Game of the name Deciding what to call a new political party may decide its fate

What's in a name? Potentially a lot, if you are launching a movement with ambitions "to shape something truly transformative" in British politics.

- Esther Addley Yassin El-Moudden

That's the challenge facing Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, the former Labour MPs who announced plans last month, if not in the most coordinated fashion, to launch a leftwing political party.

More than 600,000 people have already signed up for updates on the new group, which will be called... what?

"The members will get to choose," Sultana said last week, as a consultation on the subject closed.

It will not be called Your party, however, despite having launched on a website with precisely that name.

Her own preference is the Left party, "because that's what it says on the tin... We'll obviously put that to the members and we'll see what we get."

The fact that so many have already signed up to a nameless project might suggest that what it is eventually called matters less than the involvement of Corbyn, the still totemic (to some) former Labour leader, and Sultana, an effective and savvy digital communicator.

But, say political insiders, history shows how parties' fortunes can be shaped by the names they adopt, both good and bad.