Labour's Continued Attacks on Liberty

Here is a story that won't stick in the headlines for more than a day. David Lammy has unveiled plans to curtail the right to jury trial for anything but the "most serious" offences.The Times reports the automatic right to appeal will also be scrapped by the government. The plans will involve a new tier of courts presided over by judge-only trials, and will cover offences with penalties of up to five years in prison and/or especially complex cases, like those involving fraud. Relying, as ever, on managerial justifications for a political decisions, drawing on a report by our old friend Sir Brian Leveson, his recommendations were that upending of the right to jury trials would bring much-needed efficiency to proceedings. There is a huge case backlog and that is set to grow further by the end of this parliament, so getting through cases quicker will stop the system seizing up. Leveson and Labour are one: doing nothing is not an option.

Evidently, neither is restoring the levels of resource to the courts that was worn away by the Tories. Hypocritically, Kemi Badenoch memory holed her party's record as she criticised the proposals to scrap juries. Ordinary people have a role to play, she mused. Suella Braverman (remember her?) called this a "serious assault on our liberty" and "an end to our world class justice system". This is the very same former Attorney General who attempted to disregard the jury-led acquittal of four Black Lives Matter protestors accused of dumping Edward Colston's statue into Bristol harbour. Despite this, unfortunately Badenoch and Braverman's charges are examples of the worst people you know making good and correct points. Though if Badenoch takes Keir Starmer to task about this at Prime Minister's Questions, he'll have the list of Tory failings ready around court waiting times, levels of defunding, and so on. It's all very predictable.

That said, I'm not buying what the government are selling. Lammy is saying the backlog has to be reduced, and so the process needs speeding up.That's as far as it goes. Are we to suppose it's a matter of coincidence that this comes after Labour have backed state-mandated curbs of the right to protest and clampdowns on our liberties? Such as the disgraceful designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist group, more police powers to prevent protests, including stopping what they deem "repeat protests", and Labour's support for disproportionately long sentences for "disruptive" protestors - particularly those from the environmental movement. Combine that with Labour's attack on asylum, including the legal remedies open to those forced through their inhumane-by-design process, and ICE-style deportations units, Labour are happily - gleefully - building up the infrastructure an authoritarian regime would find useful. It's a good job a right wing extremist party isn't topping the polls and stands no chance of winning the next election.

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Uncovering Starmer's Fraudulent Politics

I was privileged enough to score an invite to Tuesday morning's presser for Paul Holden's The Fraud, a forensic examination of the shenanigans, rules flouting, and, in some cases, potential law breaking by Morgan McSweeney and the people around him. The story of Labour Together and what role it played in capturing the Labour leadership for Keir Starmer is well enough known, but what Holden has done is hunt down the receipts and the emails that lubricated this dishonest enterprise. But this has not happened without personal risk. A malicious complaint against him was made to the National Cyber Security Centre, alleging that he'd accessed hacked emails from Labour Together. He was also called by someone pretending to be a journalist for openDemocracy who tried pumping him for information, and that "reputation management firms" had tried digging up dirt on him and his family.

Holden began at the beginning. Labour Together was founded by Jon Cruddas and was billed as a non-factional organisation looking to bridge the divides inside Labour. He hired McSweeney, and very quickly Steve Reed, now the minister for housing and local government, and Imran Ahmed, now of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, came on board, From that point on it became a front for their factionalising, which was hidden from Cruddas. As we now know, LT was central to Keir Starmer's leadership campaign in early 2020, but McSweeney and friends denied it was any such thing. We also know that LT took over £700k in undeclared donations, and while this was later explained as an admin oversight Holden has email correspondence between McSweeney and the Electoral Commission. McSweeney argued that it didn't need declaring because LT was not a campaigning organisation, whereas the EC said that didn't matter and should be reported as a matter of course. The Morganiser subsequently "forgot" this conversation. Meanwhile, LT figures, such as the new home secretary Shabana Mahmood, was writing articles that said all funding was properly declared.

