Owen Jones 🌹Verified account

The antisemitic comments reported by The Sunday Times are vile, twisted, abhorrent, and anyone holding such views should be regarded by anyone on the left as a bitter political opponent, whose hatred must be defeated. Let's not be in any doubt about that.

The impression The Sunday Times splash attempted to foster is that there is a cover-up and a conspiracy at the top of the Labour Party to protect antisemites. Yet this is simply not true.

One of the claims centres on Loto (the Leader Of The Opposition's office) intervening in cases. Yet this only happened in the couple of weeks between Labour's general secretary Iain McNicol resigning and Jennie Formby replacing him.

What happened in this interregnum is Labour party staff - appointed long before Corbyn became leader - asked for Loto's help to clear the backlog. Loto staff didn't intervene or make decisions, but gave advice when they were asked to do so - i.e. in good faith.

When Jennie Formby took over, she ordered this practice to end. Yet we're left in an absurd situation where a disgruntled former staff member asked Loto for assistance, and has now briefed the media against what he himself did.

Only staff in Labour's Governance and Legal Unit have the authority to make decisions on cases. So they took the decision to ask Loto for their views of their own accord, yet it's up to them whether they took that advice or not - because they alone have that power.

The worst case involves a member leaving online comments such as 'Heil Hitler'. The Sunday Times focuses on the fact that his member has been suspended, but not expelled. Seems reasonable, doesn't it? Such sickening comments should surely mean expulsion on the spot? Does to me!

Unfortunately there is no provision in Labour's rule book for automatic expulsions. Only a body called the National Constitutional Committee (NCC) - more on this to follow - has this power. It's an autonomous body independent of the disciplinary team and Labour's leadership.

The NCC was established in 1987 under Neil Kinnock's leadership and took away the power of Labour's National Executive Committee to investigate and expel members. The Party brings the cases - think of it as like the Crown Prosecution Service - and NCC is like the court.

If the party arbitrarily expelled people without due process - i.e. the right to defend themselves, as, in criminal justice, those accused of the most heinous crimes has the right to - those expelled could take Labour to court and quite possibly win.

My own two cents is that given confidence has self-evidently collapsed in Labour's disciplinary system, it should be outsourced to a streamlined, independent body. I'm told there are data protection issues with this - but something self-evidently has to be done.

There has been some reform: e.g. legal counsel appointed, antisemitism panels to process complaints faster etc. But the Labour party really has to do more (not least replacing the NCC with something fit for purpose).

One of the Sunday Times' most damning accusations is against Labour party staffer Thomas Gardiner, that he frustrated attempts to fast-track the investigation of a member called two Jewish MPs for being “shit-stirring c** buckets” in the pay of Israel”. (Ugh, sickening comments).

I've looked in to this at length: it's just untrue. Gardiner asked why the normal procedure hadn't been followed, why it hadn't been treated as antisemitism by the complaints officer when it self-evidently was. He was arguing it to be fast-tracked: the opposite of what's accused.

Look, antisemitism really does exist among a small minority on the left. Some on the left are in denial over that; their denial compounds hurt. Labour's disciplinary procedures are out of date and not fit for purpose: that failure has caused real distress. They must be replaced.

That does not mean accusations which represent a real distortion of reality - and which cause real distress amongst Jewish people who are understandably anxious and angry - should be left unchallenged.