‘Deep sixing’ of report on right-wing Labour staffers’ misconduct continues – and inquiry team emails are bouncing
In 2020, just after Keir Starmer conned his way into the Labour leadership, an internal party report on the actions of right-wing Labour staffers during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was leaked into the public domain, revealing racism, electoral sabotage. misappropriation of funds and other misconduct.
Starmer promised a report on the revelations, leading to the creation of the Forde Inquiry under Martin Forde QC – although the party in reality spent more effort and resources trying to identify who had leaked the original document – and the inquiry was supposed to publish its findings in the summer of 2020.
Two years later it has still not been published, after numerous delays and broken promises by the leadership of new dates for it to be made public – and despite the inquiry team saying at the beginning of this year that it was ‘largely completed’ and a promise to Labour’s national executive that they would receive it in January.
During the interminable delays, the purpose of the report has reportedly also morphed – neutered from an investigation of the actions of Labour staffers into an examination of the ‘circumstances’ of its leaking and an analysis of party culture. And now, with the report still unpublished, the inquiry appears to have given up even responding to enquiries about the schedule for the publication of its report.
Skwawkbox emailed the Forde Inquiry, via the address published on its website, ten days ago to ask for an update on publication – and at least one email address associated with the inquiry address, presumably as an ‘auto-forward’, immediately bounced:
Despite repeated chasers for a response, as of the time of writing none had been received.
Skwawkbox view:
It appears the grass into which the party has kicked the report has grown very long indeed – and Starmer seems to think that enough time has passed now that, like Boris Johnson and his ‘partygate’ scandal, we’ll all just forget about it and move on. That must not happen.
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Unite
Should get clarification
They are just dragging it all out like the court case hoping for the inevitable winding up order….Why should Starmer and Evans incriminate themselves when the Smucks in the PLP are finishing off the labour party for them and they are too stupid to even realise it.sooner the better for the working class because there’s none of the big parties interested in the invisible working class people of Britain.
The basic problem, not just in these islands but across the entire Western world, is described here in this five minute video about Bonhoeffer‘s Theory of Stupidity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc
In summary: On any issue, subject or matter Western Politicians, Media Pundits and managers are what happens when the ventriloquist dies and the dummy keeps on talking.
The longer it is not published is in direct proportion to how bad it shows Starmer to be.
More likely how bad was the behaviour of some of those who support him now.
Must be something pretty bad in there for it not to be published. Wonder what? We might never find out.
Starmers failure to be open and honest about the issues revealed by the Forde enquiry and his refusal to make the findings of the enquiry public completely undermine his ability to criticise Johnson for his similar behaviour in relation to partygate and the Sue Gray enquiry etc.
Johnson is a liar and a hypocrite but so is Starmer so its clearly a case of pots and kettles.
Were Corbyn sitting on a potentially damaging report about the conduct of close advisors eg. Seumas Milne, Jennie Formby et al, the whole media ecosystem plus PLP would be in full cry for its release without any further delay. In fact it’d already be in the public domain without any redactions, because they’d insist on it. Amirite?
We live in a country in which a complicit, corrupt media and PLP play by their rules, suppressing & locking out inconvenient information. All while these hypocritical barstools denounce critics, critics frustrated by their secretive corrupt behaviour, as peddlers of misinformation / disinformation.
Starmer and co get away with all sorts of stuff that would have been media hyped into a resigning matter for Corbyn.
Well put Andrew, I agree!!
The problem with the British left is that it appears no to realise that no matter what we do, how accommodating we are, it would never be enough and the MSM would never give us a fair hearing.
We cannot change the MSM the only thing that we can change is how we respond to the MNS. Most of us travel to work and during the Corbyn years, I use to engage with people waiting in the bus stop by wearing a Momentum’s sticker and a Tshirt supporting Corbyn. Most people asked me things about LP’s policies and I was happy to explain.
For example, I managed to persuade a couple that were high rate tax payers with two young children complaining that the local schools weren’t good enough and facing paying independent school fees, that under a Corbyn’s government they would faced an increase of less than £1200 in tax per year. However, since a Corbyn government would invest in education they will end up saving money as it wouldn’t be a need to consider independent schooling for their kids. The same applied to private health insurance.