On Labour's antisemitism crisis, Reed, McSweeney, and Ahmed drove some aspects of the crisis, with the first compiling and submitting lists of his own. Where this painful episode needed to be dealt with with seriousness and care, it was instead factional and toxic. Accusations of racism were, yes, weaponised as part of the right's was against the left. One such example was David Gordstein, who made hundreds of complaints against party members. This identity was an invention of the (non-Jewish) Euan Phillips of Labour Against Antisemitism and targeted the left, including Jewish members.

LT also funded some secret projects, which included the astroturf campaign 'Stop Funding Fake News'. Launched in March 2019, it portrayed itself as a volunteer organisation but worked under the direction of McSweeney and Ahmed. It campaigned to demonetise websites. and the primary target was The Canary, which was seen as an important node in Corbyn-supportive media. They also targetted Westmonster, the right wing Arron Banks vehicle, and Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party. In May 2019, SFFN posted a thread telling people not to vote BXP and made ad hom attacks on Trump. The political problem is this used Russia-style disinfo tactics, and laid open the Prime Minister's right hand man to charges that undeclared money was used to cancel opponents. Farage is far from averse to playing the poor little right winger card, and could make something of this. Also, Starmer is in hot water of the notoriously prickly White House takes notice.

Part two of the book is called the long con, and details the dishonest contrivances around marketing Starmer. He was recreated as an inhabitant of the human rights universe, and employed "shadowing" as a tactic. I.e. Politically, Starmer's campaign tracked closely to the positions of Rebecca Long-Bailey so no meaningful gap could open between the two. Entirely by coincidence, Stop Funding Fake News was resurrected on 8th January and again went after The Canary. Their crime this time? Drawing attention to Starmer's time as Director of Public Prosecutions, a record that sits somewhat uneasily with his human rights glossing.

Part three looks at killing Corbynism. Once the leadership was won, the machinery was quickly recolonised by right wingers, which was epitomised by their response to the leaked dossier of Labour staffers' WhatsApp messages. Despite the racist banter, attacks on other party members, and evidence of a shadow campaign that diverted funds to safe seats held by right wingers in 2017, those at fault were barely admonished while heaven and earth was moved to find the leaker. Eventually the party took five former officials to court on the flimsiest of evidence. But what did they have in common? They were part of the left. This shadow campaign, which Holden calls the Ergon House scandal, saw funds diverted away from swing seats to safe seats, circumventing normal governance procedures. This was a secret office and Holden has documentary proof that six right wingers, Gloria De Piero, Mary Creagh, Margaret Beckett, Angela Eagle, Caroline Flint, and Judith Cummins, benefited from their support. Unite wrote to Starmer about this and suggested it might shade into criminality, but this breaking of Labour rules and electoral law came to nothing.

On the EHRC report on Labour's antisemitism, within half an hour of Starmer saying he would implement its recommendations he had violated them. One of the EHRC's findings was that the party was guilty of "indirect" discrimination because the leader's office under Corbyn was occasionally consulted about the pace and outcomes of complaints. It's worth noting here, which Holden did not, that this "discrimination" was focused on expediting complaints, not delaying them as falsely claimed by right wingers at the time. However, despite pledging to end interference, between May-June 2020 the leader's office and Angela Rayner were copied into all complaints and were regularly briefed on cases. Complaint handlers were also directed as to their findings. Perhaps the most egregious example of this was the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn from the party, with emails and tweets being sent announcing this immediately after Corbyn, rightly, acknowledged that antisemitism was played as a political football. Other interferences involved "VIP lanes" for MPs who wanted to complain against inconvenient activists

Overall, Holden's presser portrayed Labour as a vicious and, at times, lawless party. Their dismissal of the Forde report into factionalism and the issuing of legal threats around non-disclosure against him, the deselection of Anna Rothery as Labour's candidate for Liverpool's mayoralty, the racist profiling of Newham Labour Party, which involved significant data breaches, and - it might ba added- their repeated victimisation of Diane Abbott demonstrates a systematic problem with racism. But one that gets a free pass because it's the right wing that are doing it.

