What does Adnan Hussain's departure mean for Your Party and the British left?

Adnan Hussain, one of the six MPs in the "steering group" organising the founding of a new left-wing party, has announced he is leaving in a move likely to have dramatic consequences for the British left.

The announcement by the independent MP for Blackburn on Friday afternoon indicated he believes the party is not pluralistic or broad-based enough to accomodate him and his politics.

This is the latest in a long series of controversies to have plagued the new party, which is temporarily named Your Party and has its founding conference scheduled for the end of this month.

For the party to succeed it would need to draw together voters of many different backgrounds and political priorities, making Your Party an important player in a coalition with the Green Party. But Hussain has signalled that he believes this will not be possible. 

The barrister and parliamentarian, elected in the July 2024 general election, said he "will be stepping away from the steering group of Your Party and will continue to serve in parliament as an independent".

"When I agreed to take part," he explained, "I did so because I believed in the vision of a genuinely broad church: a pluralistic, inclusive political space capable of representing the people who have long been left behind by the mainstream parties.

"I believed in a movement that welcomed diversity of background and thought: including working-class communities, like my own constituency, people of faith, and those who may be socially conservative yet economically left-leaning, while holding firm to a commitment to equality, justice, and anti-racism." 

Hussain said the party culture has "too often felt toxic, exclusionary and deeply disheartening".

"I have also been deeply troubled by the way certain figures within the steering process, particularly Muslim men, have been spoken about and treated. At times, the rhetoric used has been disturbingly similar to the very political forces the left claims to oppose."

Middle East Eye has approached Your Party for comment on Hussain's statement.

Plagued by infighting

Hussain said he will remain a "dedicated member" of the Independent Alliance, a parliamentary grouping made up of three other independents who were elected last year for the first time - Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohamed - and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Your Party drew huge attention when it was announced in July and seemed poised to gain significant support, but it has been riven by infighting.

In a shock move, MP Zarah Sultana said she was leaving Labour to start a new party with Corbyn - an announcement that caught the former Labour leader and others involved in the project by surprise.

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Over the following days and weeks, the MPs coalesced around the new party.

Hundreds of thousands of people signed up and some nationwide opinion polls gave the party 10 percent of the vote share.

But tensions re-emerged in mid-August when Sultana gave an interview to the New Left Review in which she sharply criticised Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020.

Troubles escalated in early September when Hussain wrote on X that "women's rights and safe spaces should not be encroached upon" and that "safe third spaces should be an alternative option".

He added that trans women are "not biologically women, hence trans women", echoing the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year.

These comments won him support from many but also drew intense criticism from large numbers of leftists, who said his views were bigoted.

Sultana responded by suggesting Hussain had no place in the party, saying: "There is no room for socially conservative views in a left-wing socialist party. Period."

Asked by comedian Nish Kumar about Hussain's comments, she said: "If people don't have pro-trans, pro-immigrant, anti-racist values, there are plenty of other political spaces that you can enter."

In response, Hussain argued that "traditional socialism has never shunned the socially conservative. It's liberal absolutism that won't allow the space for differing views - driving away the very communities the left both needs to survive and claims to represent."

He also pointed to British left-wing history, saying: "Several UK communities fused social conservatism with political socialism: Welsh Nonconformists, Scottish crofters, and East End Jews grounded leftist activism in faith, tradition, and their understanding of moral order.

"A politics of solidarity before individualism."

A broad church?

The debate was turning into what seemed like a fundamental disagreement over how broad the party's umbrella should be.

Corbyn remained notably silent. The intensity of the conflict stemmed from Sultana’s apparent assertion that Hussain did not belong in the party.

A major spat then erupted in late September when Sultana launched a website inviting people to join the party, raising at least £800,000 within a few hours.

But Corbyn and the other independents announced they had nothing to do with the launch and that any direct debits set up should be "immediately cancelled".

Sultana accused the other MPs of being sexist, saying: "Unfortunately, I have been subjected to what can only be described as a sexist boys’ club. I have been treated appallingly and excluded completely."

Sultana later said she would hand over the money raised, but the other MPs have insisted the transfer of funds was taking place too slowly.

Now, just two weeks before the party's founding conference, Hussain has left the steering committee - throwing the party's future into question.

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Under its new leader Zack Polanski, the momentum on the British left seems to be behind the Green Party - which has recently been polling evenly with Labour.

Many believed Your Party, with the support of the new independent MPs, could mobilise and win over voters in constituencies with large numbers of working-class and Muslim residents that the Greens might struggle to reach.

But if Hussain feels the party is not broad enough to accommodate his politics, can it still appeal to these voters?

Much will depend on whether the other independents remain in the party's steering process - and on who is elected leader.

Your Party organisers and MPs have previously signalled a willingness to enter into a strategic electoral alliance with the Greens to secure a strong left-wing coalition. 

Now, once again, Your Party's fate - and the shape and nature of the British left - seems up in the air.