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Corbyn joins Forde’s call for action on Labour racism and Islamophobia. Silence from Starmer

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Keir Starmer: after the Equality and Human Rights Commission lifted its special measures against Labour over the way it investigates anti-Semitism, he claimed Labour would “never again be brought to its knees by racism or bigotry”. Those words ring hollow now.

Let’s say it straight: Labour leader Keir Starmer has been accused of lying about processes within the Labour Party to tackle racism, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Both Martin Forde KC, whose report on the subject was commissioned and then ignored by Starmer, and Jeremy Corbyn, who has been widely – and falsely – accused of allowing anti-Semitism to run wild in the party while he was leader, have demanded action to implement the Forde Report’s recommendations.

Mr Forde rounded on Starmer’s claim that Labour had “zero tolerance of anti-Semitism, of racism, of discrimination of any kind”.

Speaking to a virtual event organised by Compass on Monday (March 20), he said:

We’ve heard it from various politicians, but you can’t implement zero tolerance unless you’re policing things fairly rigorously and you’ve got transparent systems in place.

It’s not enough to say, ‘I’ve been on a course’, and that means I’m untouchable.

And he criticised Labour’s decision not to introduce an independent directorate that would oversee the party’s disciplinary process.

This is interesting from This Writer’s point of view, because a Labour NEC member is on the record as having said the Forde Report’s recommendations were being followed:

I think part of the reason that factionalism has arisen around this is because there is a perception that different groups are treated differently,” Forde said.

Jeremy Corbyn’s comments were, if anything, more harshly critical of his successor:

I’ll reproduce his statement below – not just for people who can’t read image files, but also to provide commentary:

The Forde Report called out the horrific sexism and racism expressed toward Diane Abbott and others among senior members of Labour Party staff who were factionally opposed to me leadership. Eight months on from the Report’s publication, it is appalling that anti-Black racism and Islamophobia are not treated seriously enough by the Party.

There should never be a hierarchy of racism.

This is a criticism of Starmer, who has been attacked for making it seem that it is more important to tackle anti-Semitism against Jews who are Zionists and supporters of the current Israeli government than any other form of racism.

We must stand up to all forms of discrimination, which is why I called for the swift implementation of the EHRC recommendations to improve the Party’s disciplinary processes for handling antisemitism complaints. Concerns about anti-Black racism and Islamophobia, detailed by Forde, must be treated with equal significance.

The Forde Report also details instances of factionalism that hindered our objectives and undermined the democratic mandate of Party members. Since April 2020, this culture of factionalism has escalated.

April 2020 was when Keir Starmer became Labour Party leader. Mr Corbyn is saying that Starmer has either ignored or supported such factionalism (my personal opinion is that he has encouraged it; some may claim he is even responsible for it).

Across the country, socialist members with grassroots and trade union support have been blocked from standing as Labour candidates, denying Party members the right to fair and democratic selection processes.

The recommendations of the Forde Report must be implemented. That is the bare minimum. But we must go further in fighting for a politics of anti-racism, democracy and solidarity in wider society. That means opposing the government’s assault on refugees, rather than pandering to divisive rhetoric. It means offering bold solutions to the compounding crises facing us all. And it means building a vision of hope, which inspires people to fight for a more equal, sustainable and peaceful world.

The factionalist attacks against left-wing Labour members should certainly be brought to the attention of the wider public – because their impact has the potential to harm the wider public significantly, if a Labour government is elected into office in 2024 or 2025.

The reason for such concern may be summed up with the words of “a senior left-wing Labour MP” who spoke after the Compass event. That person said:

“If you want to know how [a] party will treat you in government, look at how it treats its members.”

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Forde Report: Pressure on Keir Starmer mounts

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Keir Starmer: why hasn’t he met Martin Forde KC? What Forde Report measures is Labour implementing, and how? And why is he being so tight-lipped about all this?

Labour leader Keir Starmer is facing more pressure to act on the recommendations of the Forde Report after its author, Martin Forde KC, revealed he had not been contacted since it was published in July last year.

People are drawing awkward conclusions, like this:

Labour seems to be saying that it is acting on the report. Here’s the vice-chair of the NEC equalities committee:

This is the same person’s response to calls for a meeting between Mr Forde and Labour:

It’s not a convincing response because the NEC’s decisions seem liable to be overruled by the party leader whenever he feels like it:

Of course the answer is that Mr Forde requested a meeting, in order to ensure that his recommendations were understood and any further action would be appropriate.