In all, what Holden has accomplished is a detailed, meticulous exposure of right wing perfidy. It sounds like a dossier of damnation, and one whose evidence could form the basis of civil and legal cases against the Labour Party in general, and McSweeney and his boys in particular. Matters not helped by the fact these right wingers have boasted about their genius dark arts moves to any journalist willing to be their stenographer. As Holden concluded, their fraudulent approach to politics marked the 2024 election campaign and helps explain the alienation and antipathy Starmer has engendered in government. Who can disagree?

The Uses of Lucy Connolly

The Lucy Connolly interview at this weekend's Farage Fest, variously available on extreme right wing YouTube outlets, was interesting. Having served her time for inciting violence online as racist mobs went on the rampage last summer, Connolly has been variously used by Reform, by a further diminishing Tory party, and by the right wing press as a free speech martyr. But it seems she's quite happy to be so utilised, saying to the always-ridiculous Allison Pearon that she looks forward to "working with Reform". Don't be surprised if she ends up as a parliamentary by-election candidate before long.

What we got from her conversation was an exercise in right wing grievance politics. As a mother, and one who lost a child to apparent NHS negligence 12 years previously, her concern is that unchecked immigration is a threat to her daughter and other children. Surely anyone with an ounce of compassion can see the sudden trauma of the Southport murders might cause an otherwise powerless woman to lash out? That in fact her call to set fire to hotels full of refugees came from a place of love and care? Connolly then argued that the courts were handing down much tougher sentences following Keir Starmer's remarks about far right thuggery. An example was to be made of her and, therefore, she was a political prisoner. We learned that while she was inside, her entitlements to leave were abrogated, and that even photographs of her daughter wrapped in the Union jack - following her victories in junior Golf - were denied. Her treatment only improved after Richard Tice went and visited her, with the Reform audience guffawing at the imagined bowing and scraping these now frightened prison official emoted before their future master.

This blog has previously visited right wing victimhood and its propensity to moan and whinge about how unfair everything is. Understanding this begins with acknowledging how their politics are fundamentally dishonest, because Faragism, just like the conservatism he came out of, has to present the minority interest - that of the oligarchy of the City, finance, propert, etc. - as the universal interest. Farage is a cannier peddler of this moonshine than the best the Tories can currently offer, and he uses the old populist tricks to creat a "them" of establishment elites and do-gooders, versus an "us" oppressed by political correctness, race hate laws, and people that might answer back. To get a bit abstract about it, the received idea of citizenship grew out of the exclusion of gendered, racialised, and classed others, and what the extreme right here and everywhere want to retain is this power to (arbitrarily) exclude. The imaginary of losing the privilege to define is a powerful attractor for some who feel excluded from politics and society, and the promise of its restoration is a harbinger for the return of certainty, of feeling in control again. This abstraction reflects the concrete realities of class politics - of a ruling class worried about its reproduction, the decline of the West, the right's dependence on the old, and the, for want of a better phrase, petit-bourgeoisification of retired people. The politics of Leave, of Boris Johnson, and now of Nigel Farage is a politics of being under siege. And to lift any siege, sharp initiatives and decisive actions are necessities. But those "solutions" consume much less energy than the performance the right affects of being victimised. It is a contrivance.

