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ISLINGTON North MP Jeremy Corbyn has apologised for the in-fighting that has dominated the first months of Your Party.

Speaking to the Tribune in Liverpool at its inaugural conference, he said: “I am sorry and I regret some of the stuff that has happened. Social media is not a good place to conduct political debate because it very quickly descends into rancour.

“A new party is bound to evoke a lot of passions and the passions are certainly there, bucket-loads of them.”

Since Zarah Sultana’s announcement of the new party in July, the operation has been criticised for becoming overshadowed by factional division, briefings to the press, and legal threats.

The Coventry South MP has had to explain what is happening to funds from donations secured through a company separate to Your Party.

She in turn has accused Mr Corbyn’s advisers of freezing her out of important decision-making. Ms Sultana’s supporters argue that getting the project off the ground has been sluggish and bureaucratic, but Mr Corbyn said it was “a hard call” to decide how quickly to found it.

He told the Tribune: “It could have been sooner, but that might have been rushed. This way we move on. As of Monday, we are going to have a group of people chosen by sortition [selection by drawing lots] to be the committee that takes it forward.”

“As of the end of January, we will have an elected executive committee. Things are moving quite quickly now.”

Over the course of the weekend, members voted to keep the name Your Party, endorse independent candidates in May local elections, and for a “collective leadership”. MPs will not be allowed to stand for chair or deputy chair of the Central Executive Committee, meaning Mr Corbyn’s ambitions to steward the new party will remain unfulfilled.

Zarah Sultana

Ahead of the vote, he had told the Tribune that he was in favour of a “leader of the party with a whole team around them”.

Asked whether he thought he should be that leader, he said: “I’m very happy to get the party under way and get it started. I’ve put a huge amount of effort into this endeavour, ever since the July 2024 election.”

The MP, who held his seat in parliament as an independent standing against Labour, his old party, joked: “There’s been lots of thrills and spills along the way, and I’m happy to write a handbook on how to form a political party, or how not to form a political party.”

Over the course of the weekend, the conference on Merseyside became the scene of a broader debate over what the party should stand for.

Some attendees argued that Mr Corbyn is too much of a “centrist” – a suggestion that provoked amusement among members of his team – and that the project should go in a more radical direction beyond electoral politics.

Others, meanwhile, said they supported the party because they feel abandoned by Labour and wanted a party that largely seeks to achieve aims Mr Corbyn outlined while he was leader.

Mr Corbyn said, however, that these competing visions of the party could be reconciled.

“To some extent they’re at odds with each other. In other ways they are in a sense almost complementary”, he said.

“If you say you’re fed up with the current system and you want to change it, well you do that by campaigning and by argument, but you’ve got to win people over, you’ve got to bring people with you.”

He added: “In reality, a socialist movement operates in both spheres. You operate in the community organising, you operate in the communities, you operate supporting people trying to win decent wages for themselves, and at the same time you take that argument into the electoral sphere as well.”

A different party – with very different ambitions

A packed hall for the founding conference

“YOUR PARTY: DIVIDED” read the leaflet being handed out by hard-left groups outside the conference hall in Merseyside.

The narrative that the two personalities behind this project – Corbyn and Sultana – are fighting is one that has been written several dozen times over the past months, as allegations of a “sexist boys’ club”, leaks, and smears give further fodder for the story to be told in new and shocking ways.

Indeed, public apologies for the division at the top quickly seemed wholly performative as jibes once again undermined any sheen of professionalism at the very first conference.

Ms Sultana boycotted the first day over expulsions of members who are also part of the SWP.

She argued that the decisions were being made by “nameless, faceless bureaucrats” and that this was at odds with the democratic nature of the project. Backstage Mr Corbyn’s team were confused why Ms Sultana had not arrived at the conference centre.

“She should be here,” one said, while also fretting that she might “pull something”.

Little did they seem to know she already had.

But the problem for Your Party runs much deeper than a fight for power between two MPs. The problem, as became clear from countless conversations with attendees, is that members have very different ideas about what the party should be. For some, they want Your Party to essentially be a traditional political party that has socialist policies. But then what would that party be offering that is different to Zack Polanski’s revitalised Green Party?

Others, however, feel that Your Party needs to be a “radically insurgent” force that prioritises creating power in communities – even setting up parallel systems of government – over winning seats in parliament.

The energy for an alternative is there, and democracy is messy. Maybe a lack of a single leader can mark a new chapter in the development of the party.

For many, however, the worry is that this new force – for which there is a clear appetite – will be consigned to simply shouting from the sidelines, and also at each other.

