Campaign staffer reportedly in line for ‘top role’ was named as source of material in hostile Huffington Post article and accused of ‘daily’ incidents during 2017 election campaign including physically shoving others – including Corbyn
A version of this article was originally published in February about Starmer’s decision to appoint Kat Fletcher as one of two ‘left’ senior campaign staff.
In February, the Huffington Post published an article claiming that Jeremy Corbyn’s then-chief of staff Karie Murphy had abused staff, including “pushing a staff member by the neck and pinning them against a wall”, as the Labour right scrambled to try to block Murphy’s nomination by Corbyn for a peerage.
Labour sources pointed the finger for claims in the article at Kat Fletcher, who worked for Corbyn in the 2017 general election campaign, saying that at least some of the material came from her. The sources also said that Ms Fletcher was the source of a recording leaked to the Huffington Post for the article.
Now, according to the LabourList site today, after Starmer has already appointed his other ‘left’ campaign pick – the coincidentally-named Simon Fletcher – to his team as a ‘special adviser (general election)’, Kat Fletcher is now in line for a ‘top role’ on Keir Starmer’s staff:
‘Daily’ complaints
However, while accusing Ms Fletcher of being the source of material for the hostile February article, the Labour sources also said that Ms Fletcher’s conduct during the 2017 election campaign was so bad that she was the subject of ‘daily’ complaints.
The behaviour alleged in those complaints included:
- mocking a foreign-born member by mimicking her accent in front of a significant number of people
- physically pushing Corbyn around on the campaign bus
- shoving an international trade union official
- describing BAME councillors at an event as a ‘nightmare’
- singing inappropriately about female staff members, for example singing “Where is X’s skirt”
- frequent “aggressive, rude” behaviour, including bullying
The sources also said that Fletcher was aware of the complaints and was told that there was:
a complaint from staff about her every day – she was incredibly defensive and difficult.
The SKWAWKBOX attempted to reach Ms Fletcher for comment by calls and texts to obtain an email address so that full details could be provided. A response came from her lawyer.
The SKWAWKBOX asked the lawyer to confirm whether anything in the letter constituted a denial of the Labour sources’ claims so that the SKWAWKBOX could ensure she was fairly represented in any ensuing article.
The answer came back that she would not comment, claiming a lack of confidence that the response would be not be misrepresented.
Keir Starmer’s choices for top positions have been bedevilled by controversy. His first choice for the position of general secretary featured prominently in a Labour Party internal report alleging that senior headquarters staff had undermined election campaigns, obstructed disciplinary processes and behaved abusively toward pro-Corbyn staff.
His next favourite for the role was named in the anonymous ‘MeTooGMB’ complaint against the GMB union’s now-resigned general secretary, while a right-wing peer who is applying for the role has been forced to deny allegations of racially-driven bullying that were the basis of a formal complaint against the party by a former Tom Watson employee.
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Sir Starmer only a placeholder for TB’s glorious Resurrection?
I think you underestimate the Gargoyle’s personal ambition,no matter how threadbare his credentials.
I think that his credentials are excellent for what he has in mind for the greasy pole. I’m sure that he knows where he’s going because he’s been their before. Crisis equalls a call for unity, a rocking government extends hand of friendship; time to utilize all the talent. Slump, crash, government of National Unity. Max Headroom given front bench slot. Out of the shadows and into glare of media headlights. Chilling, really chilling. Hide your ducets comrades. Have a happy exercise hour, comrades. Keep safe.
There are strange happenings abroad sir. Leave the cursed village before it is too late. We must build a leaner, fitter, more stronger machine to fight the global pandemic which is capitalism. Why some soldiers have tried to instigate a coup under the vius’s cloak, others keep bombing the defenceless all while an innocent man languished in the black tower waiting for the headsman from the U.S.A. We’ve taken our eyes of the ball. Regards Skwakies. X
Annalise Midgley ?
Next Labour Party General Secretary in 12 days
What say you
SB – It would be helpful if you could supply links to all the third party articles that you have referenced above.
Not like Skwawkbox to use flattering photos of people we don’t like – that one of Fletcher is at least 8 years old.
If the last couple of weeks is a sign of things to come then God help the Labour Party that I joined1n 1944
I agree with you entirely Bill Wells – when I look at some of the nasties now gracing our front benches/shadow cabinet and look at the completely disgusting behaviour of some of our paid staff detailed in the leaked antisemitism report l despair.
Bill, out party is now being misled by Kier Starmer who persecuted Assange.