Yet Connolly, despite her gushing thanks to Reform and Allison Pearson might prove something of an unreliable partisan. Toward the end of her interview, she talked about the unfairness of the criminal justice system, of how (she felt) she wasn't able to access proper legal advice shortly after her arrest because it was at the weekend, the injustice of waiting long periods on remand, how her experience of prison has made her passionate about reforming the system, and - echoing common feminist arguments, that most women inside shouldn't be. Remarks that earned a smattering of applause. Which indicates straight away the direction Reform are using and want to carry on using Connolly's "plight". She is a martyr, an emblem of a two-tier Britain where we've become, to use Starmer's phrase, an "island of strangers". But where she has actually drawn compassionate lessons from her own experience, they're not interested. We'll see in due course if the rewards of being a useful puppet for Reform will override her desire to do something about the shortcomings of the criminal justice system.

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Rishi Sunak's Good Bad Day

Not the best day for the government. The Appeal Court said no to the Tories' obnoxious Rwanda plan, and they ruled it was not a "safe country" to transport refugees to. This morning, as expected, the Privileges Committee put out a report naming a handful of prominent Tory MPs as being in contempt of parliament. And sloshing away in the background has been the bankruptcy of Thames Water and the will they/won't they speculation about whether the government will nationalise it. The Tories have a choice of adding its debt to the state's balance sheet, or allowing the South East to run dry. And yet no decision has been made.

All three of these speak to an acute vacuity at the heart of government. Which shouldn't come as a shocker, considering Rishi Sunak began the year promising to do absolutely nothing. But even on these risible terms, he's failing. There is a school of thought that the Rwanda scheme, dreamed up by Priti Patel as one of myriad culture war substitutes to fill the hole left by Brexit, was never designed to be implemented anyway. This is state money being chucked on a wholly intentional strategy of tension, in the hope the Tories would find themselves on the right side of political opinion and Labour's "lefty" lawyer at odds with the British people. Amazing to think any of them could mistake Keir Starmer for a man who cares about liberties and human rights. The problem is that a wheeze cannot last forever, and if you keep promising you're expected to cough up the goods eventually. It might be good news for Suella Braverman, seeing as she gets another crack at laying out the ground for her leadership campaign. But for Sunak, it's a disaster. His hand-wringing criticisms of the judgement make him look powerless, and he's got to know it as well. Short of repealing the Human Rights Act and withdrawing from the ECHR, which is unlikely given the company he'll be keeping, his policy now relies entirely on the Supreme Court deciding in his favour. And if the Appeals Court have found the government at fault because they've breached the law, simply arguing the same thing again isn't likely to cut it.

Coming after disappointment in court, the Privileges Committee report must have come like a kick in the pants. Having ducked out of one vote to pronounce on Boris Johnson, Sunak will be hoping for a vitally important meeting with a foreign leader to pop up in the diary. The Privileges Committee report into the conduct of Johnson cheerleaders accused 10 parliamentarians, seven MPs and three lords, of trying to undermine its work. Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg are on the hook for impugning the integrity of the committee and orchestrating a campaign against its Conservative members. Also in the dock are Andrea Jenkyns, Michael Fabricant, Brendan Clarke-Smith, Mark Jenkinson, and Priti Patel. The report will go before the Commons on 10th July, and MPs will have a free vote on the fates of this most motley of crews. Sunak will avoid expressing a view, no doubt. But the rest? Some of the briefcase brigade would happily see these incur the 10 day suspension penalty, which will mean a slew of by-elections the Tories would lose. But on the bright side they could make the case they've shut the door on the Johnson era and get on being "sensible" and "grown up" without their theatrical distractions. There are good right wing reasons to get shot as well. Of the gang, Patel is in the safest seat but a big drop in her vote would harm her leadership ambitions, benefiting Braverman and Kemi Badenoch both. Not only would a potential rival be knocked down a peg, the riddance of the rest leaves their residual support up for grabs too. And for the right wing attention seekers who remain, like the always appalling Jonathan Gullis, that means more media opportunities. The situation has something for everyone!

Whatever happens, Sunak will take a hit if the Tories close ranks, or if they pave the way for suspensions and by-elections. Surely even he has to realise that the last few weeks have definitively shown there's no coming back for his party. It's not a question of whether they'll lose, but how much by. And it might just be the case that by-election pain in the Autumn could allow for a quieter life between now and the election, and maybe, just maybe, save a few more seats from the coming bloodbath.