Victorian theatre provides an evocative backdrop for Dickens’s tale of greed and redemption

Matthew Cottle as Ebenezer Scrooge and Neil Morrissey as the ghost of Jacob Marley [Mark Douet]

MARK Gatiss’s acclaimed adaptation of A Christmas Carol returns for another season at Alexandra Palace. The cavernous Victorian theatre provides an evocative backdrop for Dickens’s ghostly tale of greed and redemption.

Adam Penford’s slick, pacy production opens in the office of Ebenezer Scrooge (Matthew Cottle), dominated by designer Paul Wills’s towering filing cabinets.

After grudgingly dismissing his clerk Bob Cratchit (Henry Davis) on Christmas Eve, Scrooge heads home for his customary bowl of gruel. The tone is sombre, the colours muted, with destitution all around. Any sense of seasonal cheer is subdued.

But Scrooge’s life changes forever when the ghost of his late partner Jacob Marley (Neil Morrissey) appears, weighed down by chains to deliver a stark warning. Three further apparitions swiftly follow.

The Ghost of Christmas Past (Grace Daly) springs from Scrooge’s bed and reminds him of the young fiancée (Kalifa Taylor) he lost because of his love for money. The Ghost of Christmas Present (Mark Theodore) takes him to Cratchit’s home. Despite their poverty, the family are warm and caring, and Scrooge is moved by the frailty of their ailing son, Tiny Tim (Elios K Douglas).

Scrooge’s final visitor is the Ghost of Christmas Future, a terrifying hooded presence who leads him to the desolate grave that awaits him should he not mend his ways.

Cottle is terrific, and his portrayal of a miserly old man rediscovering his conscience in the nick of time proves surprisingly poignant.

Gatiss’s version gets to the heart of Dickens’ story by drawing out the supernatural elements to stunning effect, with Nina Dunn’s video, Philip Gladwell’s lighting and Ella Wahlstrom’s sound enhancing Wills’s design.

The versatile cast impress, closing with a festive atmosphere that contrasts with the play’s darker moments.

Warmly recommended.

Until January 4

Ermonela Jaho leads the cast in La Rondine at the Barbican [Fadil Berisha]

IF you can tear yourself away from thoughts of Christmas, the Royal Opera has a big new show opening Dec 9 that’s refreshingly unseasonal and features a young star voice not to be missed.

The show is Handel’s Ariodante which, like all Handel operas, has a plot so complicated you’re allowed to give up on it and just follow the music. But what music. And what a singer it has in the title role, which is one of those jobs originally written for a castrato but – castrati being hard to come across these days – is usually sung by a mezzo in drag.

Here, the mezzo is the charismatic Canadian-Italian Emily D’Angelo who, the last time I heard her sing, sent shivers down my spine – it’s such a deep, rich and confronting voice. The run is Dec 9-21. rbo.org.uk

• As for Handel, he’s in season now as the Messiahs start to pile up. There’s a maverick but punchy (I’ve seen it) account at Smith Square, done by the excellent little touring opera company Wild Arts with an element of staging. Dec 9:sinfoniasmithsquare.org.uk. But another, grander opera company, Glyndebourne, brings a supercharged Messiah to the Albert Hall, Dec 5: royalalberthall.com. And for something on the doorstep if you’re in Camden, Hampstead Collective present another version with period instruments at Hampstead Parish Church, Dec 6: thehampsteadcollective.com. Which is enough Messiahs for now – though I daresay there will be more next week.

• Think Puccini, think Tosca, Bohème, Madam Butterfly…but the chances are you won’t think La Rondine, which is one of his less performed operas. So seize the chance to hear it – not staged, alas, but in concert – at the Barbican, Dec 5, done by Opera Rara with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and starring the glamorous world-class diva Ermonela Jaho (no expense spared there). barbican.org.uk

• One of Antonio Pappano’s missions when he became chief conductor of the LSO was to focus on Vaughan Williams. And he’s been doing nothing less, in a sequence of the symphonies that continues Dec 11 with No.2, the magical London Symphony that makes you wish the capital was half as alluring as VW depicts it. For good measure, on Dec 7 he also conducts a performance of two VW choral works, Flos Campi and Dona Nobis Pacem. Both concerts are at the Barbican. barbican.org.uk

• Highgate International Chamber Music Festival rounds off this week with a baroque night, Dec 6; a recital in which cellist Natalie Klouda plays bach alongside her own music, Dec 7; and a festival finale of Shostakovich and Brahms, also Dec 7. chambermusicfestival.co.uk

