Life of the Party – Details, episodes & analysis

Shanice, Joe and Jonas dive into all things democracy, examining Zarah Sultana’s saucy New Left Review interview, travelling way back to the Greek agora, and asking searching questions of Corbynism’s legacy.

As the Your Party founding conference looms, they ask what real party democracy actually looks like?

Readings:

The Alternative - Zarah Sultana

Born for life, Marked for death - Max Shanley

Models of Organisational Democracy - Jante's Umarell

Party as Articulators - Salar Mohandesi

Credits:

Design: Rachel Carr / rachelcarr.co.uk

Music: Benjamin Tissot / 9INTLNTLWTYTDKVN

As Zack Polanski begins to make his mark scrapping with journalists and political opponents, Joe and Shanice disagree on where his biggest challenge will come from. Meanwhile the row between MPs Zarah Sultana and Adnan Hussain on trans politics raises critical questions about what Your Party stands for.

Readings:

Regime Change in the West - Perry Anderson

In and Against the State. Revolutionary Feminism During De-industrialisation - Katrina Forrester

Greens Who Organise - Robert Magowan

Their End is Our Beginning - Brian Bean

Credits:

Design: Rachel Carr / rachelcarr.co.uk

Music: Benjamin Tissot / 9INTLNTLWTYTDKVN

What the f!#k has just happened with Your Party? Shanice, Joe and Jonas try their best to shake off their collective depression and get a handle on the drama and controversy underlying Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn’s very public fallout. How did we get here, and more importantly how the hell do we get out?

Readings:

Whose Party Is It Anyway - Archie Woodrow

Your Party’s Messy Public Breakdown Shows It Has Big Questions to Answer - Archie Woodrow

Disaster Nationalism - Richard Seymour

Theory of The Party - Phil A. Neel

As Zack Polanski’s comms campaigning takes the Greens from strength to strength, Your Party releases its founding documents; with debates beginning at regional assemblies. Shanice gives us a look into this contrasting picture, whilst Joe kicks off a debate about NATO, anti-imperialism, and whether Your Party and the Greens need to be more than simply pro-Palestine parties.

Reading:

Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism & Race in Palestine - Adam Hanieh, Robert Knox, Rafeef Ziadah

Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat - Hannah Proctor

Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm - Dan Charnas

As the left turns to economic populism as the way to beat Farage, Jonas, Shanice and Joe explore it's potentials and imitations. Meanwhile, the Greens surge to 100,000 members, Joe tests the water at Green Party conference, and Zarah Sultana comes out gunning for the Greens at The World Transformed.

Reading

Organising for Popular Power - An Anti-Capitalism Base Building Tendency in Your Party

The Neapolitan Novels - Elena Ferrante

Belgian Workers Party Congress Documents

New Times, New Circuits: Recovering Sivandan's Political Economy - John Narayan

With Your Party's regional assemblies in full swing Jonas breaks down the dynamics and debates shaping the grassroots of the party. Meanwhile, Shanice puts the debates about class and identity politics under the microscope; making the case you cannot understand the seismic and irresistible rise of Zohran Mamdani without taking seriously how class is felt through identity. But what are the lessons for the British left?

Reading

We Were There - Lanre Bakare

Can Apartheid Free Zones Help Liberate Palestine? - The Bristol Cable

Michael Lange's Substack

As Your Party’s founding conference approaches, Joe breaks down the latest financial shenanigans and resignations, whilst Jonas makes the case that even if the launch has been a disaster, the historical opportunity presented by the crisis of British capitalism hasn’t been totally squandered.

Reading:

Melinda Cooper - Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance

Helen Walsh - Once Upon a Time in England

Oliver Eagleton - Your Party: The Return of the Left

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Coming back from a wild weekend in Liverpool, Jonas gives us an insider account of the vibes, schisms and politics shaping the long-awaited founding conference of Your Party. Meanwhile Joe probes at critical questions: have the Green party completely over-shadowed Your Party? Should Your Party ditch elections and focus on the hard work of building popular power?

Reading:

The Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante

Three Women - Lisa Taddeo

Social Infrastructure Proposals - Organising For Popular Power

Your Party Conference: Total Chaos or the Future of Democracy - Novara Media

In the run up to Christmas Joe, Jonas, and Shanice answer your listener questions. Are we revolutionaries, what does that even mean? Should the left run as councillors? What does community organising mean? Why have some of the Independent Alliance remained in Your Party? We answer these questions, and more - as well as give you our favourite reads of 2025.

Readings:

Workers Can Win - Ian Allinson

Supermarket Struggle - Workers' Inquiry

⁠Pessimism of the Will - Asad Haider⁠

⁠New Model Island - Alex Niven⁠

Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain - Sam Wetherell

Intermezzo - Sally Rooney

What a week! Shanice, Joe and Jonas dissect the Green party's exciting and decisive victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election. How did Hannah Spencer's campaign win? Is Keir Starmer’s Labour party finished? And where does this leave Your Party? With Jeremy Corbyn's The Many slate coming out of the CEC elections with a big majority, we ask where next for the beleaguered new left party. To wrap up a big episode, Jonas digs deeper into the question of ideology and positioning: should left parties advocate for radical policies like drug decriminalisation and decarceralisation, or do we need to appeal more to the status quo?

Reading

⁠Golden Gulag - Ruth Wilson Gilmore⁠

⁠Policing the Crisis - Stuart Hall⁠

⁠The Interpretation of Dreams - Sigmund Freud ⁠

⁠RSPB Handbook of British Birds - Tim Cleeves⁠

⁠On the Ground in Gorton and Denton - Joe Todd⁠