BUILDING a new mass party of the left is essential to stop the rise of the far right, Your Party’s founding conference heard today.

Opening the afternoon session on the constitution and shape of the new party, former Crewe & Nantwich MP Laura Smith took on right-wing narratives around migration.

“Let’s speak honestly — it is global inequalities, the plundering of resources, the exploitation of labour, the environmental devastation that’s going to drive migration — not the actions of the poor, but the actions of the powerful,” she stressed.

“If no political party is prepared to confront this reality, and if we don’t do the hard work of communicating it, organising around it, and rebuilding people’s belief that change is possible, then we leave the door wide open for the far right to stroll through.”

The likes of Nigel Farage, she argued, are “no champions of the people — he represents the same old tired Thatcherite establishment.”

The session was addressed by Benjamin Pestieau of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, who explained his party’s rapid growth as down to its clear socialist and Marxist politics, its emphasis on unity in action and its prioritisation of trade union struggles.

He urged Your Party too to get out into communities and workplaces and listen to workers’ concerns. “Our first principle is that we are a party of the working class.”

It then heard from Jeanine Hourani of the Palestinian Youth Movement, who slammed the Labour Party’s complicity in the Gaza genocide and its attempt to criminalise solidarity with Palestine.

Ms Hourani argued that “zionism is an enemy of socialism in Britain,” attributing Labour’s 2019 defeat to the work of the “zionist movement” — a reference to the allegations of anti-semitism thrown at Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour because of his solidarity with Palestine. Your Party should be explicitly anti-zionist, she argued: “Anti-zionism is not a maximum demand but a minimum expectation of the masses,” she said, pointing to the role of the Palestine solidarity movement in giving birth to Your Party.

The Morning Star has always argued it was the Brexit issue, rather than the attacks around alleged anti-semitism, which played the biggest role in Labour’s 2019 defeat.

Debates on the constitution saw spirited rows over whether dual membership with other political parties should be allowed, following on from the row over the eve-of-conference expulsions of some members of the Socialist Workers Party.

Outcomes of votes on leadership and membership structures are not yet available.

On that controversy, a Your Party spokesperson said: “Members of another political party signed up to Your Party in contravention of clearly stated membership rules — and these rules were enforced.”