• Elite choral groups can be a touch earnest in their presentation. But one that isn’t – because it’s led by Robert Hollingworth, one of the funniest people on the choral circuit – is I Faglioni (the name means Little Beans) who have a Christmas concert at Kings Place, Dec 11, that I imagine will be truly festive. Music by Charpentier, Howells, Holton. kingsplace.co.uk And there’s more Christmas choral music from the chamber choir Voxcetera, Dec 5, St Mary Brookfield, NW5. voxcetera.co.uk

• Finally, Highgate’s intimate Salon Music series continues, with another visit from the London Chamber Ensemble – this time playing Brahms and Schubert. Ticket covers concert and supper (both of decidedly superior quality). salonmusic.co.uk

Miles Davis in 1956 [Tom Palumbo_CC BY-SA ] and, right, Jay Phelps in the play MILES [Colin J Smith]

THE jazz world loves an anniversary, and they don’t come much bigger than the one looming for 2026 – the centenary of Miles Davis, born May 21 1926. The actual anniversary may be some way ahead, but things are gearing up for celebrations in jazziverse. MILES, a well-received play centred on the making of the seminal Kind of Blue album, is transferring from Edinburgh to the Southwark Playhouse.

Featuring live music, projection and puppetry, it opens on Feb 4. Depping for the great man himself (musically at least) is Empirical’s wonderful horn player Jay Phelps. Tickets are going fast – after all, it’s going to be a Miles’ year (at least until Coltrane @100 in September 2026).

The play runs till March 7. If you can’t make that, then there’s also Theo Croker’s Miles Mixtape at the Southbank on March 13, which covers his legacy including and beyond Kind of Blue, no doubt (knowing trumpeter Theo’s eclecticism) diving into the electric era of Bitches Brew and beyond. See: s

Can’t wait that long? Well, you can catch Jay Phelps playing tribute to Miles’ KoB at Camden’s Jazz Café on December 16. I’ve seen this show and it’s a joy – Jay is no slavish impersonator and there will be fresh improvisation on familiar tunes, but his tone and attack will send shivers down your spine, especially when he enters on So What with the famed cymbal crash close behind. Despite what some might say, Kind of Blue is not an overrated or over-praised album. Details:

• THERE is another trumpeter in town this month, exploring a slightly more oblique link to Miles.Byron Wallen is a fascinating player, recently praised by Soweto Kinch on his Round Midnight radio show as one of the most questing and erudite musicians he has worked with. Byron roams far and wide around the globe for influences and inspiration, but it always comes back to his wonderful feel for jazz.

He is again curating a mini jazz festival at the Coronet Theatre over in Notting Hill Gate, called The Language of Rhythm. If you’ve not been, this is an endearing shabby-chic space with one of the most eccentric theatre bars in the city. The festival runs December 11-13, and on the 13th it plays tribute to the recently departed Jack DeJohnette, a drummer of immense stature and skill who was a keystone in the pioneering bands of Miles and, later, Keith Jarrett.

Jay Phelps’s fellow Empirical alumnus Shane Forbes will be filling Jacks’ giant shoes (and doing it very well – he’s an original and intuitive player in his own right). There’ll be Byron on trumpet and the gifted Femi Temowo on infectious High-Life inflected guitar.

There is more – on the 11th Tom Skinner (drum chair with Sons of Kemet, Smile and who has his own remarkable albums, Voices of Bishara and Kaleidoscope) will play with Byron with the low end master himself Theon Cross on tuba (check out his album Affirmation: Live at Birdland New York).

On the 12th Dough Hammond – a drummer, composer, griot and poet – explores rhythm both solo (on voice, drums and African thumb piano) and in a trio featuring Byron and bass player Neil Charles.

Book tickets for all the gigs on:

• IT is always good to see a jazz night taking root in Camden. Aces & Eight, the pizza/bar opposite Tufnell Park tube, has long put on music nights and comedy but a new series of shows promoted by Red Desert Music is staking out the jazz adjacent camp. The gig on December 5 features a trio of very accomplished singer-songwriters in the shape of Rebecca Hollweg, Juliet Wood and Eleanora Claps (who also plays drums) performing original material and some standards.

Look out for the estimable and entertaining John Crawford on keys, a regular at the 606 Club, but this time much closer to our home, and the mighty Andy Hamill on bass, who has played with everyone from Van Morrison to Kylie, bringing serious chops that he can apply any kind of music. Should be fun.

Tickets on: or at the door.

• JUST one Christmas bash for you this year – Hampstead Jazz Club presents its annual show of Christmas-music-with-a-twist at The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead, Church Row, London, NW3 6UU on December 13. This time it features harpist-singer-jazz promoter Tara Minton with Clara Wheeler and Sara Colman on vocals, the cracking Trish Clewes on sax and hotshot Miguel Gorodi on trumpet and flugel. Great players, wonderful setting and it usually sells out, so strike now.

