Exclusive: Labour whistleblower Cohen says Starmer no better than Welby in covering up ‘sadistic abuse’

Archbishop of Canterbury resigns after scandal – but Starmer’s repeated cover-up has been ignored by ‘mainstream’ press

Anglican archbishop Justin Welby is at the centre of a huge scandal with a string of Church of England clergy calling for his resignation after the independent Makin Review found that Welby personally and the church management he headed covered up serial sexual abuse.

Welby has resigned after revelations that he was aware of “really horrific” abuse of “significant sadistic nature” of up to 130 boys and young men by barrister John Smyth, who died in 2018 and needed to go immediately, according to Fr Robert Thompson, co-author of a petition calling on Welby to quit for failing to alert authorities about Smyth’s ‘abhorrent’ serial abuse of children and young men.

The report found that Welby ‘could and should’ have reported the abuse to the authorities more than a decade ago and that if he had, Smyth could have been exposed and stopped “at a much earlier point” than the 2017 police investigation that finally outed him.

And according to ex-Labour whistleblower Elaina Cohen, PM Keir Starmer is no better than Welby – who eagerly sided with the Establishment to smear Jeremy Corbyn leading up to the 2019 general election, though he later tried to distance himself from his support of pro-Israel Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’s attack on Corbyn.

Ms Cohen repeatedly warned Starmer and then-Labour general secretary David Evans that a Labour party staffer working for then-Perry Barr MP Khalid Mahmood – and allegedly Mahmood’s lover – was engaged in ‘sadistic’ and ‘criminal’ abuse of vulnerable Muslim women fleeing domestic violence, through the now-defunct domestic violence ‘charity’ that she ran.

Despite repeated warnings, Starmer and Evans did nothing and Mahmood remained on Starmer’s front bench as long as he chose to be there. Cohen, however, was sacked from her parliamentary assistant position. One of the staffer’s victims gave evidence, at Cohen’s successful wrongful dismissal tribunal, of the abuse she and others had suffered – evidence that was not challenged by Mahmood or his lawyers – including blackmail and sexual exploitation. Mahmood admitted under oath to the tribunal that he had also personally made sure that Starmer was fully aware of Cohen’s allegations.

Starmer was similarly personally aware of other, unrelated allegations against Mahmood, which he has denied, of abuse, theft and taking cash – but likewise did nothing. He also turned a blind eye to the horrific abuse of Poplar and Limehouse MP Apsana Begum. Instead, the party briefed against her to their media allies and tried to manoeuvre her out of her seat – and even to have her jailed on trumped-up housing fraud charges that a court rightly threw out.

When then-Chester MP Chris Matheson was under investigation by Parliament for sexual harassment, neither Starmer nor the party machine suspended Matheson, pending the outcome of the investigation, to protect the women around him. Matheson ultimately resigned when found guilty by the parliamentary panel of ‘threatening’ sexual misconduct. The Labour leader, who ran the Crown Prosecution Service when it ignored the serial sex offences of Jimmy Savile, also protected at least two further alleged sex pests on his front bench, despite ongoing investigations – and readmitted Neil Coyle back into the parliamentary party despite Coyle’s record of racism and sexual harassment.

Elaina Cohen told Skwawkbox:

There is no difference between Keir Starmer and Justin Welby. It is a matter of court record that Sir Keir was told about the criminal exploitation of women in unsafe situations, yet as leader of the Labour Party he chose to ignore my protected disclosures and harbour an abuser in the parliamentary office of a Labour MP.

Welby has belatedly done the right thing and resigned. Sir Keir needs to do the same.

She added that she had emailed a similar complaint to front-bencher Pat McFadden, who has oversight of Starmer’s Cabinet Office and of the government’s ‘propriety and ethics’.

Skwawkbox exclusively revealed Starmer’s repeated abuse cover-ups four years ago, but despite the sworn statements the ‘mainstream’ media has so far ignored the revelations. With Welby’s exposure, Skwawkbox understands that this may be about to change and some ‘MSM’ outlets are now sniffing around the Starmer scandal.

Keir Starmer and Khalid Mahmood have been contacted for comment.

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