That Starmer fella...

how do you rationalise starmer's political intervention to suspend jeremy corbyn (in direct contravention of the EHRC's guidance that there must be no political interference in disciplinary cases because such interference could be unlawful)? dispute the version of facts set out by those around jeremy corbyn (principally len mccluskey) because they're unreliable, unproven and not made in good faith? argue that - while keir starmer accepted the findings in full - the recommendations of the EHRC had not yet been implemented?

I'm afraid that argument (that Starmer broke the EHRC guidance by suspending the whip from Corbyn) is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the way party discipline works and what the EHRC report says about it. It's not helped by Novara media and the like repeating this stuff, but I'm happy to clarify:

There are two processes here. The governing body of Labour members is the NEC - they decide who can be a member of the party, and the leader's office (LOTO) should not interfere in that. However, LOTO decides who can call themselves an MP (i.e. whether an MP has the whip). The disciplinary process the EHRC are interested in is the member/NEC one; they are not interested in how the LOTO chooses to dispense the whip, which is a matter for LOTO only. The EHRC report puts it like this (my bolds):

"We agree that the leadership and the Chief Whip have a role in matters relating
to the conduct of MPs. However, neither LOTO nor the Chief Whip has the power
to suspend or expel an individual from the Party: that power is reserved to the
NEC and National Constitutional Committee (NCC), based on work done, in
practice, by the GLU. It is therefore not legitimate for LOTO to interfere in the
handling of a complaint against an MP that has been made under the Party
rules."

So when the NEC restored Corbyn's membership (and by default returned the whip too, because Labour has a rule which says that Labour MPs must also be Labour members) that marked the end of the disciplinary process the EHRC are interested in, and as long as Starmer didn't interfere in that, he's aligned with the EHRC judgement. It also freed up Starmer to be able to withdraw the whip - separately - under his powers in the LOTO.

This is more or less exactly the same thing that happened with Chris Williamson - the NEC suspended his membership (and therefore the whip) and once the membership (and therefore the whip) was restored, Corbyn (correctly imo) removed the whip. Corbyn didn't break the EHRC by removing the whip and neither did Starmer - it's within their gift to do.

one of the points on labour's action plan to address the EHRC recommendations was implementation of quarterly reporting on all disciplinary cases, to allow comparative analysis with AS cases. they said they would begin implementing that immediately (though some system changes may be required to facilitate this). where can I find those statistics?

According to the action plan that report is for the EHRC: "The Labour Party will make monthly returns for the first six months to the EHRC to report progress and thereafter, the Labour Party will report quarterly." and not for the public.

why did momentum counsel their members to vote against the implementation of reforms to labour's disciplinary processes?

No idea. I suppose if I had to try to be fair, I'd say that most of them genuinely believe that the EHRC report was wrong, and that Corbyn hadn't done anything wrong, and that therefore we shouldn't have to make any changes. Though frankly I have a fairly low opinion of Momentum, especially after this week, and it wouldn't surprise me if the reasons were much worse.