Right now I am working from home but still, I am telling my neighbours and co-workers neither Tories no Labour: we need to dismantle the Labour Party and the way to do it is by stop voting for them. The mantra that Labour is better than Tory isn’t true any longer.
The free broadband plan was mocked by the PLP eg. Jess ‘know it all’ Phillips. No doubt Starmer and co won’t be renewing the Corbyn manifesto promise.
But since the pandemic, if broadband wasn’t an essential service before, it certainly is now.
Where is Britain’s Fibre (or fiber) to the premises(FTTP) roll out Johnson promised? We’ve the worst fiber coverage in all Europe and where 1 Gigabit up/down fiber is available in the UK it’s in a hideously expensive package.
A free broadband network (why not 10Gbps even) and internet bill of rights would have been brilliant. It’d have boosted economic activity too and truly put us up there with other leading technologically advanced nations.
Starmer’s lack of honesty, integrity and openness and his failure to provide even the most basic levels of transparency to the membership who put him there, mean he is unfit to hold any public office.
He’s a shifty, secretive, wretched lawyer who sees suppressing inconvenient information as part and parcel of politics – it isn’t and shouldn’t ever be. Even Blair, who famously denounced the very Freedom of Information Act his own govt introduced, had higher ideals when in opposition (1994-1997).
Some think Starmer will be Blair Mk .2.0, he’ll be something far, far worse.
The NEC is a disgrace too, for allowing this vile autocrat to behave like this.
Interestingly, Unite appear to have deleted their submission to the Forde inquiry from their website, but it can still be obtained as a PDF from a subscription website.
But why would Unite pull their submission?
The two year anniversary of the leaked report and the commissioning of the Forde inquiry will be discussed tomorrow (Sunday) on the “Not the Andrew Marr Show”. A weely event for socialists inside and outside of the Labour party.
Some of the people implicated will be talking about the “top 10 LabourlLeaks”
Register here
https://nottheandrewmarrshow.co.uk/live-shows/
Will the show be available afterwards as a recording?
Am busy today so cannot take part in the actual show.
Holby, yes it’s normally posted on the Not the Andrew Marr Youtube chanel.
There’s another show on Wednesdays at 1pm – Not PMQs. Each week they do a “Behind Labour” expose, which were also posted up on the YouTube chanel, but have now been taken down after Labour objected. You can find out from twitter what was said on these show.
Todays was interesting re the data breach, more to come on Wednesday. https://twitter.com/behind_labour/status/1518193790699376641?s=20&t=AMDNxapX2DWuQQz7Ijm8mg
This goes to the core of what political parties are for and who, if anyone, they serve.
The Tory party is a celebration of autocratic behaviour; top-down by nature, it’s membership is treated like a fan club – take it or leave it.
You’d expect this sort of high-handed behaviour from them. But Labour are supposed to be about the collective and empowering the masses against concentrated power and elites. Too many blue Labour careerists in the PLP and right-wing oddballs running the NEC don’t understand that.
If an already limited two-party system can’t function properly, then there is no basis for its continuation.
https://labourlist.org/2022/03/report-now-finalised-announces-forde-in-fresh-apology-to-labour-over-delays/
The latest letter from Forde to Evans, [29/03/22] shared with members of Labour’s ruling body before their meeting today, read as follows:
I am writing to inform both you and the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party (“NEC”) that the content of my Inquiry Report is finalised.
All that is still to be undertaken is detailed checking for legal and factual accuracy prior to publication. I had hoped this would have been completed by 29 March but unfortunately this will not now be possible.
The Report will then have to be signed off by myself and fellow Panel members before delivery to you and then my attendance at, and presentation, to the NEC.
I will, of course, work with you and the NEC to agree rearranged timings for submission and my formal presentation.
I apologise to you and the membership for the likely slight delay, but it is imperative that the remaining vital tasks are completed.
LabourList sources say nobody working for the party – including Evans – has yet seen the long-awaited Forde Report.
Reply to Steve H – Labour list comment
If you believe that you’d believe anything.
Smartboy – Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
From Ann Black NEC update 29th March.