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2020/05/10/from-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire-the-torture-that-awaits-julian-assange-in-the-us/
So am I right in thinking that no action was taken against Ms Fletcher despite all the complaints made about her?! Sounds like another sociopath to me, like just about EVERYONE in the Blairite wing of the party.
As for the mass murderer himself, he may have been keeping a low profile during Jeremy’s leadership of the party, but you can be sure as hell that behind the scenes he’s been pulling strings and planning and plotting. And no doubt still IS!
Anyway, I came across the following recently on youtube (in the recommendations on the right-hand side whilst checking out another band), and given the title of the track just HAD to check it out! Give it a blast (but it might be a good idea to get the lyrics up in another tab first as you may find them difficult to follow):
I Am The Virus by Killing Joke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Ho_lNTatk
PS There is another upload of the track WITH the lyrics, but I personally found it too distracting.
I didn’t figure you for an actual headbanger Allan 🙂
I fail to see what the problem is. Let them play the right wing games all trying to be king rat and fighting over the garbage pile that Labour has become. It’s gone to far the cancer to deep let it die and start again. this time only with left wing people no BS right wing scum fucking it up and I include these useless unions in that statement they have allowed this crap to happen stood back and did nothing so there just as bad.If it’s not her it will just be another right wing idiot. Give them your money and hope if you want but do it with your eyes open and see it’s gone Labour is dead they have killed it until you accept it your only drive yourself mad with there stupid games.
My sentiments EXACTLY, grandad.
+1,000,000. 👍
Labour is a great party, born of the needs of the working class and at its best when it remembers this and serves its founders and their interests.
The Labour Party can be assured of my lifelong commitment – especially when, in a moment of MSM-invoked hysteria and panic, its members, including some fine liberals, social democrats and miscellaneous progressives, foolishly elect a devious and dangerous third-way centrist as leader.
Labour needs its Left members to stay and fight the good fight for people, peace and prosperity
AND – also NEVER to campaign for devious bourgeois centrists like the MP for LEEDS NE and LEEDS CENTRAL AND, alas, many other incumbent Labour councillors and MPs whose existence in Labour is an affront to both themselves and to Labour.
Sir Erik Armrest is the Sir George Iain Duncan Smith leader that Labour will soon regret and replace – hopefully faster than the two years it took the Conservatives to replace IDS.
Stay and fight! British working class people, Palestinians, and Kashmiris and many, many others need us to succeed.
Sorry, was a bit of a vent but descended into foggy brained plonkerhood… well, The ‘LEEDS NE bit anyway. I was thinking of LEEDS WEST MP, Rachel Reeves, a person who leaves me cold and massively disappointed, the LEEDS central MP is obviously Hilary Benn, an obvious disappointment to all and sundry
Glad you clarified that as I quite like the Mp for Leeds NE, Fabian Hamilton and was about to ask you what he had done to be mentioned in the same post as the disloyal and very stupid Hillary Benn
You seem to forget that many of us can’t choose to “stay and fight” because the right wing scum who have a death grip on the party removed us qwertboi.
John, those of us who stay will never forget you and your scurrilous treatment by the enemies of socialism in Labour. https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/04/18/how-many-labour-members-will-follow-this-councillors-example-and-demand-refunds/
You and the abuse of you by the likes of Sir Erik Trilateral Armrest are the reason we HAVE to stay.
A reformed Labour Party will need your example and your resolve to properly save itself. For this I am embarrassed and sorry.
You are not to blame in any way for our treatment.
This mindless party loyalty is beginning to sicken me. Sorry quertboi.
This is what was being reported about Kat Fletcher joining Keir Starmer’s team in February this year
“Former Jeremy Corbyn aide Kat Fletcher is set to play a “key role” in Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign, Times reporter Gabriel Pogrund has revealed.
[Kat] Fletcher was Corbyn’s election agent in 2015 during the general election and was subsequently a part of his campaign team when he won the 2015 Labour Party leadership election.
She will be seen as a key ally on the left for Starmer if the reports are confirmed..”
It is getting quite difficult to keep up with who is in or out of favour with ‘the left’.