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Prince Harry in Court

Prince Harry was in the witness box again for the second day of his litigation against Mirror Group newspapers. Having refused to settle over phone hacking claims like many other celebrities have done, he is there ostensibly to stand up for privacy and take one of the more notorious media organisations to the cleaners. He alleges journalists working for Mirror Group newspapers had, over a period of years, obtained voice messages illegally and used them to run a slew of exclusives about his private life. 33 such articles are at the heart of the case. They deny it and say their stories were obtained from passers-by, friends, acquaintances, etc. A line that might have credibility had they and other papers not spent tens of millions paying off disgruntled parties who had accused them of doing the same.

There are a couple of things of interest beyond the salacious details avidly consumed by royal-watchers. The first is the point oft made before Harry was due in court: the fact he's the first senior royal in the witness box in 130 years. Previously appearing was the then Prince of Wales and future Edward VII, or "Bertie" as he was affectionately known, and questioned in a slander case involving an illegal game of baccarat. The difference between then and now is he was called as a witness and compelled to attend. Harry, along with several other litigants, initiated this action.

It's this that makes matters highly irregular. The royals are not just supposed to be above the pettiness of the press, but at a far remove from it and commonplace affairs. At the pinnacle of the state, the constitutional monarchy is supposed to embody it. In a weird sor of way, they are us. And that means neutrality where day-to-day matters are concerned. In the present set up, the monarchy is an anti-democratic check on unruly aspirations incoming governments may have, and a guarantor the means of violence would be employed to serve the status quo in the unlikely event of a revolutionary upheaval. But all this is obscured by protocol, bowing and scraping, and the enthusiastic support of the official left for this state of affairs. One of the reasons why the Palace have taken such umbrage at the comings and goings of Harry and Meghan is their refusal to be bound by the straitjacket of expectation and the hypocritical rubbish demanded of them. The cutting off, so ostentatiously demonstrated at the Coronation, is necessary to close the window Harry has opened onto Palace intrigue and familial relations and repair the distance. By attacking Mirror Group through the courts, however justified Harry's action is, his behaviour is just another episode of his violating constitutional neutrality. He humanises the institution, and doing so makes it appear historical, frail, and possibly impermanent.

This isn't the only reason why we'll hear nothing from royalty during the case. Except the usual run of puff stories and good news with which we're invited to play the game of compare and contrast. The silence and being seen not to comment is their way of keeping the papers onside. The King can remember well how he and his family were damaged by the press campaign in the 1990s, that is before their knight on a white charger galloped in and helped save their bacon. No comment, not even letting an off-the-record "Palace source" hold forth on the case, helps keep the papers respectful and cooperative. Because with the royals looking at a long-term decline not dissimilar to other props of the establishment, they need continual good press if their efforts to re-legitimise the institution and secure its future until the end of the century are to bear fruit.

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Sunak's Attack on the Covid Inquiry

When Rishi Sunak was coronated as the leader of the Conservative Party and conscious of his immediate predecessors, he said his government would embrace "integrity, professionalism, and accountability". After the events of the last few days, even dyed-in-the-wool Tory supporters would have difficulty maintaining this facade. Since last week when the Cabinet Office notified the police about more alleged rule-breaking by Boris Johnson, Sunak has been extremely reticent about handing government material over to the Covid Inquiry. The is an inquiry his government set up, appointed the personnel, and determined the remit of. So opposed Sunak is that he outright refused to hand over requested material, stating that much of it was "irrelevant" and would inconveniently compromise confidences, high level discussions, etc. etc.

