The former leader of the UK Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has formally accused senior paid employees of his party of having secretly worked to sabotage the 2017 general election campaign, The Independent newspaper reported on Saturday
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th August, 2020) The former leader of the UK Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has formally accused senior paid employees of his party of having secretly worked to sabotage the 2017 general election campaign, The Independent newspaper reported on Saturday.
"There is clear evidence of factional activity by senior paid employees of the party against the elected leadership of the time," Corbyn and a member of the former party leadership said in a joint statement, as quoted by the newspaper.
According to The Independent, the joint statement was submitted to a Labour internal inquiry commissioned by current leader Keir Starmer after a leaked report claimed factional hostility to Jeremy Corbyn had hindered the party's handling of antisemitism.
"Given that Labour was less than 2,500 votes in key seats away from forming a government, having won 40 per cent of the popular vote, it's not impossible that Jeremy Corbyn might now be in his third year as a Labour prime minister were it not for the unauthorised, unilateral action taken by a handful of senior party officials in 2017," the submission added.
The dossier leaked in April included a record of private messages between senior party staffers expressing their disappointment at the good performance Labour was having in polls, and eventually at the election, according to some British media that then claimed to have seen the report.
Other exchanges explicitly referred to advise to keep activities and campaigning resources secret from Corbynites and other officials they considered to be too left-leaning.
"Many of us experienced the daily hostility and obstruction towards Jeremy, his office and members of the shadow cabinet and the frequent leaking and hostile briefing to the media," the joint statement, which according to The Independent is also endorsed by former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, and senior Corbyn�s aides Andrew Fisher, Karie Murphy, and Seumas Milne.
On the other hand, The Guardian said on Saturday to have seen another statement the party officials accused of sabotage have submitted to the internal inquiry in which they claim their private messages were misused and taken out of context to make them look racist and sexist, and threaten to take the Labour Party to court for libel and alleged data protection breaches.
In a reaction to such claims, Labour lawmaker Diane Abbot, who was named in some of the private messages, asked for the full publication of all communications.
"Officials at the very top of @UKLabour said stuff like "Abbott is truly repulsive" "Abbott literally makes me sick" and conspired with media against me. Now claiming remarks taken out of context. So let's have full publication of all communications #LabourLeaks," she wrote in Twitter.
In a Saturday editorial, the Morning Star supported Abbot's request for the publication of the message logs.
"If the former staff members believe WhatsApp conversations have been taken out of context conversations in which they discussed the diversion of party funds to an account unknown to the leadership to be used to protect their own allies and lamented the party's strong performance in the 2017 election they should welcome an inquiry that allows those conversations to be considered in full," the paper said.
The Labour Party won 40 percent of the vote in 2017 general elections, but fell to 32 percent in December, 2019, prompting Corbyn resignation from the party leadership.