I didn’t ‘discover’ skwawkbox until about April/May 2017 (when I was doing some research for a leaflet I was putting together about a phony Sun poll of junior doctors, concocted and designed to make them look like hypocrites during the period when they were taking industrial action), but whilst doing some research earlier I just happened to come across this article that skwawk posted/published on Feb 5th 2017. I mean WHAT devious and totally corrupt minds come up with ideas such as this!:
‘#UKIP FAKE St George’s flag in #Stoke pic to attack Corbyn. Get it BADLY wrong’
https://skwawkbox.org/2017/02/05/ukip-fake-st-georges-flag-in-stoke-pic-to-attack-corbyn-goes-badly-wrong/
And here’s a link to the Sun’s phony and fabricated poll of junior doctors:
‘Survey shows 93% of junior doctors would back a fully privatised health service if it meant a pay increase’
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2323924/survey-shows-93-of-junior-doctors-would-back-a-fully-privatised-health-service-if-it-meant-a-pay-increase/
As Adolf Hitler said, the bigger the lie the more effective.
Allan – I thought you might find this interesting
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-05-07-revealed-how-britains-profiteering-spymasters-ignored-the-countrys-biggest-threats-like-coronavirus-and-endangered-the-public/
If the behaviour of this unpleasant woman was freely known at the time why on earth was she not got rid of? Tolerance and civility has led to a RW takeover that could finish off Labour for good.
rayvisino – I am having some difficulty in believing that Jeremy Corbyn’s 2015 GE election agent who also played a key part in his leadership campaign is an agent of the RW.
Does not matter one iota
The report makes our job simple, stay, recruit and vote in at every level the people we choose
Now who is our next General Secretary in 12 days, I have no clue
Best I can find out is the NEC will vote them in and because WE fucked up it might not be the person we want
AND THERE ENDETH THE LESSON YOU FUCKING NUMB NUTS
SteveH, do MP’s appoint their own election agents or does the party, maybe the GenSec’s office, select them? I genuinely don’t know.
In 2015 if McNicol chose JC’s election agent I wouldn’t expect him to pick a leftie.
David – To the best of my knowledge PPC’s appoint their own election agents + Kat had an important role in JC’s leadership campaign. She was also a Labour councillor and Mayor in JC’s constituency.
Perhaps the above has more to do with Kat Fletcher and Karie Murphy being sworn enemies.
Maria, 99.97% of your post is so brilliant, it needs repeating.
“Corbyn’s leadership was an issue on some doors, but in my experience it was mostly Corbyn appearing to do a U turn on Brexit and no showing leadership. How could they trust Labour when in the last GE (2017) it when with a manifesto of respecting Brexit and within months it was all about remaining in the EU and now, if ever Labour won the election the final decision would be decided in a special Labour Conference? Most leavers told me that they knew the result of such Labour Conference and it would be to cancel Brexit and remain in the EU. In the process Corbyn was called all sorts and none of it was pleasant. I believe, we lost in 2019 because simply put we broke our promise to respect Brexit and once the public lost trust no matter what was in our manifesto we weren’t believed; those that voted to leave expected that once in government Labour was going to do a U turn and have a vote in Parliament cancelling Brexit and remaining in the EU. You are right they blamed Corbyn for no sticking to his guns and no longer trusted him. Those that voted to remain but have accepted the Brexit result, didn’t trust us either on account of breaking our electoral promise on Brexit. Many undecided voters would say something along the lines, Labour promised to enact Brexit at the last election but now you aren’t going to. So how do I know that you will not break the promises in this manifesto, when you broke a promise you made in the last one? It would appear that Starmer is proving suspicious members of the public right in not trusting Labour. ”
Thanks. 🌹🌹🌹
Thanks for Maria’ incisive post signpost.
Powerful analysis is its own reward. Thanks Maria
Maria is brilliant 🌟🌟🌟 Enviable clarity. We need that desperately. So great start to a great day. Dashed out for 29 minutes to see the Red Arrows fly past over central London. Was over in a flash but had lovely chat afterwards with an interesting stranger and his son. Amazingly we got unto Jeremy. Both he and the teenage son lamented the lack of consistent “enthusiasm” from Jeremy. Thrilling sometimes then the same day the very opposite. Not an ounce of ‘this worth focus’… this is important… urgent. We need to address these basics and the MSM and tbe right at the same time. It is pointless to treat “the party” as some detached entity. WE make “the party”. If we ALLOW the Right to dictate narratives of lies and give them peerages and cabinet posts, then it is illogical to blame them for taking advantage of our TOTALLY unforced errors. We gave ground. They took it. They would have been fools not to use our gifts for their purposes. They would be fools to treat OUR gifts of detachment from basic realities as if they would be on tap forever. Jeremy GAVE them opportunities after opportunities with NO GOOD REASON. KICK AFTER KICK. More gifts to open saboteurs. Yet to date to my knowledge, not a single saboteur has been expelled. Not a single PUBLIC acknowledgment of gratitude to HUNDREDS. Hundreds who stepped up to counter the AS LIES. Letters were published in the MSM despite great intimidation. To date not a single public expression of thanks. ZERO. We make it easy to repeat these GROSS FAILINGS, when we fail to acknowledge these crucial failings.