See:

Where in the World?

• DO people still give CDs as presents? Or did Alan Rickman kill that stone dead in Love Actually? Or perhaps it is just that, in this age of streaming, fewer people have CD players any more (although I sense a revival in the silver disc’s fortune, especially as vinyl is so expensive). Anyway, should you know anyone who can play a CD and likes jazz can I point you in the direction of guitarist Tom Ollendorff’s album Where in the World?

This is sophisticated, harmonically satisfying music with compositions that stay with you. It starts in a pastoral, Metheny-ish vein (in terms of the musical landscape Ollendorff conjures up on the likes of the title track, rather than his style) but later on the quartet show they can swing at high speed (see Meaningless Mirror), and I was put in mind of Spaces-era Larry Coryell (again just in terms of speed and fluidity).

He has a wonderful group behind him, including Seattle-born pianist Aaron Parks who gets plenty of room to shine, Conor Chapman on bass and James Maddren on drums. The latter two play out around London a lot and they are a Kite Mark of jazz quality – you always know a gig is worth going to if either of them are on board. Recommended. Buy at Bandcamp:

By All Means!!

• HAVE a friend who is into vinyl? Then Aaron Parks himself has a new piano trio album out called By All Means!! Again, immersive, warm playing and interaction on this album, which, being devoid of histrionics, is one for fans of Bill Evans perhaps. It’s on Blue Note and it has a Miles Reid-style cover riffing on the classic designs of that storied label, a blast of nostalgic typography. Good stuff, inside and out. Available on CD, too, although the cover loses its impact somewhat.

Stephensong by Ian Shaw

• I WAS at Kings Place at King’s Cross last week for the launch of another album that might be on your Christmas gift list, Stephensong by Ian Shaw (Silent Wish Records), with Barry Green on piano, which as the title suggests is an album of tunes penned by maestro Stephen Sondheim.

Now, I confess I am not a fan of musical theatre, but that isn’t the point – Shaw just loves wry, witty, moving and well-written tunes and they are here in abundance. “It’s tough, disciplined writing – but that’s what makes it brilliant,” says Shaw. “These songs are about real people and tell the truths we all recognise.”

The show itself was a tour-de-force triumph – Shaw again demonstrating how he can wring every nuance out of a lyric and navigate tricky changes in tempo and key with aplomb. He dug deep into his bag of vocal tricks on Children Will Listen and tugged heartstrings on No One Is Alone.

Barry Green gave elegant, sympathetic support and also delivered an emphatic and moving version of Send in the Clowns. There was clever use of back projection too, adding some visual cues to the songs.

The record might not quite capture the full Shaw live experience – what can? – but is a powerful testimony to the skill of the singer and the songwriter nevertheless. As Jazzwise magazine put it: “An exquisite duo take on the music…with Shaw poignant and powerful in equal measure.”

The next outing for the album live is March 10 at Ronnie Scott’s, but Shaw has a two-shows-in-one-night gig at the Crazy Coqs near Piccadilly on December 18 (see ), which is ostensibly a Christmas bash, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the odd Stephensong found its way into the repertoire.

Buy the album on:

See for more live dates, including a season at the Pizza Express at the tail end of next month, of which more nearer the time.

For more jazz at Kings Place, see:

Peace on Earth

• FINALLY, a Christmas album, albeit one that doesn’t follow the well-trodden tracks of the usual fayre. Three Christmases ago the by-turns sultry and fiery vocalist/composer Collette Cooper gave us the Darkside of Christmas album, which featured narration by Ray Winstone.

This year she has revisited and expanded the project as Peace on Earth (Thelonious Punk), with the unmistakable lilt of James Nesbitt as her voice artist on the dramatic track Rock of Dunamase, as well as guest appearances by Maxine Peake, Fra Fee and Ray Winstone reciting Collette’s words.

There is music too, obviously, with distinctive, atmospheric versions of, among others, Silent Night, Coventry Carol, Ain’t Necessarily So and a reprise of Darkside of Christmas itself. And it’s available as a limited edition on vinyl, on Bandcamp. https://collettecooper.bandcamp.com/album/peace-on-earth – with all profits going to War Child. So, there’s a double Christmas gift.

Richard Osley meets Andrew Gimson – a renowned chronicler of our current troubled times – who has trawled the past to tell the story of his top idols in history

Andrew Gimson with his latest book

MANY lay claim to being the first to predict that Boris Johnson would one day become prime minister. Andrew Gimson was certainly one of the early weather forecasters in a biography published long before he eventually arrived at Downing Street. People were complacent that a haphazard jester could ever get the top job and amid the sleepwalking, Johnson outmanoeuvred everybody else, as Mr Gimson had always suggested he might.