” Encouraging signals had been received from the Forde inquiry into the infamous 2020 leaked report, and its findings might come to the NEC in May. I assure members, again, that these are not in possession of the general secretary, the leader, or anyone else. If they were they would immediately have been leaked, same as every other “confidential” document”.
The last sentence is very telling.
Steve H
No, its just that experience tells me not to believe everything I read in the MSM or blogs like Labour List.
Do you have any evidence to support Labour List’s assertion that nobody working for the party incl the Gen Sec has seen the report?
Smartboy – I guess you are entitled to your opinion, everyone has one BUT LabourList is sponsored by both Unite and the FBU both of who are not particularly well known for being RW. As well as often being the first to publish accurate reports on Labour Party news It also publishes articles from contributors who come from right across the Labour political spectrum. Members of the SCG are regular contributors and Jeremy Corbyn has published about 200 articles on the site.
So, if true, the finalised report might have actually been factually and legaly checked by now and ready for publication very soon?
Whatever, I suspect Evans, Rayner and Starmer would have recieved their copies of the current version already.
When the pre-Starmer version of this report was leaked, did any copies get saved anywhere, does anyone know? It would be good to do a ‘Spot the Difference’ on them.
The joke one woman right wing band labour list “will soon be extinct along with the business The labour party” whos cavalier attitude to the law of the land and their inbuilt contempt for those who give away their hard earned money to support them is legendary.The Ford report is meaningless and its just more distraction politics to prop up the hope of the seriously delusional members of the labour party..and salve their conscionce that theres hope just over the 🌈rainbow in Wonderland of the labour party.bunker.southside.
Reply to Steve H
I knew Unite sponsored Labour List but didn’t realise the FBU did so too. I have never understood why Unite got involved in financing Labour List – in fact I think it is a total disgrace that they should spend members money this way.
I hope both unions get a grip and make ceasing to fund the partisan Labour List a priority. However I have to say, as a now retired lay Trade Union activist ,I’ll not hold my breath while waiting for this to happen given the Unions continued financial support for Starmers Labour. In my opinion this support is a disgusting betrayal of traditional Trade Union principles which I adhered to and upheld all my working life.
Smartboy – You are the one that is being partisan. I guess that Unite and FBU sponsor LabourList for the same reason that many Labour supporters read it. Besides carrying accurate and prompt news reports on the Labour Party they also publish articles written by contributors from right across the broad church that is Labour.
Steve H
To quote your often expressed response to other contributors on this site
“don’t be silly”
Starmerfuhrer has every intention it seems to hide behind a facade of togetherness which simply has eroded to the point where socialism within a former socialist party is non existent. The same lack of integrity and unbounded cronyism which runs through The Conservative Party is now mirrored in Labour. I hate to use that title because it does not reflect what the party has become. RIP Socialism. Abandon Hope All Who Live on Plague Island.
Wasn’t Keith’s response to the Forde report an early insight into where he was headed with his absolute betrayal of the Labour Party? I’ve rather lost track of the layers.
Maybe the best chances for any justice here is for a leak? Even then it’ll require some follow up from the likes of the BBC and the Guardian. How very far we have fallen since 2019!
Martin – What response would that be, it hasn’t been published yet?
I suspect that they are hoping the fallout from partygate will provide local election results sufficiently buoyant to allow a sort of ‘that was then but look at us now’ response to a publication in mid May. Hopefully those voting will be able to acknowledge that Johnson’s government is the problem but that Labour are not the solution and put their faith in good local candidates from other parties.
I think the media are doing all they can to help Labour. As the excellent Jonathan Cook explained, there is nothing in the partygate stuff the media didn’t know about a whole year earlier. The fact they are going all in on still could be a Labour / Starmer rescue attempt perhaps? A cynical view, but Johnson ‘s weak defence could also be part of trying to help Starmer survive politically.
At the moment the Tory establishment control both parties – we’ve got a ‘controlled opposition,’ they’ll want to keep it that way. If Labour do win power they’ll make minor tweaks, disappoint then be thrown out fort another 20 years.
‘m repulsed by the guardian these days A paper that is now best described as ‘neoliberal woke’ in outlook. No wonder it’s circulation is in the gutter.
