I Witnessed Labour Staff Working to Undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s Leadership
JVL Introduction
James Meadway was invited to work in John McDonnell’s office as an adviser to the Shadow Chancellor.
As he shows in an account based on my submission to Labour’s Forde Inquiry into the leaked Labour party report, the Party bureaucracy did its best to undermine his appointment and it took a full year for him to be given a proper contract with the party.
Here he tells the story of what he saw: “a persistent, slow-burn attempt to undermine the elected leadership of the Labour party by a small (but influential) minority of its staff that began as soon as Corbyn entered office.”
This article was originally published by Novara Media on Wed 2 Sep 2020. Read the original here.
I Witnessed Labour Staff Working to Undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s Leadership
The leaked internal report into the Labour party’s handling of antisemitism has dragged up some extraordinary allegations about the behaviour of some of Labour’s staff during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, with the party having to open a formal inquiry into the document and its contents. Members and supporters are, understandably, furious about the suggestion that some staff, in key positions, not only did not support the new leadership but seemingly acted directly to undermine it.
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“But it is the betrayal of the hopes placed in Labour that most sticks in my throat.” I feel exactly the same.
What most astounded me when I read the “leaked” Labour report was the BRAZENNESS of the sabotage effort . Its perpetrators were acting against the Labour leadership, the party membership and the trades union (and other) affiliates. Why did they believe they were entitled to do what they did?
My question got an answer in Tony Blair’s recent article in the “Independent”. Blair said that before Ed Miliband became leader, selecting the leader was done entirely by Labour’s MPs. Those leading the “chicken coups” must have grown up politically before Ed Miliband widened the franchise; they were seeking to RESTORE a system which gave their small part of the Labour family power and made onlookers and fund-raisers of the rest of the Labour family.
I hope the Forde Inquiry names names and allows for punitive action to be taken against those who betrayed this country, the voters and their party so badly.
When the Forde Inquiry was set up, Keir Starmer promised a ‘swift’ independent inquiry that would publish its findings in mid-July. THAT has now been kicked down the road, and is due by ‘the end of the year’, as it says on the Forde Inquiry website. So assuming that’s December – and it isn’t kicked FURTHER down the road in the meantime – that will be seven/eight months, some three times as long as was initially stated.
Given the revelations in the leaked report, and given how various ‘moderates’ were always complaining (in the MSM) about the length of time it took to deal with cases of alleged anti-semitism AND crticising Jeremy about it, not only have these Labour MPs been uncustomarily quiet about the revelations, but they don’t appear to have any problem with it suddenly taking three times as long to complete the investigation.
And in case you’re not aware of it, the ‘defenders’ of a number of people in the report were very quick off the mark with comments (in the MSM) such as ‘the report was leaked in an attempt to smear whistleblowers (BBCNews article on May 1st)’ and ‘Labour report ‘misused private messages to portray party members as racist” ((headline to a Guardian article on August 6th). Here’s a passage from the Guardian article:
In a formal submission to the inquiry, seen by the Guardian, lawyers for the accused officials say the WhatsApp messages were used selectively and edited to give a false impression. They also say the inquiry should be abandoned given the damage already caused by the leaked report.
The 11-page submission claims that some WhatsApp messages sent months apart were joined together to create a false narrative, and others were removed, “so that by such editing a deliberately false impression that racist and misogynistic conversations had taken place”.
Needless to say, there was no ‘editing’!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/06/labour-report-misused-private-messages-portray-members-racist
What gets me (apart from the treachery of some of Labour’s staff) is that this would never have been discovered if the Labour Party had not been instructed to open their books by the EHRC. It is therefore ironic that those implicated are complaining that their private correspondence has been opened and investigated!
I agree though that the end of the year is a long time to wait for its conclusions and hope that these are taken seriously by the party.
I only joined the Labour Party, after years of voting for it, in 2015 and was immediately aware of the smears about Corbyn that started appearing in the MSM within minutes, it seemed, of his being elected Leader.
Margaret, given that I DIDN’T say it’s a long time to wait (until the end of the year), I’m not quite sure how you could agree with something I didn’t say. My point in mentioning it was for what I thought was so obvious that I didn’t have to spell it out. Let me put it THIS way: In the first place Keir Starmer said that the investigation would be concluded ‘swiftly’, and he obviously conferred with the NEC and Martin Forde to ascertain how long the investigation would take to complete. Now I don’t know WHEN it was changed from mid-July to ‘the end of the year’, but presumably it was at some point PRIOR to mid-July. In other words, in a matter of a couple of months, they’ve suddenly decided it’s going to take some three times as long to complete the investigation, and the point is that I don’t for one millisecond buy it.
As with David Cameron promising there would be a Leveson Part 2 (at the time of setting up Part 1), I have no doubt whatsoever that the plan was always to ‘drop’ the Part 2 at some point in the future. And I have no doubt whatsoever that despite what Keir Starmer said initially, he knew that they were going to delay and extend it until the end of the year from the outset, not because Martin Forde needs that much time to conclude the inquiry, but because by then most people will have completely forgotten about the leaked report and even that there was an inquiry going on in to it, and I also suspect something ‘unexpected’ will happen in the meantime so as to sabotage the inquiry.
It is quite likely that many of those involved in this exercise of disenfranchising large parts of the electorate – as well as undermining democracy – from within both the organisational bureaucracy and the PLP were, and remain, keen advocates of UK membership of the EU.
It is therefore deeply ironic that their arrogant, ignorant and base selfish sectarianism has led to the present situation in which the UK is not only leaving the EU but likely to be leaving without a trade deal. Leaving the Country and it’s citizenry in a damaging position.
There is little doubt that the actions of deliberately sabotaging the 2017 election has directly led to the current situation.
In an earlier era those responsible, at all levels and within all sections of the Party would have been accurately charged with treason against the interests of the Country and it’s people.
I’m glad you have recorded your account of what went on it is essential to record the truth,the true facts.Its shocking that those staff deliberately worked to undermine the democratically elected leadership of Corbyn and his chancellor John McDonnell.
The arrogant, selfish and disrespectful attitude and lack of any care for democracy and working for the greater good is there for all to see.
Let’s hope the current leadership doesn’t continue to sweep the truth under the carpet.