The government was given until 4pm today to furnish the Inquiry chair, Baroness Heather Hallett with the relevant WhatsApp messages, diary entries, and everything else. Sensing an opportunity to embarrass the Prime Minister, even at the cost of his own self-preservation, Johnson unilaterally declared he'd be making available the evidence he has that Sunak would sooner keep under wraps. The deadline came and went, and there was no document dump. Instead, the the government announced it was taking the Inquiry to court to prevent the release of the messages. This is a complete waste of time for two reasons. Baroness Hallett has acted entirely within the powers Sunak granted her inquiry. She is the arbiter of what is and isn't relevant under the powers the Tories determined, and no judge is going to find her at fault. Second, the government don't have to fire up the lawyers anyway. As Paul notes, Sunak could intervene to "refine" the terms of the Inquiry. There would be a political hit, but surely not as damaging as the theatre of dragging it out in court.

I've long argued that Sunak is politically flat-footed. He doesn't know the state of play on the backbenches, how to or when to play up to the yellowing grassroots of the Tory party, nor when to put his briefcase forward. Except when the situation is glaring and obvious. Is taking on the Covid Inquiry one of those occasions? Yes and no. Sunak copped it for last week's Cabinet Office argy-bargy among Johnson supporters, and so turning around and now to protect him and his allies might take the sting out of the internal opposition. If that means falling in the polls, keeping his troops quiescent for now is a worthwhile trade off.

But there are wider concerns to worry about. During the acute phase of the pandemic, as is well known Johnson was resistant to taking measures that would have saved tens of thousands of lives. But he was not alone in this. Nearly the entirety of the Tory party whittled away at the restrictions circumstance forced upon the government, not least our current Prime Minister and his recklessly stupid Eat Out to Help Out scheme. Or, as Matt Hancock rightly put it, "Eat out to help the virus get about". The conversations about that policy, around Sunak's very early attempts to cut short the Jobs Guarantee scheme, and what really drove their haste to ease restrictions as quickly as they could get away with finds almost the entire senior cadre of the party, briefcase or not, on the hook for the public health disaster they exacerbated. The last thing Sunak wants is for his own wilful ignorance and lack of seriousness splashed across the front pages day after day.

Lastly, there's the question of authority. Sunak believes his position in the party is weaker than it actually is, and therefore has to be seen to face down every demand made of him. Here he's not just copying Johnson's premiership, but Tory statecraft in general. At least since the blessed Thatcher entered Number 10. No reverse gear, my way or the highway, the 40-year authoritarian turn in politics finds a hapless Prime Minister putting his fingers in his ears and refusing to budge. Because in his mind, once he's said no to something - workers' pay rises, helping with the cost of living crisis, uprating benefits last year, and in this case abiding by the law - going back on it would be fatal to his premiership and finish his career off. And, for once, Sunak's dull instincts do not betray him. John Major and Theresa May were hopelessly hindered by ending up as authoritarians without authority. If Sunak is not seen sticking to his guns, then his fate won't be entirely dissimilar to theirs.

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Taking the Labour Right to Court

When is enough, enough? In the lead up to Sam Tarry's deselection, reports of dirty tricks were legion. But ultimately, nothing came of the complaints his team made against them. While Apsana Begum was out of action following harassment in her local party led by her ex-husband's family, the London regional bureaucracy turned a blind eye as her reselection was forced through. And now it's Ian Byrne's turn. Despite winning MP of the year from the Patchwork foundation in recognition of his campaigning, the Labour right want him out. And it's the same old tricks. "Lost" invitations to branch nomination meetings, the outright exclusion of Byrne supporters, and now the revoking of Byrne's access to the local membership list. Every low level shenanigan available to the petty fixer is getting employed.

This is inseparable from a concerted effort by the Labour right to lock the left out of the parliamentary party. They don't always get their way, as the reselection of Faiza Shaheen in Chingford and Woodford Green shows. Then again, what is one selection against a score of left wingers who've been disposed of for dubious reasons? She's the exception that proves the rule. As Patrick Maguire points out in his Times piece, Keir Starmer is unconcerned - he's largely contracted the purging and the brutality out to the creatures for whom sharp practices are the definition of sharp politics. And the Labour right can get away with it. There's no Corbynite surge on the horizon threatening to sweep them away. On the contrary, as tens of thousands of leftists have quit and continue to quit, the stitching up jobs of self-styled Tammany Hall-types gets easier.

