Zarah Sultana’s unauthorised launch of a Your Party membership portal may have been “serious criminal activity” and should be referred to the police, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has advised.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project (PJP), which referred Your Party to the information watchdog last September over a potential data breach, has been advised by the ICO that it should consider “taking further action” regarding the matter, after deciding it was not a matter for them.
An extraordinary split opened up between Corbyn and Sultana in September after an email was sent to 800,000 people on Your Party’s mailing list, urging them to become paying members for £55. Sultana revealed the new membership portal on X, urging supporters to “be a part of history”, and reassured her followers that the membership site was “safe and secure”, encouraging them to keep trying to sign up despite “issues due to such high traffic”.
Later the same day, Corbyn issued an “urgent message” telling his followers on X to ignore the “unauthorised” site and said “legal advice is being taken”.
After the referral to the ICO, the information watchdog advised Corbyn’s PJP, the data controller for Your Party, that it was not a matter for the ICO at this stage. The guidance, first reported by the New Statesman, advised the PJP to consider going to Action Fraud, now known as Report Fraud, and the police to determine whether the issue constituted criminal activity.
The advice noted that as “serious criminal activity may have occurred”, any police investigation would take primacy over one by the ICO at this stage.
A spokesperson for the ICO said: “After reviewing the information provided, we have assessed that formal ICO involvement is not required at this time.”
On Friday Sultana issued a statement which said the ICO had “dropped the case around the Your Party membership portal”.
Writing on X on Friday, Sultana said: “I always anticipated that this inquiry would conclude with no further action and I am pleased that everyone can now draw a line under the matter.”
Sultana said she was looking forward to campaigning for the party’s forthcoming formal collective leadership contest which would break “decisively from Labour right tactics, gives power to members and local branches, and helps build a mass movement for socialism”.
She added: “I will continue working closely with Jeremy and comrades across the movement to build on our 60,000 members – the largest socialist party in the UK since the 1940s. Let’s get to work.”
Your Party declined to comment.
