Party’s ruling body gives MP formal warning rather than refer him for expulsion

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Labour will reinstate suspended MP Jared O’Mara after its ruling body was advised to issue him with a formal warning rather than refer him for expulsion, the Guardian understands.

O’Mara, who has been suspended since 2017 for abusive comments made on social media, had his case considered by Labour’s national executive committee after waiting more than nine months for a decision, according to sources.

A Labour party spokesperson confirmed the MP would be re-admitted to the party. “The disputes panel has ruled on the balance of the evidence that a formal warning should be issued and a mandatory requirement to attend training,” the spokeswoman said.

The MP for Sheffield Hallam is among more than 70 cases that will be considered by the NEC’s disputes panel on Tuesday, which examines all complaints deemed serious enough to warrant official sanction.

The vast majority are complaints involving antisemitism, including calls for Jews to be murdered, sources said.

“Some of the stuff they will have to wade through is awful, some is straightforward Holocaust denial,” one party source said. “We’d expect most of them to be referred for expulsion but there is already a huge backlog of cases.”

O’Mara was suspended after homophobic and sexist comments were unearthed on online forums, including inviting members of Girls Aloud to an orgy and saying the musician Jamie Cullum should be “sodomised with his own piano”. He was also accused of shouting abuse at a woman he met on a dating app.

Party officials who have examined the case against the MP, who defeated former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg in Sheffield Hallam in 2017, advised that NEC members issue him with an official warning, which was accepted.

Sources said the panel had ruled that the case did not meet the threshold for a hearingby the party’s independent disciplinary committee, the national constitutional committee.

It is understood some members of the NEC, including Momentum’s founder Jon Lansman, were unhappy about the decision to only issue a warning to O’Mara and recommended he be referred to the NCC

The NCC is the only body with the power to expel members from the party and has ruled on recent high-profile cases including Marc Wadsworth and the former mayor of London Ken Livingstone.

O’Mara would not have been compelled to resign his seat if he had been expelled from the party, and could have chosen to sit as an independent MP for the rest of this parliament.

Party sources said the panel had no capacity to rule on whether O’Mara had behaved with the conduct expected of an MP, and could only decide whether he had broken the rules expected of any other party member.

The panel were asked to take into account the apology O’Mara gave for the comments he made online to fellow MPs before his suspension, some of which were made fifteen years ago, saying he had been “on an education journey.”

Labour was known to be wary of forcing any potential by-election in Sheffield Hallam, where the Lib Dems and the Conservatives would be likely to heavily target the seat. O’Mara has never spoken in parliament, but has voted with the Labour whip on several crunch votes.

At the meeting on Tuesday, committee members elected Claudia Webbe as the chair of the disputes committee, which oversees disciplinary cases. Former chair Christine Shawcroft was forced to quit the committee after it emerged she had opposed the suspension of a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial.

Webbe, a former adviser to Livingstone in City Hall, is an influential ally of Corbyn and gains a place on the powerful NEC officers’ group.

In leaked minutes of the last disputes meeting in March, it was revealed that key supporters of Corbyn attempted to block action against Labour members facing complaints.

At the meeting in March, sources suggested Lansman, the MP Jon Trickett and Darren Williams, one of the constituency party representatives, had argued for more limited disciplinary action in several contentious cases.

However, it is understood at the meeting on Tuesday, Lansman in particular advocated for disciplinary action to go beyond what the party recommended,

including in the case of O’Mara.