The right also rely on something else: a certain acquiescence of the Labour left. They reckon, not unreasonably, that the left won't rock the boat too much. The fact trade union leaders, even the left wing ones, aren't saying or doing much publicly as their affiliated branch endorsements get rebuffed for flimsy and/or undisclosed reasons. True, the CWU's Dave Ward has two crucial disputes occupying his time, and Sharon Graham has been clear that her priority is industrial action, not pissing around with internal Labour matters. But still. And the second is court action. Bringing the courts into labour movement matters has long been taboo. Because our organisations were built by the hard graft of our people in the face of bitter opposition, this is good grounds for not letting bewigged members of the ruling class adjudicate on our internal matters. That is a labour movement competency alone. But the Labour right have consistently and with great success relied on this taboo to get away with the most egregious rule breaking. As we know, the party rule book is enforced by the right. It never applies to them. However, the court taboo broken in the Corbyn years. Elements of the right supported a court challenge to keep Jeremy Corbyn off the second leadership ballot. And when the NEC changed the rules over who could vote in the election, some Corbyn supporters launched their own action. In both cases they were doomed to failure as the party's leading lay body acted entirely within its competency. Neither were successful, but the caution against using courts to settle disputes died with the cases.

Therefore, Ian Byrne's announcement that he's gathering materials for a legal challenge is a welcome one. From a mainstream melty, centrist point of view how can a party that hopes to be the lawful government of the land be cavalier about the breaking of its own rules? But from a leftist standpoint, given how the party treats its own rules as optional depending on the politics of those on the receiving end, there is a legal case to be heard. As argued previously, the degeneration of Labour Party structures into something akin to feudal patronage means a dashing of bourgeois law might be a step forward. In the absence of anything else, why not? If a day in court means shining light on party nepotism and hypocrisy, that could hardly be regarded as a bad thing. If Ian goes down this path, good luck to him. Enforcing proper due process across the party would be a big win for the left.

But there's something else of interest going on here. A side note of internal politics. As the North West region is home to Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham, and Steve Rotheram - three not inconsiderable party figures who have endorsed Ian Byrne's reselection, the fact dirty tricks are getting fielded against someone they support either suggests their backing is a cynical tilt to the left for movement kudos, or as is more likely their writ in the region doesn't run as far as it might. Admittedly, because Bryne won his 2019 selection by the tightest of margins - three votes if memory recalls - the contest would likely be tight without the right's attempts to fix the results. But if these two powerful Labour politicians can't knock the shenanigans on the head, what hope do either of them have in running successful future leadership campaigns if sections of the apparat can defy them with impunity?

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Against P&O's Union Busting

800 P&O workers sacked, just like that. Fired by a pre-recorded Zoom recording, workers were told their jobs were terminated with immediate effect. They would be welcome to apply for their jobs again via the agency who were now contracted to provide staffing, but as far as the business were concerned they "had no choice".

It's rubbish. In the early days of the Covid crisis, P&O warned they were in dire straits and, then, "had no choice" to cut workers' pay. This was despite the company troughing on furlough payments and, awkwardly, having transferred out £270m in dividends to its UAE-based parent company, DP World. And if P&O are in trouble because Brexit or Covid or whatever, how is it rival firms operating from the same ports, such as Denmark's DFDS, are doing well? The problem isn't the workers, it's incompetent management and rapacious owners. P&O's employees are entitled to take the bosses' excuses with a pinch of salt.

