It isn’t the week of redacted reports after all; it’s the week of POSTPONED reports #FordeReport
Keir Starmer: has he sabotaged an important inquiry?
Even Martin Forde has lost track of what his inquiry is supposed to discover, I reckon.
Why else would his report – now around 18 months late – still be unfinished?
Originally intended to find out whether allegations in the leaked Labour Party report The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019 were accurate, Forde was (then? later?) ordered to find out who leaked it (by Labour leader Keir Starmer).
Later still, it was stated that most of the inquiry’s aims had been dropped and it would now focus merely on the “culture” of the Labour Party – whatever that means.
No wonder Mr Forde has just reported to Labour’s National Executive Committee that his report has been delayed yet again – and won’t be available, even in redacted form, in time for the January 25, 2022 NEC meeting:
He says that the report is still only “largely” completed – is this because he has become as confused as the rest of us about what it is supposed to say?
This is potentially humorous: “We have been working extremely hard to ensure our recommendations are clear, cogent and workable.”
We’ll be the judges of that!
And isn’t it suspicious that he wishes to “place on record” that the delay has not been caused by “political interference”?
What has he been doing for the last 19 months, then?
LabourList editor Sienna Rodgers also seems to be running out of patience. She tweeted:
A reason given for the delay last year was that the ICO was investigating the same leaks. I have asked the ICO whether it has completed that investigation and what it found. I've also asked the Forde Inquiry that, and whether the report was changed due to work by the ICO.
— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) January 24, 2022
Does this mean the report can be completed and published before the ICO investigation is completed? Or is the report only going to be shared with the NEC in a redacted form with the leaks section excluded, until the ICO investigation is completed?
I've asked the Forde Inquiry.
— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) January 24, 2022
The reply appears to have been delayed.
In all seriousness, it is questionable whether the Forde Report – or indeed the ICO report, if it ever appears, will have any relevance at all; when the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that Labour was not institutionally anti-Semitic, in autumn 2020, it reported a factional, right-wing culture of delay in handling complaints, in order to cast false blame on the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
So the allegations in the leaked report have been proved by the EHRC. Haven’t they?
The trouble with that is, it isn’t what Keir Starmer wants to hear.
He wants to blame the Labour left-wingers – particularly those Jewish people he has been busily expelling for no reason at all since he became party leader.
That’s why Mr Forde’s protestations of non-interference ring so hollow and his inquiry is so badly compromised. Nobody is going to believe him if he exonerates the Right and blames the Left, after the EHRC did the exact opposite.
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Nice work of you can get it, Mike.
Chilcott was paid £790 a DAY. Small wonder that whitewash was years late.
I wonder how much forde is being paid, and if that’s the reason this £13.5m* has vanished?
*Minus £600k handed over to the panorama lot without so much as a squeak from former DPP keef smarmer,despite being advised the party’d win the case if was contested.
Maybe they can both be found hiding in the fridge I hear that’s popular I have only contempt for both parts these days.
Heck, why not claim it caught covid and is in isolation it would be more believable than this BS!