Sultana halts legal action amid feud with Corbyn over Your Party
Sultana says she will not pursue defamation action and seeks reconciliation with Jeremy Corbyn as tensions within their hard-left party continue.
Zarah Sultana said she will call off legal action announced as part of a bitter feud at the top of her new hard-left party with Jeremy Corbyn. The Coventry South MP acknowledged the row over her push for members to sign up to Your Party, the political outfit she established with Mr Corbyn.
In a statement posted on X, Sultana said she would not pursue legal proceedings despite the baseless and unsubstantiated allegations against her, adding that she was determined to reconcile and was in talks with Mr Corbyn.
The dispute centers on the membership drive and the control within the party's leadership, with Sultana saying she had been sidelined and effectively frozen out by Corbyn and fellow independent MPs Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain, Iqbal Mohammed and Shockat Adam. She described what she called a sexist 'boys' club' environment and said she had been subjected to appalling treatment and exclusion.
In the statement, she stressed ongoing discussions with Corbyn and said she was determined to reconcile for the sake of the movement and to build a genuinely democratic conference and socialist party. Earlier this week she said she had instructed specialist defamation lawyers after she was the subject of a number of false and defamatory statements about the party's launch of the membership system, a step taken after she said she had been sidelined.
The row has unfolded as Mr Corbyn publicly engages with the movement's events, including a demonstration outside the Downing Street gates on September 9 to oppose the presence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog. On Friday a message encouraging supporters to sign up to Your Party was disowned as an unauthorised email by Corbyn, underscoring the tensions at the top of the outfit.