So before we get on to his new work, how does he feel now we’ve come out the other side?

“Boris was a popular insurgent – he thrived on that, we saw that with Brexit,” he says. “But it’s one thing being an insurgent and another being in power and being expected to run things. That was a problem for Boris. He wasn’t as good or as interested in that.”

Mr Gimson saw British politics at close hand with long service at the Daily Telegraph, including a sharp stint as its parliamentary sketchwriter. You can still find him drawing colourful scenes on the Conservative Home website and elsewhere.

As a sample, he wrote of Rachel Reeves’ performance at the budget debate last week: “The chancellor resembled an apparatchik of the late Soviet period who is striving to present the latest tractor production figures as a triumph, knows she is failing lamentably, but is nevertheless condemned to press on from one dodgy forecast to the next.”

Philanthropist Thomas Coram, a favourite of the author

At one time such bite about the UK’s first female chancellor might have caused trouble at home, and many moons ago he was in the New Journal as the Tory uncomfortably making the teas for Labour tactics meeting at the kitchen table as his wife, Sally, became a Camden councillor and almost an MP.

While they have amicably gone their separate ways since then, it’s nice to see the bookshop down their old high street in Kentish Town promoting Ms Gimson’s recent analysis of High Speed 2, Off The Rails, next to his latest, Gimson’s Heroes.

You get the impression that Mr Gimson still admires Johnson for his apparent wit and entertainment factor, but the Covid rulebreaker isn’t even close to featuring in these short histories.

“I probably indulged him too much already,” Mr Gimson says over coffee at his Camden Town home. We agree that anybody who can communicate or even just make a speech might already have a jump on the current Labour frontbenchers and the obvious itch to talk about next is whether we’d see a Johnsonian rise and a Nigel Farage crash, but there are 60 heroes to review and Mr Gimson is as much as a historian now as a Commons runes reader.

Nevertheless, it’s fun sport to tease him that Gimson’s Heroes – his surname is becoming a bookshop brand, after compendiums of kings and queens and prime ministers and presidents – appears to include many you might associate with left-wing struggles, or at least social reformers horrified by poverty.

We are taken through a tour that meets Camden locals like Charles Dickens, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Coram, after whom the park near the Brunswick Centre is named.

Lifesaver Grace Darling

“These short histories, or brief lives, are not supposed to be exhaustive, and I hope they inspire people to go and learn more about the heroes here,” he said. “But there are anecdotes and stories which try to show how someone becomes a hero. It is rarely somebody who is part of the establishment.”

Coram is a favourite, so much so his framed picture is up on the wall looking down at us from the dining table wall.

He established the Foundling Hospital at the top of Lamb’s Conduit Street to rescue children abandoned on London’s streets in the 18th century.

“There was opposition to what he was trying to achieve, but he is a great example of someone who was determined to make a change,” Mr Gimson says.

The doubters said his idea would cost too much, and simply encourage more children to be born and then abandoned to this new institution, but the book reveals a dogged determination which would improve the lives of so many.

“It seems he spoke his mind with tactless freedom when he detected anything that looked like inefficiency or corruption,” he writes of Coram, another example of an agitator not playing by the rules.

Those less celebrated elsewhere but deserving of chapters in his book are Grace Darling and Thomas Clarkson, he adds. “Amazing Grace”, a lighthouse keeper’s daughter, helped rescue people from the sea when a paddle steamer crashed in Scotland in 1838, while Clarkson was an unsung abolitionist.

Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson

“He doesn’t get the credit he deserves really,” says Mr Gimson. “He was one of the few determined to find out what was happening on these voyages and the awful conditions for men manacled and tightly packed together. He went around Liverpool to collect the evidence, speaking to people in pubs who had seen this and he was almost murdered for doing it.”

There is a big picture of Sir Winston Churchill on the front of the book, which feels very on brand, but he then describes his post-war election loss as greatest example of democracy the UK has seen – the public deselecting the war hero straight after victory.

And soon we are on to Nelson Mandela, another of those “insurgents”. The anecdote he likes to tell is a meeting Madiba had with Margaret Thatcher after his release. “She kept him in Downing Street so long, the press outside started to call ‘free Nelson Mandela’,” he explains.

It’s a whistlestop ride, full of such asides, but you get the feeling there are more lists in his whirring head of history for future editions.

• Gimson’s Heroes: Brief Lives from Boudicca to Churchill. By Andrew Gimson. Constable Books