Compounding this, though, is the fact that Labour’s Forde working group asked to meet with him and were rebuffed:

Alongside this, there’s the fact that mainstream media journalists who practically camped on Jeremy Corbyn’s doorstep to ask him about anti-Semitism suddenly found that they didn’t have time to knock on Keir Starmer’s front door over this:

Then there’s the question of the BBC’s attempt to gag Mr Forde by demanding that he “amend” a critical section of his report:

And now other organisations are being brought into the debate, like the Muslim Council of Britain:

Who else will get involved?

Personally, This Writer would like to see representations from Black Lives Matter, if only to see what that group has to say about him describing that organisations as a “moment” and cynically taking the knee as a photo opportunity.

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Why is Keir Starmer ignoring racism and Islamophobia exposed by the Forde Report

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Starmer takes the knee for Black Lives Matter: to him it meant nothing more than a photo opportunity. Black lives don’t matter to him – as we discovered when he attacked the organisation shortly after. Now we find he’s turning a blind eye to racism identified in the report by Martin Forde KC.

Anti-black racism and Islamophobia in the Labour Party, raised by Martin Forde KC in his report to that organisation last summer, has been ignored by party leaders including Keir Starmer.

Starmer has not contacted Forde since he published his report confirming that anti-Semitism and other racism had been a battleground between left- and right-wing factionalists within Labour. It seems this was not what the party leader wanted to hear.

Fortunately for him, very few mainstream media journalists had been interestest either:

Yes – odd, that. Mainstream hacks had been able to doorstep Jeremy Corbyn at the drop of a hat, but Starmer seems uncontactable.

Worse, Starmer seems to have ignored concerns raised by black and minority ethnic figures within his own Parliamentary party:

Here’s some evidence to back up the assertion:

Strange how anti-Semitism against pro-Israel Zionists can be such a vital issue for Starmer, but racism against non-Zionist left-wing Jews, black people and Muslims gets a free pass.

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Months after the Forde Report was published, Labour STILL hasn’t contacted its author about future steps

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Keir Starmer: yet another own goal.

Martin Forde KC, the author of a major report on allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, has said there are serious issues of racism but, since it was published in July, nobody in the organisation has contacted him to discuss what should happen next.

Mr Forde told the Express

he has “anxiety” and “genuine underlying concerns” about “racial issues within the party”.

Referring to Sir Keir’s speech last month, in which the Labour leader said the party will “never again be brought to its knees by racism or bigotry”, Mr Forde said: “It is not a sufficient response to say ‘that was then this is now’.”

He added: “These are serious debates that need to be heard in a respectful context. And I just feel this there’s work to be done.”

His words come after he was interviewed by Middle Eastern broadcaster Al-Jazeera for an episode of its Labour Files documentary series, in which he claimed that the BBC Panorama documentary Is Labour Antisemitic had been “objectively entirely misleading”, and that he had been contacted by BBC representatives who wanted him to “amend” his comments on the show.

Here’s how the Al-Jazeera documentary describes what happened:

The documentary also suggests that Labour leader Keir Starmer has reneged on a promise to party members from ethnic minorities, that he would take the findings of the Forde Report seriously:

You can watch the whole documentary via the link below:

I think I would urge you to do so.

Why does Jeremy Corbyn STILL face constant attacks – with LIES – in the media?

One has to admire the resilience of the man.

More than two years after he retired from the leadership of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn is still bombarded with unsupported attacks on his character and behaviour.

We all know, now, that claims of rampant anti-Semitism within Labour during his leadership were lies. Accusations were confected for political reasons and were false.

Similarly, claims that he was a supporter of terrorist organisations like the IRA and Hamas were also lies; he is a pacifist and would never approve of the use of violence to achieve political ends.

But still the accusations fly – today, from client journalists like Olivia Utley of the Torygraph and a comedian called Matt Forde, on the BBC’s Politics Live.

Sadly, little attempt was made to balance their nonsense with factual evidence.

Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was reduced during Mr Corbyn’s time as leader – and that was from a level lower than the national average or any other UK political party.

The investigation of the party by the Equality and Human Rights Commission was requested for political reasons and eventually reported that the party was not institutionally anti-Semitic.

