Welby, quitting, says he informed police in 2013 about molester cover-up. Who was running CPS in 2013?

Questions raised – again – by comments of departing Archbishop of Canterbury

Justin Welby resigned today as Archbishop of Canterbury over the scandal of a ‘horrific’ serial molester of young men and boys who was allowed to continue his crimes for years after Welby’s failure to raise the alarm with police. Welby is a thoroughly Establishment figure who played his role in preventing a government of genuine change when he amplified and reinforced the antisemitism smear scam used to topple Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.

But in his departing comments Welby claimed that he had believed that his office did inform the Metropolitan police, in 2013, about paedophile barrister John Smyth, who molested some 130 victims – and that he had ‘believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow’.

Welby apparently made no further enquiry and that is more than enough to justify his resignation, given the extent and gravity of Smyth’s crimes.

But his comment raises serious questions. It’s unthinkable that a report of such a matter, if Welby’s officials did make one, would not have crossed desks at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) – particularly given Smyth’s profession as a barrister – and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), head of the CPS, until November 2013, was one Keir Starmer.

During Starmer’s tenure, the CPS also refused to prosecute serial rapist Jimmy Savile. Starmer’s allies have always claimed he did not personally have a role in that decision, although that in itself would raise questions if a serial-rape case involving the UK’s highest-profile entertainer, a close friend of politicians and royals, had not been referred to the DPP. The CPS said that it destroyed all records of who made the decision, as it says it did of its records regarding the planned extradition, also during Starmer’s period in the role, of journalist Julian Assange to the US.

Starmer has similarly claimed he didn’t know, as DPP, about the massive Post Office scandal that ruined, and in some cases cost, the lives of hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted for fraud because of an unfit Post Office accounting system.

If Welby is telling the truth about his office’s referral of Smyth’s crimes to the Met, is this another scandal that somehow evaporated as it passed through the CPS? The question needs to be asked – and Keir Starmer needs to be made to give clear answers for once.

And the questions about Starmer and sex offenders and abusers are not limited to his time as DPP. Labour whistleblower Elaina Cohen today said that ‘there is no difference’ between Welby and Starmer because of their cover-ups of abuse. 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 the repeated warnings, Starmer and Evans did nothing. Mahmood remained on Starmer’s front bench as long as he chose to be there, while Cohen was sacked from her role as a parliamentary aide. One of the staffer’s victims gave evidence, at Cohen’s successful wrongful dismissal tribunal, of the abuse she and others had suffered – including blackmail and sexual exploitation. Her evidence was not challenged by Mahmood or his lawyers and Mahmood admitted under oath to the tribunal that he had also personally made sure that Starmer was fully aware of Cohen’s allegations.

Starmer 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, as would be usual practice to protect the women around him. Matheson ultimately resigned when found guilty by the parliamentary panel of ‘threatening’ sexual misconduct. Starmer 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.

And the party under Starmer ignored the advice of its barrister that it must thoroughly investigate allegations of ‘serious’ sexual assault brought against then-Redbridge council leader and slum landlord Jas Athwal, a right-wing Labour figure close to Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Instead, the NEC dropped the case and reinstated Athwal, who is now a Labour MP after a questionable vote to select him as the party’s candidate in Ilford South.

The cover-up of Elaina Cohen’s whistleblowing has never been examined by the so-called ‘mainstream’ media in the four years since Skwawkbox first exposed it, and numerous further revelations since. That needs to change – because Starmer’s record, and Welby’s parting comments today, raise questions that need to be answered – and not to become the subject of yet another cover-up.

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