ZARAH SULTANA is up for the fight. After a bruising few months which would have broken many a political veteran, the young Muslim socialist is still brimming with hope for the new party she has co-founded.

As Your Party heads for its debut conference in Liverpool, she believes that the left is on the brink of something historic, trials and tribulations notwithstanding.

Sultana’s theme, speaking to the Morning Star two days ago, is empowerment — of the members in the new party, and of the working-class communities they seek to serve in society.

Her measure of a successful conference is one where “members feel that it is being shaped by them, not MPs.”

It will also be about “putting a structure in place where they can organise in their communities and win seats in May’s elections.” The basic pitch remains clear: “The government serves the interests of the Elon Musks of this world. It is the working class bearing the burden, as it has for 15 years.

“People want a challenge to the status quo, they need a party that will be fighting for workers’ rights, on climate change, on challenging those who have enabled a genocide, on fighting for civil liberties.”

Delegates, selected by random ballot, will be asked to choose between the new party having a collective leadership or a more traditional single-leader model. The co-leadership model, which would have united Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn and was Sultana’s own preference, is not on the agenda.

“I was a supporter of co-leadership, but a bureaucrat has decided that is not an option members can vote on this weekend,” she says, in the only flash of bitterness she allows herself during our interview.

Given that, she favours the collective option. “I have always been fighting for maximum members’ democracy. A collective leadership will allow more members to shape this, putting power in their hands.”

It is not precisely clear how this model will operate, but the assumption is that a central executive will choose a party chair and other officers, with a parliamentary convener among them to deal with Commons business. This will still probably leave a perception of Corbyn and Sultana as the party’s main public faces.

And if conference votes “for a single leadership model I will consider throwing my hat in the ring for members to decide,” she says, not going beyond previous pronouncements but committing to “grassroots power” in either eventuality.

One of the many controversies to have roiled the new party is over what scope there might be for people with more conservative social views to find a home there, an argument Sultana has engaged in.

She is anxious to explain her thinking. “A party with a broad base will have different views among its voters — I didn’t mean to deny that.

“There is social conservatism in all communities, trade unions, faith communities. It is not more prevalent in a specific community, though Islamophobia now sometimes contrasts ‘backward’ Muslims to the ‘enlightened’ West.

“That distortion helps nobody: the attacks on trans people in Britain today come from the state and from all the major political parties, but those same forces will quickly claim to defend LGBT equality the moment that helps them to castigate Muslims.

“We have to deal intelligently with those tactics of division. I defend and support migrants, refugees, disabled people, Muslims, trans people, knowing that the threats to them are coming from the same place.

“That may not be the analysis everyone has at the start of their political journey. But the beauty of socialism is in the growth of solidarity, the recognition that all the engineered divisions between us can be overcome by our common interest in our freedom and flourishing.

“I am confident that we can build a socialist culture where everybody feels respected, in a party that always stands with the oppressed,” she says.

Sultana rejects any idea that Muslim voters want something different to everyone else.

“I have been talking to Your Party Muslim members and supporters from Wigan to Walsall. Muslim voters want change just like every other voter,” she says.

“They want their lives to be materially better — council homes, hope for young people, investment in public services, bring bills down.

“And yes there is a profound concern and mobilisation around Gaza — they want those held responsible to be held to account — Keir Starmer, David Lammy, Shabana Mahmood. They want to see the Palestinians liberated and safe in their own land. We should sever all diplomatic relations with Israel, end all arms sales.”

Like Corbyn, Sultana is reluctant to rake over the endless rows which have scarred Your Party and sucked a lot of the initial enthusiasm out of it.

“There is no blueprint for setting up a new left-wing, socialist party,” she says before acknowledging that “what has happened has not been ideal.”

But she is clear that it is not about personal clashes. She says she is committed to “a party that is democratic, allowing it to be led by its members. Reducing it to personalities is not accurate.

“I want members in the driving seat, giving local branches resources and data and building power in communities.”

She prefers to look ahead, to next May’s elections for devolved and local authorities. “We could win in Glasgow and win one or two seats in the Senedd which would be a great platform,” she argues.

Relations with Corbyn are cordial. “Both me and Jeremy are looking forward to welcoming our members to a historic conference in Liverpool.

“With more than 50,000 members already it’s the largest socialist party since the 1940s, the task is to make sure it’s the most democratic socialist party in modern British history,” she says.

Your Party’s faltering start has opened up space which the Green Party has occupied under the new, radical, leadership of Zack Polanski. Sultana seeks co-operation between the two parties, but keeping a distinct identity.

“We can work with the Green Party. We are talking the same language on tackling inequality. The Greens have areas where they are very strong and there are also places where the Greens will not win. We can speak to those communities.

“We are socialist, anti-imperialist, anti-Nato and we are not looking to rejoin the European Union any time soon. Zack is a really good communicator of our politics, but we have Green members in the House of Lords voting against workers’ rights, while Zack is saying they need to be stronger, so that is a deficiency in Greens’ democracy,” she says.

She also has an approach to winning in the older industrial communities, now dubbed the “red wall,” where Greens might struggle.

“I have been hosting events in such seats — the message people want is that there is a real socialist alternative, a party that is fighting in their interests,” she says.

Drawing on her experience as a community organiser in Brexit-voting communities in the West Midlands, she argues that “we need to be out in the community, organising, listening to people, building campaigns.

“It’s about allowing people to rediscover their own power, so it’s not just being an electoral vehicle. You’re in the community, on picket lines, in anti-fascist struggles, against tenant evictions, against deportations and in solidarity movements.”

She is not impressed by the Budget, or by arguments that a silk purse may yet be made out of the sow’s ear of the Labour Party.

“The Labour Party chose for a year-and-a-half to leave hundreds of thousands of children living in desperate poverty. An act of performative cruelty.

“They could have voted for the amendment abolishing it last July,” instead of suspending her and six other MPs who rebelled on this issue, “but for the next year and a half it was OK to keep the cap.”

Warming to her theme she argues that the Budget freeze on personal income tax allowances “will cancel out the more progressive measures.

“I see no evidence that the government has changed its course. They are still passing PFI deals, still attacking disabled people, changing the rules to make it harder for asylum-seekers. The government is still on a trajectory of attacking the most vulnerable while rolling out a red carpet for Nigel Farage.”

Sultana wants delegates to leave Liverpool with a spring in their step, “feeling empowered, believing that conference was a healthy democratic event, that they have made new connections with people in their communities and regions, and part of a party that is going to win in May and beyond.”