Sources close to Zarah Sultana have told the Canary that a Your Party official social media post that went out minutes before the Coventry MP was due to appear on BBC Question Time was ‘appalling’. The post on X once again took aim at Sultana over party funds sitting in the MOU Operations bank account. This is despite her publicly saying that the money will be transferred. However, this didn’t stop her from smashing it on BBCQT.

Zarah Sultana and Your Party

As the Canary has been documenting, officials in Your Party have been engaged in a war of words and corporate media briefing against Zarah Sultana. It’s been over MOU Operations—the company set up by Jamie Driscoll, Beth Winter, and Andrew Feinstein. It was the first company formed around what is now Your Party, back in April 2025. However, since then, there have been ongoing disputes between it and Jeremy Corbyn’s team in Your Party over finances and data.

Crucially, there have been disagreements over membership and donation money, which currently sits in MOU Operations’ bank account.

Most recently, Your Party and MOU Operations had very public falling outs, with the latter’s directors all resigning and handing control to Zarah Sultana. Now, she is acting to ensure that Your Party has the funds. As the Canary previously reported, Sultana outlined when she would send the money.

Early on Thursday 13 November, Sky News reported that Zarah had transferred the first £200,000 from MOU Operations to Your Party, as per her previous statement. Sky News also outlined timescales for the transfer of more of the funds. It also reported a dispute over a further £500k. Faye Brown noted that:

But that’s not the end of it…MOU is also holding £500k of membership fees after ZS’s unauthorised membership drive in September. She wants to transfer this to Your Party by her March deadline, minus any refunds that are requested from the people who signed up to that portal.

But officials within Your Party told me on Monday they don’t want to accept any of this membership money for legal reasons, and ZS knows this. Suggestion is there’s politics at play w a leadership contest expected in the new year.

Yet seemingly, for some people in Your Party, this wasn’t good enough.

What were they thinking???

Just over an hour before Zarah Sultana was due to appear on BBCQT, the official Your Party account posted this:

*Statement from the Independent Alliance of MPs*

"Your Party’s founding purpose is to stand for the many against the few who hold the wealth and power in our country. Thousands of ordinary people have given their time and money to build a real alternative to endless cuts and…

— Your Party (@thisisyourparty) November 13, 2025

The post cause uproar amongst many on X:

I don’t understand this statement. It says that funds are beginning to be transferred. Zarah only took over management of the money 2 weeks ago. She’ll be transferring it installments. They could thank her for finally getting things moving. Instead they attack her again. https://t.co/yuWkmeuoy1

— Heather Mendick (@helensclegel) November 14, 2025

Stop using party communications for factional purposes.

You should be be attacking Reform, big business, & profiteering landlords, not your own colleagues.

Members want unity going forward. https://t.co/Bo5nfIkWAI

— Transform Politics (@tf_politics) November 14, 2025

If Your Party so desperately needed £ for a national conference (obviously it would) then…why didn’t they launch a paid membership model before Zarah S forced their hand?

It seems inexplicable to me.

You need money – but fail to launch something that offers you…money. Ok? https://t.co/iPGcL3VdCV

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) November 13, 2025

A spokesperson for Sultana told the Canary:

Zarah recently took over as sole director of MOU Operations Ltd and is working to transfer all funds and data to Your Party. While briefings of possible liabilities are overblown and misguided at best, she is still legally responsible for ensuring the company is properly run – including arranging for refunds requested and ensuring any other liabilities are settled. All remaining funds will be transferred to Your Party once the company’s costs and liabilities are settled in full.

Zarah did not seek to become the sole director of MOU Operations Ltd. Still, she was prepared to take on this responsibility after the other five Independent Alliance MPs declined to join her as co-directors. Her goal is to resolve this as rapidly as possible, and to focus – as she did on BBC Question Time yesterday evening – on building a member-led, socialist party that offers a real alternative to our failed economic status quo.

To ensure funds are available for the upcoming founding conference, she transferred an initial £200k this week, once Your Party’s bank details had been confirmed. Further instalments will be paid as soon as possible, as the legal details are ironed out.

However, this is not the end of the story.

Attempting to destroy Zarah Sultana?

Internal Your Party WhatsApps seen by the Canary show that those involved claim that the party tweet was in response to allegations made by Zarah Sultana in the earlier Sky News article, and what was reported by the Canary earlier in the week. However, these reports came off the back of previous Your Party briefings against Sultana – and it seems that she is doing all she can to resolve the situation in the face of this within a short space of time.

More broadly, sources close to the internal workings of Your Party told the Canary that the briefings against Sultana form part of a wider picture. The Canary understands that, by undermining Sultana (and previously Driscoll, Winter, and Feinstein), Your Party officials want to ensure Corbyn ends up leader – and that others can maintain their positions within the organisation.

However, Sultana is not having it. Someone who is close to her team expressed their ‘outrage’ and what your Party had done. They told the Canary that just as she was supposed to appear on BBCQT, they “attempt to undermine” her with this “pathetic stunt”:

The timing makes this feel like a deliberate attempt to sabotage her Question Time appearance, and they’re worried she’ll win the upcoming membership contest because her vision is much closer to what members actually want from the party. It feels really malicious and underhanded.

It’s also so disheartening for members to see official party comms channels misused this way. It’s outrageous.

Smashed it

Of course, Zarah Sultana did not allow Your Party shenanigans to stop her smashing her appearance on BBCQT. She hit the nail on the head over the main parties’ management of the country’s finances:

Yes! @zarahsultana hit the nail on the head pic.twitter.com/xNSEaqU6j7

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) November 13, 2025

Notably, as the only minoritised person on the panel, she also had to sit through an hour of at best dogwhistle racism, and at worst outright racism from members of the panel and the audience. Yet she did this without flinching:

Reform’s vile demonisation has GOT to stop. pic.twitter.com/CXsWttcfH8

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) November 13, 2025

And it’s this which is the backdrop to this entire story.

Enough already

As a brown woman, Zarah Sultana is systemically abused and discriminated against not only by British society, but the British political system. You would have thought that she would not have had to face the same issues within Your Party. However, time and time again we’re seeing more than the faintest whiff of both misogyny and (at best) prejudice due to her gender and ethnicity.

By anyone’s standards, attacking one of your own before they go to represent you on the country’s biggest politics show is wilful self-destruction. But more than this, it is increasingly obvious that many within Your Party have zero respect for their members – and disdain or worse for Zarah Sultana.

The situation has become toxic. Sultana might do well to give Zack Polanski a call.

Featured image via the Canary

By Steve Topple

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