Your Party’s tantrum over transvestites is the tonic Britain needs right now

Noël Coward’s advice on life in general – ‘Be flippant. Laugh at everything’ – is worth keeping in mind for those of us who are passengers in the collapsing clown car that is mid-2020s Britain. New figures reveal that a quarter of a million Brits have fled the country since Labour returned to power.

Wimps! They’re missing out on a never-ending real-life livestream of comedy gold. Every day we get to tuck in to a black-comedy buffet. Scores of lags released by mistake, a Russian ship buzzing us the day after we confessed that we are defenceless, the revelation that the government is spying on people who say exactly the same awful terrible ‘racist’ things as… the home secretary. It is an age of mirthful glut. But the biggest laugh of them all has to be Your Party.

Your Party has brought together – I can’t really say ‘united’ – the two great ‘easy come, easy go’ ideologies of our time: transgenderism and ‘pro-Gaza independence’. You wait ages for a faction built on spite and resentment, with an interesting attitude to Jews – oops sorry, ‘billionaires’ and the ‘super-rich’ – and two come along at once. Your Party is now scattered like leaves before the wind of the Greens (the wind that whistles between Zack Polanski’s two front teeth).

Let’s get the obvious thing over first. Your Party is a stupid name. But it is only a placeholder. Members will be able to vote on the actual name from a suggestion box. This is rather like when kiddies named the pets on Blue Peter, or choosing the team names on The Apprentice. So Your Party might end up being called ‘Goldie’ or ‘Team Dynamic’.

The leading lights of Your Party keep parting brass rags. The big squabble between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana was entertaining enough, but recently independent Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) has now peeled off, citing ‘generalised accusations and offensive slurs’ aimed at him. And Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) looks like he might head for the door, too.

So what did Iqbal say to spark the latest kerfuffle? ‘White or brown men shouldn’t be telling or forcing biological women to give up their rights and private spaces to other biological men, black, white, brown or trans.’ I just can’t imagine the sort of mind that could write that sentence without bursting into guffaws. And ‘Black, white, brown or trans’ scans exactly with that line in ‘It’s Raining Men’ – ‘Tall! Blond! Dark and lean!’ – a temptation I have found impossible to resist.

He goes on:

‘What about the biological women’s rights? They have rights which I will always fight to protect. I also believe in the human rights of all trans and LGBTQ+ people but not by taking away the hard-won rights of women.’

It is striking that Mr Mohamed is here employing the language of 21st-century Western feminism.

A spokesperson for Zarah Sultana shot back, ‘Zarah will always stand with the trans community. She believes an ironclad commitment to trans rights is non-negotiable for a socialist party.’ This continued: ‘The working class is diverse, yet united by shared economic interests.’ I think this means that all the transvestites and Muslims toiling together over looms, under railway bridges, down pits or up chimneys in 2025, should forget their differences for the Good Old Cause. ‘The Internationale unites the human race!’, as the left’s stirring anthem has it. (It also contains the line ‘Away with all your superstitions!’, which must be embarrassing for the comrades when bellowing in full voice next to devout Muslims.)

None of Britain’s political parties reflects a broad flow of the electorate, if that is even possible nowadays. But Zarah Sultana’s wing of Your Party reflects a very, very select and specific section of voters – those who are gung ho for fellers that like to wear a boob tube and a burqa at the same time.

This marriage between gender ideology and fundamentalist Islam is perhaps not quite as insane as it sounds. The Islamic Republic of Iran, after all, has a nice sideline in ‘gender-affirming care’ – ie, genital mutilation. But the idea that men without any such alterations must be regarded and treated as women, if they so declare? I can’t see that policy landing very well in the mosques of Yorkshire.

The main parties still preen about being ‘broad churches’. This has long been one of those things that political idiots and mediocrities repeat like parrots. It’s code for ‘we can cope with a small fringe of lunatics who mop up a few seats’. But despite its smaller size, Your Party is the broadest church of all, with its non-negotiable, ironclad commitment to both political transvestism and the glory of Allah. What a combination! The silly, modern, Western goading of ‘trans’, shaken up in a cocktail with the utter seriousness of ancient Islam.

The disputes and splits in Your Party all seem to revolve around Sultana. Iqbal Mohamed’s coup de grâce contained the following ‘not naming any names’ barb: ‘Don’t blame Corbyn for the faults of the left and its ability to look for differences to fight over. And make sure that he is not replaced by a selfish, egotistical, power-hungry, dishonest, me-myself-I person.’ Who could he possibly mean? Get back in the drawer, Mr Knife! This is known as ‘throwing shade’, popularised by RuPaul’s Drag Race, a TV treat which I can’t imagine is series-linked by many of Mr Mohamed’s constituents.

Shade is being thrown in buckets around Your Party. Its inaugural conference is set for the end of the month in Liverpool, and the latest news is that Zarah Sultana is holding a big jamboree the night before – and hasn’t invited Corbyn. I hope there’ll be a big sign on the door – ALL COMRADES WELCOME IN SOLIDARITY (NO SMELLY JEREMYS!)

There’s a lot of despair in the air in Britain today. People are saying things can’t get worse. Au contraire, I say – because we can still laugh. Just about.

Gareth Roberts is a screenwriter, author and novelist, best known for his work on Doctor Who.