First CEC Introductory Meeting – 3rd March

The Central Executive Committee met for the first time on Tuesday 3rd March 2026. This was scheduled with one day’s notice and described as an introductory call. Another full meeting has been set for Sunday 8th March from 3–5pm. These meetings were set by the outgoing interim leadership of Your Party.

Introductions and electing an interim Chair

At the start of the meeting, members were able to briefly introduce themselves and we moved on to an election of a Chair. There was some confusion over whether this was a permanent Chair, holding the ‘officer’ role of Chair as set out in the Constitution agreed at the November conference. This was due to the circulation of differing agendas prior to the meeting.

Some of us raised the point that we should not elect a Chair, or any other officers, until a set of standing orders has been agreed and the remit of the Chair has been discussed, developed, and agreed. The point was also made that newly elected members were not in a strong position to decide on a permanent Chair until there had been a full in-person meeting of the CEC for members to get to know one another, as part of building the collective leadership party members voted for.

Although the debate was rushed, as only one hour had been allocated to this meeting, it was agreed that this election of Chair would be for the person chairing the rest of that meeting and the following meeting on Sunday. This role was therefore described as interim.

Chair candidates were given one minute to speak, with no time for questions. Jen Forbes was elected as interim Chair (14 votes), with Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi (9 votes) and Niall Christie (1 vote). The poll was conducted anonymously.

It was raised that the vote, as per 3.2.6 of the party’s Standing Orders, should have been carried out using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) method. No mechanism was available for this to happen, and the vote carried on despite the concerns. It was raised by multiple members that future votes for officer roles should ensure they use this method.

Staffing updates

The meeting then moved on, with Jen Forbes chairing, and we received very brief reports from staff on how the party has been operating logistically, including governance, complaints handling, responding to member enquiries, managing the CEC election process and overseeing STV voting systems. This included outlining that a structured handover had been prepared as part of the interim secretariat’s work and sharing that audit trails had been preserved post-elections. We were also given a short overview of social media statistics.

It was confirmed that the staff team had been working with the independent alliance MPs, and following that, the members oversight committee that oversaw the election. It was discussed and agreed that, going forward, such reports will be written and circulated five days ahead of meetings.

There was an ask to understand more information about levels and funding of staffing.

The next full CEC meeting

We then briefly discussed how to run the next meeting and items for the agenda, although it was decided by the Chair that these will be solicited via email. The Chair began by offering their own list of items for the agenda.

Following this, key items briefly discussed for the next agenda included: local branch set-up, standing orders, Wales and Scotland Your Party progress, upcoming national officer elections, youth participation, community independent candidates to support, campaigns, and financial scrutiny. We also requested a discussion on anti racism given the upcoming demo against the far right on 28th March. It was not made clear how final agenda items would be decided on.

We proposed extending the next meeting to ensure we can properly go through standing orders and have time to debate other agenda items, and to make the most of the time spent travelling to London, but this was not voted on or confirmed. The Chair agreed to collect possible agenda items and then look at whether the meeting needed to be extended.

Closing out

Further questions were asked about finances and governance. We were also told that a brief financial overview could be provided on Sunday and that a Code of Conduct had already been drafted and would be presented at the next meeting.

We raised the need for more notice of upcoming meetings in the future, for accessibility and inclusion. Members reminded the meeting that it was Ramadan, as a consideration.

We also raised the need for a shared means of communication, such as WhatsApp, for all CEC members to communicate between meetings. We were given the generic Your Party email address.