Labour’s new general secretary has been criticised for placing the parliamentary party’s secretary on gardening leave for the duration of his notice period, amid concern over how the removal of the party’s most senior Jewish employee could be perceived.

John Cryer, the chair of the parliamentary Labour party (PLP), wrote to Jennie Formby about her decision over Dan Simpson, the PLP secretary.

Cryer told fellow MPs: “I have made it absolutely clear to Jennie that to use her first day in the job to effectively remove our secretary with immediate effect shows a worrying set of priorities.”

Ruth Smeeth, the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, also criticised the decision, saying: “Dan has been an excellent member of our team, and I’m incredibly concerned by the optics of the first act by the new general secretary being to put on gardening leave the most senior Jewish member of staff employed by the party.”

Labour sources said the gardening leave had been mutually agreed.

The complaints – which reflect widespread anxiety in the PLP about changes to the national executive committee (NEC), where Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters now control all senior positions – comes hours after the Bristol West MP, Thangam Debbonaire, faced a censure motion in her constituency.

She was accused of bringing the party into disrepute for attending the antisemitism protest organised by Jewish community leaders outside parliament early last week. The motion was defeated by 108 to 84.



Meanwhile, two Labour councillors in Peterborough face a critical meeting of their constituency party on Friday night. Richard Ferris and Matthew Mahabadi complained about the selection of a candidate, Alan Bull, who had been linked to antisemitic posts on social media. The row led to the resignation of Christine Shawcroft as chair of the NEC’s disputes panel after it emerged she had intervened to try to stop Bull being suspended and deselected as a candidate.

Formby, who began work on Tuesday, emailed constituency Labour party secretaries on Thursday warning them that criticising members who were concerned about antisemitism was “deeply unhelpful”. She said any discussion should be based on Labour principles of “solidarity and equality”.

Mahabadi and Ferris said they only went public with their complaints about Bull after there was no action from either the local or national party.

Last week in an article for the New Statesman, the councillors wrote they had been branded as “far right” and faced investigation for “bullying and intimidating behaviour” on social media. They had also been called in for “discussions” with the Labour group on the council and criticised.

Mahabadi and Ferris fear they will face further criticism, or even expulsion, at Friday night’s meeting of the constituency party executive.

Labour’s East of England regional organiser emailed party members on Friday to emphasise that the executive had no power to discipline the councillors.

The email said the regional office had to give approval for disciplinary action. “I want to state categorically that you will not have this,” wrote the organiser.

“Speaking out against antisemitism, as Richard Ferris and Matthew Mahabadi have done, is clearly not a breach of Labour party rules.”



This week, Bull emailed news organisations including the Guardian to deny he was either a Holocaust denier or antisemitic. He insisted he deeply regretted reposting an article denying the Holocaust but claimed he did it only to find out what his Facebook friends made of it. Critics have pointed out that it went out to 2,000 people.

Bull wrote: “I accept that I am guilty of sharing material that is antisemitic ... [but] I am not antisemitic, and I am not a Holocaust denier. I have accepted an offer of antisemitism training.”

Many MPs who, like Debbonaire, attended last week’s protest against Labour’s failure to tackle antisemitism in the party are facing criticism. A post on a closed Facebook group of party members in Tottenham, north London, suggested the constituency’s MP, David Lammy, should be deselected. Other MPs have been abused on social media. Luciana Berger, who first raised the problem, has been targeted. Berger, who is MP for Liverpool Wavertree, is Jewish.

Corbyn has condemned the attacks. But he was criticised again for his decision to attend a Passover celebration with the radical Jewish group Jewdas in his constituency.

• This article was amended on 6 April 2018 to remove an incorrect reference to Jewdas’s position on the complaints about antisemitism in the Labour party, and on 9 April to specify that one post, not the whole group, had suggested Lammy’s deselection.