Forde’s attacks on Bell Ribeiro-Addy, referring to the investigation, were misleading. I think he must have known this and question why he behaved in that manner. It surprises me that nobody at the BBC thought to question it in any way.

Perhaps This Writer can redress the balance here, with something the BBC broadcast a while ago:

It seems there’s at least one broadcaster there who still knows what a fact is.

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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:

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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Is this the week of the redacted reports? #Partygate #FordeReport

All in it together: reports about Boris Johnson and Labour’s right-wing faction (to which Keir Starmer belongs) are set to be published during the week – but both Johnson and Starmer will be able to edit them before the public gets to learn anything about them that may harm their standing generally. Shouldn’t they be blocked from doing that?

Two hugely important and controversial reports are set to be released in the coming week – but it seems the authorities behind them are so worried about how they’ll be taken that they won’t let us read them in their entirety.

We’re being led to believe that the Sue Gray’s report on Partygate is likely to come out first – probably on Monday.

But the amount of detail released to the public will be decided by Boris Johnson, according to Deputy PM Dominic Raab.

That’s a perverse decision, isn’t it? He’s the one the report is about!

Worse than that is the claim that the report won’t be based on all the information that it should use, because officials at 10 Downing Street have withheld it.

It seems that, even after the Information Commissioner’s Office intervened to warn that withholding or deleting information is against the law, at least three Downing Street employees have done so – in fear.

The claim adds more damage to Johnson’s credibility, after allegations were made that his whips were blackmailing MPs into withholding letters of “no confidence” in his leadership and Nusrat Ghani said that, after she was sacked as a minister over her “Muslimness”, Johnson advised her to complain by using the wrong method.

It seems increasingly that, despite the fact that we all know what it should say, Ms Gray’s report won’t be worth the time it will take for us to hear it.

The other document that should become public – on Tuesday – is the long-awaited Forde Report into alleged mishandling of anti-Semitism claims by Labour Party officers.

This was prompted after an internal party report, The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019 was leaked to the public.

It asserted that factionalism in the party – by right-wing senior managers – was responsible for failures to properly handle allegations of racism and anti-Semitism (a claim that has been corroborated to a great extent by the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on claims that the party was institutionally anti-Semitic).

The report was originally due in early 2021. After being delayed for an entire year, it is expected to go before members of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee on Tuesday (January 25).

But any copy of it that is seen by the public is likely to appear only in edited form.

For any member of the public, the editing of both reports raises the same concern: what do Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer have to hide?

Both these reports are on matters of public interest; we deserve to have the facts.

But they both cover activities that could reflect poorly on the prime minister and the Labour leader, respectively.

Shouldn’t they be prevented from having anything to do with these documents before they are published in full?

Source: Dominic Raab refuses to confirm full publication of Sue Gray partygate report | Boris Johnson | The Guardian

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Forde inquiry into leaked Labour anti-Semitism report delayed – but does it matter?

Jeremy Corbyn: the Forde Inquiry could have exonerated him from any implications of support for anti-Semitism but it seems to have been gagged from doing so.

Martin Forde QC’s report on the leaked report into the way anti-Semitism was handled by Labour Party officers has been delayed. But does it really matter after its focus was watered down to almost nothing?

Mr Forde told Labour’s National Executive Committee he was delaying his report to avoid prejudicing an inquiry by the Information Commissioner’s Office into whether the leak breached data protection laws.

But is this really likely, considering that the Forde Inquiry is apparently now focused only on examining “the structure, culture and practices of the Labour Party”.

It had originally been charged with some much more interesting and worthwhile purposes.

But in an all-but-ignored announcement last summer, Mr Forde announced that he would not, after all, “investigate and report on the truth or otherwise of the main allegations in the report”.

This was the inquiry’s most important purpose. The report had produced a mountain of evidence which, if true, cleared Corbyn of claims that he had been complacent on anti-Semitism.

Instead, it implicated party officials who had been among his fiercest critics with claims that they actively worked to prevent the party as led by Corbyn from winning a general election.

If the claims were found to be true, then claims that Corbyn and his supporters were soft on – or even supported – anti-Semitism would have been exposed as primarily a witch-hunt.

But now, nobody is checking the basic accuracy of the report at all.

Also ditched was the requirement to investigate why the report was written and how it was leaked.

So it seems there is little point in being concerned about when the Forde Report will be released. It simply won’t provide any information worth waiting for.

