Jeremy's droning message of unity falls on deaf ears

Given the disasters surrounding the Budget, Your Party should have been thrilled. It's made their last three months of infighting, budgetary arguments and leadership squabbles seem borderline competent.

- KAT BROWN

Yet within moments of these wannabe leaders launching their first conference, the clown car started filling up. First, a load of members were ousted, following rumours that the Socialist Worker Party was planning a disruption. Second, Jeremy Corbyn's welcome speech ran late. Third, there was no sign of his co-leader, Zarah Sultana. Fourth, it later turned out that Sultana was boycotting her own conference due to, fifth, “faceless bureaucrats” doing the ousting. Your Party was due to be renamed this weekend; it may as well stay thus so that Sultana can yell it at Corbyn.

“We’re here to do something dramatic - and may I say the hall looks absolutely fantastic - to found a new socialist party in Britain,” Corbyn said, peering out at his anoraked audience. As an opening gambit to a new political party, this was more like welcoming a busload of sightseers to a talk by the local WI. The hall was free of decorations, with some chairs and screens, but as their £800,000 in donations have been withheld by the party founders, presumably they've had to save on the bells and whistles. Given how much of the audience was still clad in winter hats, they must have decided to keep the heating off, too.

Jeremy Corbyn is the star of Your Party, but he's not a gripping speaker. Certainly, Keir Starmer is no showman, unless he's quipping at PMQs. But watching Corbyn speak is like watching your least public-facing schoolteacher being rolled out on Speech Day because everyone else came down with food poisoning.