An internal investigation into the way Labour handled antiSemitism complaints will not be submitted to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Sky News is reporting.
The 860-page report has been blocked by party lawyers after it concluded that factional hostility towards Jeremy Corbyn amongst former senior officials contributed to “a litany of mistakes” that hindered the effective handling of the issue.
No evidence
The investigation, which was completed in the last month of Mr Corbyn’s leadership, claims to have found “no evidence” of antisemitism complaints being treated differently to other forms of complaint, or of current or former staff being “motivated by antisemitic intent”.
Rather, it found evidence of a “hyper-factional atmosphere prevailing in Party HQ” towards Mr Corbyn which “affected the expeditious and resolute handling of disciplinary complaints”.
WhatsApp communications
The report says the WhatsApp communications in question, which included some of the most senior figures in the party headquarters and Lord McNicol’s office, were leaked by one of the group’s members.
The examples from chat archives published in the document include:
- Conversations in 2017 which appear to show senior staff preparing for Tom Watson to become interim leader in anticipation of Jeremy Corbyn losing the election
- Conversations on election night in which the members of the group talk about the need to hide their disappointment that Mr. Corbyn had done better than expected and would be unlikely to resign
- A discussion about whether the grassroots activist network Momentum could be ‘proscribed’ for being a ‘party within a party’
- A discussion about ‘unsuspending’ a former Labour MP who was critical of Jeremy Corbyn so they could stand as a candidate in the 2017 election
- A discussion about how to prevent corbyn-ally Rebecca Long-Bailey gaining a seat on the party’s governing body in 2017
- Regular references to corbyn-supporting party staff as “trots”
- Conversations between senior staff in Lord McNicol’s office in which they refer to former director of communications Seamus Milnes as “dracula”, and saying he was “spiteful and evil and we should make sure he is never allowed in our Party if it’s last thing we do”
- Conversations in which the same group refers to Mr. Corbyn’s former chief of staff Karie Murphy as “medusa”, a “crazy woman” and a “bitch face cow” that would “make a good dartboard”
- A discussion in which one of the group members expresses their “hope” that a young pro-Corbyn Labour activist, who they acknowledge had mental health problems, “dies in a fire”
Read the analysis in full here.
