I experienced the hostility documented in the leaked Labour report – it has to be a turning point A more united and effective Labour Party is possible, but we all need to play our part

Thousands of Labour party members will have been feeling a mix of emotions (anger, disbelief and frustration) over the last 72 hours as an explosive document was published online over the Easter weekend documenting the alleged sabotage and vitriol faced by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, leading to the mishandling of disciplinary issues.

One of those who must have been feeling frustration is Keir Starmer, the recently installed leader elected under a banner of uniting the party and ending factionalism. The Scottish Labour leader, Richard Leonard, who also sits on the party National Executive Committee responded: “The tactics and language detailed in this report should have no place in the Labour Party”. Most Labour members will agree.

If handled correctly, this could be an opportunity for Keir Starmer to put his unity pledge on a robust footing, by clearing out the Augean stables and putting down a marker that such behaviour will not be tolerated.

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Party staff should act as a kind of civil service, leaving their own politics at the door and using their skills and creativity to most effectively implement decisions made by the party’s democratic bodies and representatives.

The report instead appears to shows party staff organising against Labour candidates and to undermine MPs, hoping the party would fail at elections, and failing to work as instructed by the elected leadership and National Executive Committee. It appears too that this behaviour was not just protected but encouraged and co-ordinated by the most senior levels of management.

As someone who entered Labour Party employment as the first tranche of staff for the then newly elected Jeremy Corbyn, not much of the substance of the report shocked me. There was no support to a new incoming team – instead, there was hostility; and staffing budgets and other resources, like new PCs, were withheld. It was clear then that we were being systematically undermined.

Of course those staff took their lead from the majority of the parliamentary Labour party, many of whom never accepted the result, and who would launch a coup just nine months later – with Labour then about level in the polls.

With Jeremy winning even more convincingly in the 2016 leadership contest the attacks paused temporarily. But by February 2017, John McDonnell wrote that what he termed a “soft coup” was underway against the twice elected leader. He was ridiculed as “unhinged” by an anonymous (as ever) former Labour minister.

The leaked report documents a conversation in January 2017 involving three of the party’s most senior staff agreeing to pull together “Operation Cupcake”, and reporting that the General Secretary of the party had told “TW” (presumably then deputy leader Tom Watson) “to prepare for being interim leader”. As Kurt Cobain sang (in the criminally underrated song Territorial Pissings) “just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you”.

If true, the report shows that this wasn’t a few disgruntled staff, but a culture that came from the top levels of the party. Racism and misogyny were on display, too. Diane Abbott allegedly had her whereabouts passed to connoisseur of the doorstep interview Michael Crick, after staff discussed finding her crying (on a day the media was reporting the volume of online abuse she receives). Dawn Butler is separately castigated for alleging racism within the party by an all-white cohort of staff. Senior female staff employed by Corbyn are variously described as “smelly cow”, “bitch face cow”, “fat” and “fucking idiot”.

“Advisers advise, ministers decide” is a hackneyed phrase, but like most aphorisms it holds a deeper truth. The bureaucracy serves democracy, not the other way around. Even if staff think they know best, they are not accountable. As any civil servant, council worker or union official knows, you can make your case but ultimately the decision is not for you. What’s remarkable is that most of these staff had only been appointed since 2005 and so had no experience of actually delivering the party any electoral success. Ironically the only time Labour has gained seats since 1997 was under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017.

What the report doesn’t show, as some deniers have assumed it did, is that the anti-Semitism allegations were all a politically trumped up smear. What it does appear to show is that until 2018 the party was more concerned about expelling people they deemed “Trots” (i.e. anyone left of Blair who maybe had seen a Facebook post by the Greens and liked it). Actually offensive behaviour – whether anti-semitism, Islamophobia or other bigotry – appeared to be overlooked or minimised unless it served a greater factional purpose.

On a recent edition of the BBC’s Westminster Hour I said I thought the leadership had been too slow to get on top of the issue of anti-Semitism, and wrong not to have immediately adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition. This report appears to prove that there were deliberate actions by staff to delay or string out high profile cases.

In his leadership campaign, Keir Starmer backed those whistleblowing staff who alleged failures in the fight against anti-Semitism. Some of those testimonies will be viewed through a different lens in light of this report. Starmer’s backing for whistleblowers must also now extend to the authors of this document.

On the plus side, I’m pretty sure Keir Starmer won’t face the hostility from senior party staff that his predecessor did. Labour party staff should faithfully serve whoever the party elects as leader (or resign if they don’t want to), and in my experience very many did and will continue to do so.

Nevertheless, this report – and the recently announced investigation into it – must be a turning point for Labour. A chance not just for Keir Starmer to assert unity as the party’s watchword, but a chance too for all staff, members and elected representatives to reflect on their own behaviour too.

A more united and effective party is possible, but we all need to play our part.

Andrew Fisher was Executive Director of Policy at The Labour Party from 2016 to 2019. He is the author of The Failed Experiment – a book about UK economic policy and the financial crash of 2007/08.