Labour leadership contest 2020

Me, an idiot: this report contains damning primary evidence that the management of the Labour Party conspired against and undermined the elected party leader

You, an intellectual: both sides are bad

Also, nice to see the usual fuckers saying 'CorByN is UnEleCtabLE bEcAusE tHE mEdiA'. Fucking fuck off, Ed Miliband was pilloried for eating a fucking sandwich. Corbyn was unelectable because the BBC newsroom is run by Torys and the Labour party is staffed by cunts.

Yep, you can't play the 'both sides' card here (or anywhere really to be honest). The report details that the dominant faction within Labour HQ operated a sustained campaign to undermine the party's democratically-elected leader, aiming to hinder any chances of electoral success and in the process grossly compromising the party's responses to instances of racism within party ranks. All in order to own the left.

Can someone help me with the summary take here?

Corbyn - hated by the centrists - didn't investigate the antisemitism because he was being hated on by the centrists? Meanwhile, the centrists are also actively plotting against Corbyn and prevented a general election win because they were hating on Corbyn?

Wow. You are in a different world

Can someone help me with the summary take here?

Politics is gonna politic

Care to explain? The left is far from blameless (in general), but the above is what I gleaned from the report. What strikes me most about the Labour right is that they don't seem to be able to offer any indication of what they actually want—they just seem to define themselves in terms of a diametric opposition to the left (and by the left, as stated in the report, they mean anyone to the left of Gordon Brown).

The counterfactual that Labour would have won the election in 2017 were it not for the actions of senior HQ staff seems to me to be implausible or at least doubtful, but this report nonetheless is very serious—not least for the manifest cruelty that these staffers demonstrate, and the influence that these unelected and ostensibly non-factional positions exert over electoral and (most significantly in this case) disciplinary processes.

I found it too dull and factional to try and understand, but I think the complaint is that centrist staffers in Labour HQ helped discredit the leadership over the failures to tackle anti-semitism.

At least anti-semitism will be less of a problem when all the entryists from the SWP pack their bags and head off.

"I didn't try to understand this but here's my hot take anyway" is a strong opening gambit, respect.

The accusation is that the 'staffers' (or senior management, if you prefer to accurately represent the degree of power the people in question had) actively impeded the disciplinary process for those accused of antisemitism - i.e. they intentionally made it more difficult for the party to effectively deal with the issue - for their own political ends.

surely impeding any investigations into anti-semitism is something an anti-semite would do?

"I didn't try to understand this but here's my hot take anyway" is a strong opening gambit, respect.

Ha - at least I was honest. Have you read the report? Can you point me to where there is evidence of Labour staffers blocking antisemitism investigations to harm Corbyn?

Good summary here: https://labourlist.org/2020/04/internal-report-lays-bare-poor-handling-of-complaints-by-labour/

It's important to note that this is not what the report states: they actually dealt with nearly all complaints of discrimination equally badly. The most significant disciplinary cases were all of an antisemitic nature though (Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker). The report claims that cases were dealt with more quickly when there were factional gains for HQ to be made, and that since 2018 when Jennie Formby (who doesn't share the same factional allegiances as McNichol etc.) was installed, there has been a significant improvement in the way that cases have been dealt with. As @Thick_Hollins states above, this is a good summary: https://labourlist.org/2020/04/internal-report-lays-bare-poor-handling-of-complaints-by-labour/

https://youtu.be/H6oOj7BzciA

(Rant deleted)

Why not drop this, and just let these saboteur arseholes on the Labour Right dig their own grave?

Did you actually watch it? It says nothing of the sort.

Apoligies for the rant, have decided it was not constructive.

There’s WhatsApp messages that state that the senior management team got Tom Watson who sat on the committee dealing with it to suspend ken Livingston for another year, rather than deal with it swiftly to harm Corbz.

Go and police someone else's posts.

Appreciate you've deleted the post now, but on the subject of your rant, I'd just like to emphasise that the 'The report’s findings prove the scale of the [antisemitism] problem, and could help end the denialism amongst parts of the Party membership which has further hurt Jewish members and the Jewish community.'

It by no means denies the fact that there is a problem; rather it points to the fact that the LOTO's responses to disciplinary cases within the party have likely been compromised by the faction of the party who were screaming most loudly about it. It also therefore suggests that some of the people in the most powerful positions on the Labour right were not exactly acting in good faith.

There’s WhatsApp messages that state that the senior management team got Tom Watson who sat on the committee dealing with it to suspend ken Livingston for another year, rather than deal with it swiftly to harm Corbz.

I think it's likely that stuff like this went on, but the quote this is based on isn't proof of it:

Emilie Oldknow wrote that "Karie [Murphy] has been telling Shadow Cabinet members that I've orchestrated the Ken situation so... Tom got his people on the panel to make a soft decision. all in order to embarrass JC and create a crisis".

So she's reporting Murphy's opinion here.

There is some failing to see the wood from the trees here. The likes of Livingstone and Williamson were lifelong political allies and fellow travelers of Corbyn. The crisis with anti-semitism in the party arose under Corbyn's leadership because of the people he gave prominence too and the people he attracted to the party.

This is untrue in the case of Williamson. He'd only been an MP since 2010, and only aligned himself with the left some time after that. Prior to his career as an MP he'd been on Derby council, and was notably an outspoken advocate of PFI.

In the case of Livingstone, yes, he'd been historically more aligned with Corbyn's politics, but let's not pretend he sprung up from nowhere. He was Mayor until 2004...

Equally, much of the commentary on Labour's antisemitism crisis was centred on the handling of the crisis itself. The Chief Rabbi's statement in December for instance laid the blame for the failure to deal with these complaints at Corbyn's feet. What the report shows is that at least until 2018 the complaints procedure was in such a mess not because of LOTO or the team surrounding him but because of Labour HQ staffers.

Agreed, deleted.