The Jewish Chronicle has today claimed that I have left the Labour party. This claim is false.
The paper also claimed that I had “quit the party ahead of any investigation” into “numerous complaints, including allegations of bullying, harassment and sexism”. This is also entirely false. I have received no communications of any type from the party about any such complaints.
The absence of any communication from the party about these supposed complaints suggests that, if they were made at all, even the present hierarchy in the party recognises that acting against a journalist for doing investigative journalism and adhering to the editors’ code of IMPRESS – the UK’s only Leveson-compliant press regulator – would not be a good look even for the current regime.
The claims of complaints seem to originate with a small group of Labour right-wingers in Liverpool who have taken exception to Skwawkbox exclusives revealing inconvenient information about certain activities in the city and who seem to consider that offering the subject of an article the opportunity to comment before publication constitutes ‘bullying, harassment and sexism’.
I remain not only a member of the party, but a member in good standing and indeed only yesterday was receiving appeals from Keir Starmer for help with the local election campaign – emails the party would be forbidden to send me under data protection laws if I had quit.
The article by Lee Harpin, who has a record of making untrue claims about Labour members and others that have cost the publication substantial out of court settlements, enabled a number of individuals to make serious and untrue claims on social media about me.
The Jewish Chronicle and Mr Harpin will be hearing from my lawyers shortly to invite them to suggest how they will remedy their false claims and the harm they have caused to avoid legal consequences.
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this rag is an honest as Boris but gets sued quite often, hopefully this will cause is to pay out damages yet again