'Toxic and disheartening' Can Your Party move on from chaotic factional infighting?

At an early meeting to set the path for what would become Your Party, participants quickly agreed on one thing: given the cliches about leftwingers forever falling out, at all costs they must avoid a descent into factionalism.

- Peter Walker

Six months on and the Liverpool venue hosting this weekend's inaugural Your Party conference has been warned to expect potential disruption, including possible stage invasions by disgruntled members representing particular wings. Extra security guards have been hired.

How did an idea with so much potential traction and reach - hundreds of thousands of people signed up to support the idea of a movement spearheaded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana before it even existed - become so quickly and comprehensively bogged down in power struggles and infighting?

The simplified answer, one agreed on at least in private by people from all sides, is rooted in tensions between Corbyn, portrayed as indecisive and at times ambivalent about yet another political venture at the age of 76, and Sultana, the combative former Labour MP who has enraged colleagues by making major decisions unilaterally.

The ground zero for a split so comprehensive that, insiders say, Sultana has for the past three months mainly communicated with her supposed colleagues through lawyers, came on 3 July, or "terrible Thursday" as one calls it. This was when the Coventry South MP announced she was resigning from Labour and would co-lead a new entity with Corbyn.

The news followed a meeting of the embryonic organisation earlier that day at which the co-leadership was discussed. There was, however, one problem: Corbyn and his allies very firmly believed that no decision had been made.