CRY if I want to, Cry if I want to.

The apparent implosion of Your Party is a mortifying moment for the left in Britain.

Not everyone will be weeping at the debacle of the aborted launch of the new party’s membership system, leading to a public split between its two most prominent leaders, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.

Keir Starmer, for one, will regard it as a spot of sunshine in an otherwise unremittingly cloudy sky for his collapsing Labour Party.

New Green leader Zack Polanski, heading an apparently grown-up organisation, will now feel that hegemony over the large and growing strand of opinion well to the left of the government is his party’s for the taking.

But for the rest? One of many supporters who I have spoken to in the last two days put it best by channelling Churchill: “Never have the hopes of so many been dashed by so few.”

Indeed. Nearly 800,000 people have signed up to support the new party. Opinion polling showed that it could be 15 per cent of the vote, maybe more, in a general election. Allied to the Greens, it could replace Labour as the main electoral force on the left.

That is all now prejudiced, to put it mildly. With Gaza burning, neofascists rampaging in their biggest mobilisation in the country’s history, and a Labour government imposing a renewed austerity while abasing itself before the far-right US President, the most promising initiative on the left for a generation has imploded over … a membership system.

So much is disputed in this ugly story that it is an effort to present uncontested facts. But Thursday’s car crash developed somewhat like this.

Your Party obviously needed a system through which members could be recruited. It was agreed that this would be launched in September. Money would follow membership, so the system and the bank account used were materially important.

Zarah Sultana launched the membership drive using a system already to hand, with the funds raised to go into the bank account already being used by the party. This account is under the control of distinguished figures who have been seen as sympathetic to Sultana.

She took this step without the consent or even foreknowledge of Jeremy Corbyn, although she messaged him, having taken the decisive step, assuring him that the money would be properly used and seeking an early meeting.

Corbyn, together with the other four Independent Alliance (IA) MPs, instead responded with a statement denouncing the move and urging anyone who had signed up to cancel their direct debits. They want the cash to go into a different account, presumably under their own control.

Sultana issued her own statement, containing some intemperate phraseology, asserting that she had been subjected to intolerable treatment by a “sexist boys’ club” — the IA — and attacking by name Corbyn’s former chief of staff, Karie Murphy, for seeking to dominate proceedings.

The day was rounded off with a further statement from Corbyn announcing that Sultana’s action may have been a data breach, which had been referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for investigation, crossing a pretty clear red line.

So — at every stage, escalation, rhetorical and practical. No initiative aimed at conciliation. No pause for reflection.

Not even any great evidence of a sense of responsibility to the wider movement. None of this could have happened, clearly, had Your Party been a happy ship. It has been an increasingly poorly kept secret over the last three months that, in fact, it is a very miserable vessel.

The road to Thursday’s pile-up is too long and winding to be outlined here. But relations began to deteriorate after the committee established to launch the new party voted, by a large majority, for Sultana and Corbyn to be co-leaders, a decision Sultana controversially and unilaterally announced immediately.

On paper, a dream ticket, ticking all boxes between them. One person’s dream is another’s nightmare, however. Corbyn did not want to be co-leader and did not accept the vote. Having had leadership famously thrust on him once, he did not want co-leadership thrust on him anew.

In the end, no-one can be forced into accepting that sort of role against their own will.

However, encouraged by advisers who believed in his exclusive right to lead, he successfully insisted on the winding up of the committee as punishment for its temerity.

Instead, oversight of the new party’s launch was vested in the Independent Alliance of MPs — Corbyn, Sultana, and the four Muslim men elected on a pro-Gaza ticket last year.

By any reckoning, it is an inadequate basis for promoting a new party of the left. The four MPs have little or no political experience or history of engagement in socialist politics.

Their shoulders simply cannot bear the weight history was placing on them.

Sultana, moreover, found it a cold place to work. The other MPs reliably backed Corbyn on all issues, having worked collaboratively with him since their Commons debuts.

They resisted all suggestions of broadening out the group controlling the party’s launch conference, and issued emails to Your Party’s burgeoning list of supporters without Sultana’s agreement.

The emails themselves were innocuous, and the proposals for advancing the new party broadly as good as they could be under the circumstances.

But there is little doubt that Corbyn’s entourage — by no means as pacific as the man himself — were bent on isolating Sultana and reducing her role in what they believed was Corbyn’s party by right. With IA approval, they took full control over preparation for the party’s launch, elbowing aside those they did not trust.

Parallel to all of this, Sultana did an interview with the New Left Review, critically examining “Corbynism” and its record at the head of the Labour Party. Her remarks had merit, but they did not go down well with team Corbyn, many of whom worked in the leader’s office (LOTO) at the time and generally are not inclined to critical self-examination.

An entirely pointless row as to whether Corbyn was, as Sultana declared herself to be, “anti-zionist” further soured matters.

And, almost inevitably, there was a poisonous public dispute about trans rights between Sultana and IA MP Adnan Hussein, reflecting the fact that this issue can set almost any left organisation against itself.

Simmering underneath all this were doubts among some about the wisdom of relying on Corbyn, given his age — he will be 80 at the likely time of the next election — and record as Labour leader, to head the new party. “No-one wants a LOTO tribute act,” as one put it.

This is countered by those arguing that Corbyn is, for sure, vastly better known and more popular than any other figure on the left, and widely admired for his authenticity, engagement with mass movements and stubborn defence of principle. In this telling, Sultana was seen as too volatile and inexperienced.

Certainly, describing Corbyn as sexist is not likely to fly, while turning Sultana in to the ICO, an arm of the state eager to crush her as they did Corbyn’s Labour leadership, is a very bad look indeed.

So here we are. A wave of anger and despair has engulfed much of the left on Thursday and since. Numerous statements have been issued by local groups set up to promote the new party, demanding reconciliation and greater maturity and responsibility at the top, with few backing one “side” or another.

Perhaps such pressure from below will force a reconsideration. But it is hard to see this Humpty being put back together again. Mediation has been mooted, but Corbyn has hitherto insisted it is not necessary.

And there are no party structures extant which can resolve the question. Some are arguing that both Sultana and Corbyn take a step back and allow others to repair the breach.

But a party without its two most prominent and inspiring faces would be a poor shadow of its possibilities. Sultana without Corbyn would be turning its back on the latter’s enormous reservoir of support and goodwill, and perhaps risk alienating some supporters on identity issues.

Corbyn without Sultana would be turning its back on the future, and the party would surely lose a good deal of its energy, fire and novelty. Five men, four of them not particularly socialist, launching a new left party would risk ridicule. As it is, we have a left, so recently exhilarated, now in tears.

You would cry too if it happened to you.