The last thing the people who planted Starmer in the Labour party want is to lose ‘their man’ a leadership election.
There was some speculation, towards the end of last year and early this year, that the delay in the publication of the report was a consequence of its contents giving rise to the possibility that there had been some criminal conduct identified, and that the report could not be published before a police investigation had been carried out. At least, in May, we’ll find out whether or not there was substance in the speculation.
Imagine you’re a so-so lawyer who self-promotes yourself as ‘forensic’ (Ego the size of a WEF World Government) and you become the leader of the Labour party and are threatened by the material in the report, I imaagine you could bluff a delay on very-obviously flimsy possibilities as easily as skid-mark your own undies.
Dirty is as dirty does.
qwertboi – and yet oddly the leaked dossier doesn’t mention Starmer.
There are at least two parties in Labour and the Conservatives and most political discourse is about suppressing this fact. The need to move to PR has never been more urgent.
New New Labour saud The Forde report will be out in January, they didn’t say which one, we can expect it Jan 2047, hope tjis helps.
That the whole nation deserve to find out if and how a so-called political party conspired to throw an election (which would’ve changed the nation’s fortunes for better or worse) should be making headline news throughout the world, not be stashed away.
But democracy is just an illusion these days.
Toffee – Hopefully the Forde Report will be published at the NEC’s meeting in May. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Toffee – I don’t recall Jeremy ever winning a single vote against Boris, do you?
The worst PM in living memory…..And this is Labour.
If Corbyn was leader he would be 20 points ahead by now.
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 36% (-2)
CON: 34% (-)
LDEM: 10% (-)
GRN: 8% (+1)
via
@OpiniumResearch
, 20 – 22 Apr
Chgs. w/ 07 Apr
But but but….Corbyn…..😴
…was way behind Boris in the polls.
SteveH
You really like comparing apples and oranges, don’t you.
Corbyn faced a tidal wave of hostile media coverage. Whereas Starmer, by way of contrast, gets carried with softball questions and no follow up highlighting his rank hypocrisy and flip-flopping.
The fact Starmer can hardly pass muster with all these inherent MSM advantages, advantages media harassed Corbyn could only dream of, speaks volumes as to his incompetence.
And this was when Boris Johnson was the media’s ‘golden boy’ .
Remember the Sun’s front page with Johnson’s face in place of Teletubbies’ Sun Baby, his golden rays showering the country in prosperity?
How atrocious is our MSM?
And keefs yet to GAIN a seat from him. Or win a commons vote. No chance of that while keef has yet to oppose him in a commons vote, neither.
But Corbyn…😴
In other news, Doris is at it again..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61201792
No, you don’t have dyslexia, Doris – It’s just that you’re as thick as mince.
“I have dyslexia, which means that when I speak I often run my words together.”
Alcohol has this effect.
An aside – another senior former analyst/adviser provides further insight. Jaques Baud, until quite recently a senior adviser to NATO gives his perspective.
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/15/us-eu-sacrificing-ukraine-to-weaken-russia-fmr-nato-adviser/
Correction – it is Jacques Baud.
Incidentally, he is not liked by the odious Eliot Higgins – there can be no higher recommendation.
See, Eliot Higgins attempts to disrupt the MH17 trial.
https://thehaguetimes.com/2021/01/04/bellingcat-disrupts-mh17-trial/
You must know that the Forde Report can never be published.
I strongly suspect that you will be proved wrong.
I told you so
Find it bizarre how the ‘fat cat’ corporate CEOs Starmer and Reeve’s are so fond of courting for funding, are mandated by l.aw to maintain higher standards than the leader of a major political party.
CEOs have strict legal responsibilities around duties of care, loyalty and disclosure to shareholders. The membership are analogous the shareholders here. Any failure by a CEO to uphold the responsibilities of his office can result in personal liability for the company’s debt and legal actions from shareholders.
This is an indication of how a Starmer government will behave in power. Lies, corruption, Complete lack of accountability with a dislike of unions and an authoritarian streak.
The Forde report will confirm that there was systemic disloyalty under Corbyn as there is now under Starmer. And in 2024 everyone will be encouraged to vote Labour – does anyone in this party have sufficient interest beyond itself to have the inclination to govern a failing country?