Conor McGinn and Holly Lynch [Composite: PA/Labour].

After his conduct during the attempted coup against Jeremy Corbyn by members of the Parliamentary Labour Party over the summer, there will be few members who are sorry to see Conor McGinn leaving the whips’ office.

This is the man who, in an article on PoliticsHome titled I can no longer tolerate Jeremy Corbyn’s hypocrisy, claimed fellow whips had told him the Labour leader had threatened to telephone his father, a former Sinn Fein councillor, over comments made by Mr McGinn (Jr) in an interview.

It very quickly transpired that none of his allegations are substantiated by factual evidence. There is no record of the content of the call he allegedly received from the Whips’ Office and he does not say how “it transpired” that Mr Corbyn was going to phone his dad.

Shortly afterwards, Mr McGinn was embroiled in a row with his own Constituency Labour Party members, after a group of women was excluded from a meeting to discuss a vote of confidence in Mr Corbyn.

It would appear that this group of members had been fed incorrect information about the venue for a CLP meeting; that McGinn and local councillors/delegates had conducted the meeting behind locked doors, and when questioned shrugged off members’ genuine concerns.

But in his report to the police – yes, the police – about the incident, and in a subsequent article on PoliticsHome, it seems Mr McGinn claimed that a group of thugs had ransacked his office and threatened him so severely that he required police protection.

Perhaps it is best that he should go – and go quietly.

Ms Lynch, on the other hand, is almost a blank slate to This Writer. She became a whip last autumn, so it seems Mr Corbyn gave her the job.

The only record of her conduct held by This Blog shows that she was among the many Labour MPs who let down their constituents by abstaining from voting on the then-Welfare and Work Bill on its second reading in July last year – as advised by Harriet Harman, who was acting party leader at the time.

From that, we can infer that she was a so-called ‘moderate’, and therefore not likely to support Mr Corbyn’s policies avidly. But there seems no reason to believe she campaigned hard against him.

Unless somebody knows something I don’t?

Two Labour MPs have resigned from the shadow whips’ office, just days after party leader Jeremy Corbyn reshuffled his front bench.

His decision to replace chief whip Dame Rosie Winterton with Nick Brown, was met with some surprise last week.

MPs Holly Lynch and Conor McGinn have resigned, it was confirmed on Sunday.

Ms Lynch tweeted it was “time to focus” on her marginal constituency while Mr McGinn said it was the “right time” to concentrate on his seat and his family.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn thanked them for their service and said that their positions would be filled “in due course”.

Source: Labour MPs quit as whips after Corbyn shadow cabinet reshuffle – BBC News

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