Source: Labour: Report into anti-Semitism dossier leak delayed – BBC News

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Hysteria as ONE poll puts Starmer Labour level with Tories. Why isn’t he 20 points ahead?

No answers: Starmer’s Labour is level in the polls because of Tory incompetence, not because of anything he has done. His own decisions could force his ejection from the party leadership within a few short months.

Apparently The Guardian reckons Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has gained 26 points in the opinion polls to draw level with the Conservatives on 40 each. This is nonsense. In fact, I think it’s a flat-out lie.

My reasoning is obvious: Labour has not fallen to 14 points on the opinion polls this year. When Starmer took over as leader, I am reliably informed the party stood on 32 points.

So, if The Guardian was right, Labour should now be 18 points ahead. And that’s still not the 20 points ahead that Labour right-wing cuckoos said Jeremy Corbyn should have been, when he was Labour leader!

Who wrote that nonsense for the Graun and how do they justify their paycheques?

And consider this: while Labour as a party is said to be level with the Tories in this outlier poll by Opinium…

… Starmer himself has fallen behind Johnson. It is a matter of days since Starmer’s adherents were claiming his critics should shut up because a poll had put Starmer above Johnson as preferred PM while Labour was several points behind the Tories.

They want to have it both ways, and it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Labour’s current – only average – showing is due to the incompetence and greed of Boris Johnson and his Tory cronies, who are clearly to be seen cashing in on the Covid-19 crisis when they should be doing everything they can to help the citizens of the UK.

And it’s not going to last – because Starmer’s decisions are catching up with him.

So we see in Labour Heartlands that genuine left-winger and film director Ken Loach wants to know Starmer’s involvement in the Julian Assange case:

As DPP, Sir Keir Starmer tempered his supposed love of liberty by fast-tracking the extradition of Julian Assange (a process now making its way through the courts). He flouted legal precedents by advising Swedish lawyers not to question Assange in Britain: a decision that prolonged the latter’s legal purgatory, denied closure to his accusers in Sweden, and sealed his fate before a US show trial. Leaked emails from August 2012 show that, when the Swedish legal team expressed hesitancy about keeping Assange’s case open, Sir Keir’s office replied: ‘Don’t you dare get cold feet’.

Documents released under Freedom of Information requests to Italian magazine La Repubblica confirm the very close relationship between the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Sweden in the Julian Assange case. The files contain hundreds of mostly redacted emails sent over a five-year period. But according to one authoritative source, the number of CPS documents relating to the case may be much greater than has so far been disclosed.

In May 2017, the Swedish authorities announced they had ceased all remaining investigations into alleged sexual assault by WikiLeaks founder Assange. But the Metropolitan Police arrest warrant for skipping bail would remain in force. Subsequently, Assange’s legal team sought a ruling that the Met warrant should be rescinded, but the court ruled otherwise.

This case is one of the great political cases of the century, as John McDonnell recently said. It’s a defining case for the left, and Sir Keir Starmer has taken the most conservative position imaginable.

This is what Labour Party members can expect from a Starmer leadership: unquestioning loyalty to the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic.

And then we have the matter of the Labour Payout – the £600,000 that Starmer handed over to a group of right-wing factionalists who are no longer working for Labour but who made extravagant claims about anti-Semitism and Jeremy Corbyn, while apparently doing all they could to sabotage the party’s chances at election (according to a now-infamous leaked Labour report).

One part of those allegations involved the diversion of 2017 election funds away from target seats to safe seats in a move that was hidden from Corbyn. Former elections director Patrick Heneghan was said to be responsible for this and he has now published his attempts at self-justification in response to the inquiry into that leaked report.

His response has been picked apart in a 14-tweet thread by Steve Howell, who also worked on Labour’s General Election Campaign Committee (GECC). I make no apology for including those tweets here, so we all have access to them:

(Oh yeah, let’s have the rest of that previous thread as well:)

It is clear that Heneghan did siphon off Labour campaign money that could have been used to win the seats needed to form a government in 2017 – without the knowledge of the party leader – and it is entirely possible that this action prevented Labour from winning that year’s election.

So why did Starmer give a huge amount of money to the people who threatened to take Labour to court over it? It seems clear they did not have a case.

Put these matters together – along with any others that you care to mention – and one thing seems clear:

Keir Starmer’s position as Labour leader is on borrowed time. He may not last long after the Forde report is published.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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