Establishment media and Labour right’s knives out again for Corbyn’s chief of staff
The Establishment media and the Labour right have been dogpiling Jeremy Corbyn’s chief of staff Karie Murphy since a Huffington Post ‘exclusive’ last week said that Murphy had taken a ‘city break’ to Vienna before last month’s general election.
Murphy was away for one day, on a weekend.
In 2017, Labour’s then-general secretary Iain McNicol took at least three breaks in the run-up to vital elections, as the SKWAWKBOX revealed soon afterward.
In February of that year, as Labour fought tough campaigns in the Stoke and Copeland by-elections that were viewed as a crucial test of Labour’s leadership, McNicol went skiing in Tignes in the French Alps.
He returned from the piste in time to tweet good luck wishes to Labour’s candidates in the north – from south-west London:
A few weeks after the by-elections, as Labour fought another by-election and an array of local elections, Iain McNicol, now a peer calling for the end of ‘Corbynism’, went abroad twice – first on a trip to Israel sponsored by Labour Friends of Israel, immediately followed by a two-week break in Vietnam.
A Labour source at the time told the SKWAWKBOX:
He went straight to leave from Israel – guest of LFI. He hasn’t visited any of the Mayorals or local government election seats. He missed the local election launch and has no plans in his diary to go to the West Midlands!
Sadly, the selective memory of the Labour right and its media allies is a common phenomenon. Last week, McNicol’s successor Jennie Formby was attacked for telling Labour staff who want to help leadership candidates campaign that they have to take unpaid leave to do so.
But in the past, staff had to resign their jobs to work on leadership campaigns, with no guarantee of returning to their job after the campaign.
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