To sit back and allow thousands to be expelled, but not a single saboteur, must NEVER be allowed to happen again. To GIVE Twatson, Starmer, Blair, McNic etc the space, the support, peerages, the kindness the gentleness to enable them to gain strength, is unforgivable. We must acknowledge what went UNNECESSARILY wrong. I suspect misguided stubbornness, a lifetime of it. A reluctance to learn. An ineffective inflexibility.
We must be nimble, intelligent, determined and realistic. A key realism is that WE make the party we get. Jeremy gave away the endorsement we gave him. No one forced him. We make choices. We should own them. To have attracted the many yet be kind and gentle only to the few, is neither kind nor gentle. It is confused incoherent obstinate self sabotage and worse. Worse yet it is a passive or active disregard of the many. It is taking the support of half a million for granted. It is foolish and it is the definition of failure to gain success then crush it. That need not happen again. It IS up to us. Life should not happen to us. We must shape the lives we want. We make the lives. We make the party.🌹🌹🌹
I see signpost is rubbishing Jeremy again, as he has on dozens and dozens of occasions during the past seven or eight months. As I’ve said before, repetition is a subtle form of brain-washing, and THAT is precisely why signpost does it. So the Blairites have taken more-or-less complete control of the party again (not that they ever really lost it), but according to signpost “WE make the party we get” and “We make the party” and “It is up to us”. He doesn’t elaborate of course because it’s just complete bunkum and asinine and meaningless platitudes.
And needless to say, signpost will continue to repeat his character assassination diatribe of Jeremy over and over and over again in the coming months – ie it’s ALL Jeremy’s fault that he/we lost two general elections blah, blah, blah, and nothing whatsoever to do with the corporate media and the BBC who ‘transformed’ him in to an anti-semite and a friend of terrorists etc, etc, and ‘transformed’ the left membership into anti-semitic bullies and thugs. And nothing more exemplifies the power of the media than the result of the poll of around 1,000 people conducted for the authors of Bad News For Labour in which respondents believed, on average, that 34% of LP members had been reported for anti-semitism.
White flag man, with regard to the criticisms of Jeremy Corbyn, you continue to say that there is nothing he could have done about the attacks on him by the media. I am a firm supporter of Corbyn but I feel that he let us down.
First of all, he could have at least strongly refuted the attacks and explained to the public during his many interviews why they were being made. But secondly, he has to answer for his own actions, actions which were bizarre to say the least…. the promotions, the honours, the suspensions and expulsions of some of his strongest supporters, about which he said little or nothing. He had thousands of dedicated, willing supporters who would have given everything for him – and some of them did, with little or know appreciation, simply because Jeremy had no strategy other than appeasement to deal with his greatest enemy, the Israel Lobby.
As you know Jack, if Jeremy had refuted the attacks – the allegations – he would have been attacked himself for being in denial and, as such, a part of the problem. As for ‘promotions, in the first place there is a very limited pool of left MPs from which to draw from, and in the second place, if he gives so-called moderates a position in his shadow cabinet, they still have to act according to party policy.
In other words, he had no choice in the matter EXCEPT to leave numerous positions vacant, or load two or more – which I believe happened at one point – on to one person.
And WHAT exactly could his supporters have done. Whenever members DID pass a vote of no confidence in one of his detractors, the corporate media attacked not only the members of that particular CLP for doing so, but also attacked Jeremy and accused HIM of being behind it. And ditto for deselecting MPs, which was of course ‘depicted’ by the MSM et al as a purge of his critics – ie the ‘brave and courageous’ MPs who have called him out over A/S etc, etc.
Here’s just ONE example from August 2018:
JEZ ‘BLIP’ ON LABOUR HISTORY Dame Margaret Hodge attacked Jeremy Corbyn and tore into the Labour leadership for ‘purging’ its critics
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6965448/dame-margaret-hodge-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-purging-critics/
Oh, but *I’m* a white flag man for drawing readers attention to the lies and smears etc dissembled by the MSM. Well at least I’m in good company – ie the guys at medialens and Jonathan Cook and the authors of Bad News For Labour to name but a few.