conference even began - Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed both quit over “persistent infighting.”
So what did this car crash of a political party achieve?
Well, they’ve certainly achieved something. Bookings for local Liverpool hotels. A fair amount of rail and coach fares for people travelling in. Increased sales for the coffee van outside the venue serving “speciality coffee” to disgruntled delegates. A very healthy amount of takings on alcohol sales - because let’s face it, you’d need a drink after listening to Corbyn and Sultana argue about who gets to control the money. Packed restaurants in the city centre. Overtime for security staff dealing with expelled Socialist Workers Party members. And presumably a decent commission for whoever hired out the ACC Liverpool venue.
So it actually achieved quite a lot for anyone who wasn’t directly involved in the conference itself. Liverpool’s hospitality sector must be thrilled.
And having achieved relatively fuck all at this year’s conference, they’ll presumably be back next year to argue about the same things and achieve even less - if the party lasts that long and they’re still speaking to each other.
Friday night: Corbyn and Sultana held rival events. Sultana wasn’t invited to Corbyn’s “evening of politics and culture.” The general secretary of the Socialist Workers Party spoke at Sultana’s rally. Then, Socialist Workers Party members got expelled from the main conference.
Saturday: Zarah Sultana boycotted the conference hall, standing outside, condemning the party’s “toxic culture” and calling it a “witch hunt” after her supporter James Giles was denied entry. When Sky News asked if Sultana was his friend, Jeremy Corbyn refused to use the word, calling her instead a “colleague in Parliament.”
Corbyn gave a speech calling for unity, saying they needed to “learn from our problems, learn from our mistakes, learn from overreaching.” Which is quite something when your problems include publicly fighting with your co-founder, losing a third of your MPs before the conference even started, and having £1.3 million tied up in legal disputes over party donations.
The conference got heckled during debates about whether to use the word “socialist.” Sultana accused the party of “leaks to the right-wing press, legal threats, bullying, intimidation and acts of sabotage.” Corbyn was confronted by attendees demanding he take a stronger anti-Zionist stance.
Sunday: Well, we’re still waiting to see what they manage to achieve today. Perhaps they’ll finally decide on a name. Though given the weekend so far, they’ll probably spend the day arguing about whether “indecision” or “prevarication” better describes their founding principles. Maybe they should just call themselves the Procrastination Party and be done with it.
Concrete achievements: Absolutely nothing that’s been made public, and they’ll probably have to come back and do it all again next year to take the party a stage further.
The £1.3 Million Question.
Well, they managed to raise £1.3 million in donations - £800,000 from initial donations when they announced in July, and another £500,000 from Sultana’s “unauthorised” membership portal launch in September.
The problem? Nobody can actually access the money.
The Unauthorised Membership Portal.
When the Fruitcake Party was first announced in July, donations had to go somewhere while they waited for official Electoral Commission registration. So they set up MOU Operations Ltd to manage the funds temporarily.
Then Sultana launched her own membership portal in September - without telling Corbyn. That brought in 22,000 members and roughly £500,000, all processed through MOU Operations Ltd.
Corbyn told supporters to ignore the “unauthorised email” and cancel their direct debits. Sultana accused him of running a “sexist boys’ club.” Both threatened legal action.
MOU Operations: Where The Money Went.
In October, the three original directors of MOU Operations resigned en masse, making Sultana the sole director and giving her control of all £1.3 million. She offered to transfer £600,000 in instalments. Corbyn’s team rejected this, demanding the full amount immediately.
Sultana says she can’t transfer the money without seeing the party’s constitution and financial scheme. The party says the draft constitution is a public document anyway.
Conference Organisers Left On Shoestring Budget.
So who’s funding this shambles? Ordinary people whose money is now locked in a legal battle between two co-founders who won’t speak to each other except through lawyers. Conference organisers had to work on a “shoestring budget” while hundreds of thousands of pounds sat beyond their reach.
The Death Spiral.
The polls tell you everything you need to know about UK politics and this particular shambles. When the Fruitcake Party launched in July, 18% of people said they’d consider voting for them. Now it’s down to 12%. Meanwhile, the Green Party under new leader Zack Polanski is polling at 28%.
As one political expert put it, the party is “at risk of being irrelevant very quickly.” That’s bearing in mind, of course, that it was relevant in the first place.
The Guardian reports that if members vote for a single leader rather than collective leadership, Sultana will run against Corbyn in the leadership election. So after all this chaos at the Liverpool conference - the infighting, the legal threats, the boycotts, the expulsions, the rival events, the public sniping - they’re setting themselves up for another internal battle.
But at least they’ve finally got a proper name.
The Fruitcake Party. Half-baked, full of nuts, left on the shelf to go stale while everyone argues about who baked it, and nobody really wants it.
What Happens Next.
The conference continues today with votes on party name and leadership structure still pending. If members choose single leadership, Sultana is expected to challenge Corbyn for the position. Meanwhile, the £1.3 million remains locked in legal disputes with no resolution in sight.
The party’s polling has already dropped from 18% to 12% since July, while the Green Party surges to 28% under new leader Zack Polanski.
British politics just got a little more ludicrous.
Credits and Sources:
Research compiled from multiple news sources,
including The Guardian, New Statesman, BBC News, ITV News, LBC, GB News, Al Jazeera, The Times of Israel, and various political reporting outlets covering the Your Party founding conference in Liverpool, 29-30 November 2025. Electoral Commission registration details, YouGov polling data, and party membership figures verified through publicly available sources.
All errors, brain cell casualties, and fruit cake metaphors are entirely my own.
The Almighty Gob blog attempts to cover Bristol City Council and UK political dysfunction through rigorous research and satirical commentary.