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It's not a precis, it's a direct quote. The EHRC report has a whole chapter called 'A Failure of Leadership', page 100, but their view is best summarised by the following quote:
We found specific examples of harassment, discrimination and political
interference in our evidence, but equally of concern was a lack of leadership
within the Labour Party on these issues, which is hard to reconcile with its stated
commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism.The Forde Report says the following:
"In contrast to the widespread response from the membership, some key figures within the Party were notably silent ... Regrettably, certain prominent members of the Party (including those central to the factual matrix) either declined to meet with the Panel or failed to respond to our requests for evidence. Most notably, while he was a signatory to a joint written submission, Jeremy Corbyn did not engage in our requests to interview him"
You are fundamentally wrong on your interpretation of the EHRC report btw. It does not matter if it found that Labour had institutionally discriminated against Jewish people on one or a hundred occasions, that it found we had done so at all IS the judgement. It had 220 complaints to choose from, of which it investigated 58, and 12 from the Labour Party itself. The detailed analysis it published to demonstrate the legitimacy of the ruling was literally the tip of the iceberg.
ReekBlefs-
The quote you've selectively used there is actually quite interesting, because while it criticises 'a lack of leadership within the Labour Party', it stops short of apportioning blame for this. Now, you may say it's the leader's job, the buck stops with him, etc. But that would be to ignore the Party's own internal rule, its structure and the very real evidence of interference in the process from both sides, not just from 'the left'. The EHRC has been quite careful in using the term 'leadership' because as far as it was concerned, that didn't just mean the leader of the opposition, a fact made plain by its distinguishing the two in the summary of its findings. So he was not specifically called out for a failure of leadership in that judgement, as you initially argue. Quite the reverse, in fact - the Labour Party as a whole was criticised for lapses in process, procedure, complaint handling, training. etc.
As for your Forde report quote, that Jeremy Corbyn didn't engage in requests to interview him was neither here nor there. Loads of people declined to be interviewed, including many of those responsible for the outbursts that sparked Forde being called in to investigate in the first place. So to interpret that as 'not tackling the issue and not taking it seriously' (by which you mean the issue of antisemitism) is disingenuous at best.
And actually, it does matter how many people had been 'institutionally discriminated against' when you're talking about the scale of something. That EHRC found evidence it had happened in two cases where it deemed the Labour Party was directly responsible. It also found wider evidence of antisemitic behaviour - but not that much wider. Nevertheless, the findings were acknowledged by Jeremy Corbyn when he made the statement to which you object. And the gravity of it was accepted. Nevertheless, the point that the scale was exaggerated still stands.
As for the the tip of the iceberg thing - I read the same bit of the EHRC report and if that iceberg consists of 18 further borderline cases and evidence of antisemitic conduct among members (that were not deemed the responsibility of the leader of the opposition), then it's not exactly an iceberg, is it? More a perfectly visible snowball.
But ultimately, you're saying Jeremy Corbyn should have had no right to reply, which is pretty wild IMO.
ketsbaia
That's an interesting interpretation/précis.
Just been through the Forde report and there are no such suggestions, so either you've misinterpreted the report or are making it up.
As far as I remember, the EHRC upheld two complaints after a lengthy investigation. Two. I would ask whether you think the volume of column inches devoted to the crisis was proportionate to upholding two cases of discrimination, but you've already hinted at your view, so I won't bother.