Starmer and co have demanded Sunak take action against Tories embroiled in election betting scandal, but party’s Mahmood cover-up and inaction continues
The Labour party has said it will re-open a long-ignored antisemitism complaint by a Jewish former party staffer against a right-wing Labour candidate – at the time front-bench MP – but has not suspended his Labour candidacy.
Keir Starmer’s then-chief of staff Jenny Chapman (since made a peer) told Elaina Cohen that the party would not investigate her protected disclosures of criminal abuse of women and ‘abhorrent’ antisemitism – which Cohen says Starmer, as a lawyer, must have known was criminal – until her employment tribunal case against Khalid Mahmood for wrongful dismissal was decided.
Cohen had been sacked after she blew the whistle on abuse and sexual and financial exploitation of domestic violence victims in unsafe situations, by a staffer with whom Mahmood was allegedly engaged in an affair. Cohen, who has since quit the party over Starmer’s ‘protection of abusers and racists’, won her case and approached the party to demand that the long-paused investigation be resumed – only to be told by Labour’s complaints office that the investigation had been carried out and concluded in 2021-22, without the party bothering to obtain or examine the evidence for Cohen’s complaint.
Cohen has accused the party of inventing the supposed investigation as a means of once again covering up allegations against Mahmood, then a member of Keir Starmer’s front bench, pointing out that the claimed investigation was not disclosed to the tribunal. She approached Starmer and his general secretary David Evans repeatedly about the ‘sadistic’ and ‘criminal abuse’ against the vulnerable women – which Mahmood did not dispute during the tribunal case – and Mahmood himself told the tribunal that he had also told Starmer about the allegations. Neither Starmer nor Evans took any action against Mahmood over those allegations or other alleged serious misconduct.
Mahmood appears to have been re-imposed on Birmingham Perry Barr members as Labour’s general election candidate, despite the allegations pending against him. Yet Starmer and his spokespeople have been demanding that Tory leader Rishi Sunak take action against members of the Conservative party accused of wrongdoing – and have suspended left-wing candidates at the last minute on flimsy pretexts to prevent them standing as candidates for the party.
Now Labour has told Ms Cohen by email that it will re-open her complaint, but that she has to submit it again, and upload her evidence – understood to consist of some 800 pages – via its ‘complaints portal’. Mr Mahmood, who has previously denied any wrongdoing despite not contesting the evidence of one of the alleged victims of his employee during the tribunal hearing, has not been suspended and remains a Labour candidate.
Ms Cohen told Skwawkbox:
Sir Keir Starmer expects a high standard from Rishi Sunak but when it comes to his own integrity and respect for the law, he sets a low bar. To convince the electorate that in government he can be trusted with his word, he must suspend Perry Barr candidate Khalid Mahmood immediately and conduct a proper investigation.
There has been enough evidence in the public domain already for any Labour official to have concluded, before imposing Khalid Mahmood that he is now not fit for public office.
Last year Labour right-winger Luke Akehurst told Elaina Cohen that she could not stand as a candidate for the party because of her whistleblowing to protect domestic violence victims. Akehurst was subsequently imposed on North Durham party members as Labour’s candidate for their constituency.
The latest incident is one of a string of Labour leadership cover-ups and failures to protect. Women were locked out of party systems to stop them discussing a party right-winger convicted of paedophilia, while Starmer himself, in addition to the Cohen disclosures, protected for many months at least two alleged sex pests in his shadow cabinet and kept a sex-pest staffer in his team. Confirmed racist and right-wing sex-pest Neil Coyle was welcomed back into the party despite the findings against him by two parliamentary investigations. Despite this, Starmer has claimed to be a champion of vulnerable women.
Update: Labour has just suspended Suffolk Central and North Ipswich candidate Kevin Craig for placing a bet on the outcome of his election contest – highlighting even further the extent of its protection of Mahmood.
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