In firing hundreds without notice, P&O are in complete violation of the law. But thanks to decades of governments alternating between conservative and conservative-lite these protections are barely worth the paper they're written on. In the case of collective redundancy of more than 100 employees, under statute a boss must undertake a 45-day consultation with the workforce and its representatives. This has not been done, so can the book be thrown at them? No. The workforce now have the right to take P&O to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal where the company can be forced to cough up, at a maximum, a year's salary. Additionally, because they have flouted the law on consultation employees can each be awarded up to 90 days' pay. The only part of the law P&O have stuck to is their notifying the transport secretary Grant Shapps, which they did last night. It's obvious that the company has calculated any loss they'll make from tribunal actions brought by former workers can be offset by savings from replacing them wholesale. What's a cost amounting to no more than a few tens of millions versus a lower wage bill in the long run? It's pure profit-seeking from an underhanded and cynical management, and they know the pitiful legal remedies open to workers benefits them. Labour law is capitalist law, after all.

But it appears the company might have miscalculated. Both unions representing seafaring staff, the RMT and Nautilus, advised staff to stay aboard their vessels, leading to scenes of masked security guards being used to handcuff and remove workers while bussing scab labour in. Other ships sealed themselves up to prevent P&O's hired thugs from boarding, while ports have seen protests and roadblocks in response - with more to come on Friday. Politically speaking, there's a rare moment of unanimity in favour of the workers. Speaking on Humberside local radio, Keir Starmer condemned P&O in language not customary to him. Nicola Sturgeon has done likewise. I suppose their support might have been expected, but Tories too? Wheeled out in Shapps's stead in the Commons earlier, his bag carrier Robert Courts criticised the firm's behaviour as "completely unacceptable." Natalie Elphicke for Dover, not known as a friend of workers' rights, said "I don’t accept their argument they need to do this to safeguard the future of the ferry." And just before tea time, Downing Street issued a press release saying "We do not agree with the practice of fire and rehire and would be dismayed if this is the outcome they were seeking to achieve." I mean, the Tories could show how much they disagree with it by outlawing it.

With services suspended in some places for up to 10 days, unanimous political backing, and the prospect of shortages in Northern Ireland, it's difficult to see how P&O's position can stand - especially as public sympathy for the workers is likely to be high as well. Perhaps the management thought with eyes focused east and the Tories in power, they'd be able to get away with it. But P&O have found some support - from The Telegraph. Matthew Lynn, author of the cringingly-titled Death Force series of thrillers, criticises the company for its "crassness", but reserves his ire from the workers themselves and, of course, the RMT. We should be grateful for a rare outbreak of honesty in the Telegraph's pages as he notes this is less about cost and more about breaking the union. Bringing in new workers offers the company more flexibility, he claims. Presumably, the current shift patterns of one or two weeks on board followed by one or two weeks off are unreasonable when scab labour can spend more time at sea and less time recuperating on land. Not that Lynn appears to have any knowledge about terms, conditions, or industrial relations at P&O. But his article shows he does know about the RMT and the London Underground, and those militant lefties in the Universities and Colleges Union striking too. The PCS and Unite are at it as well, and another new 1970s looms. Concluding, he suggests "quite a few commuters" will be cheering P&O on if they defeat the RMT. Witness the class spite of the typical hard right hack, happy for seafarers to lose their jobs because, in his head, it would own the hated London Underground staff.

At present, however,the centre of gravity on this issue is far from the would-be union busters in P&O HQ and their press cheerleaders, and with hundreds of workers who've been stripped of their livelihoods and made to suffer the indignity of firing by pre-recorded message. The unions are doing the right thing to have recommended occupations and protests at ports. With the Tories seemingly blindsided too, effective street and workplace action combined with public support could not only force P&O to retreat, but begin unravelling the whole edifice of anti-trade union, anti-worker legislation.

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Boris Johnson Vs the Judges

Fresh from PeppaPigGate, efforts to insulate the Tories from parliamentary accountability over corruption allegations, and revelations the Prime Minister hosted get togethers and parties last Christmas, as we head into a by-election the Tories could do with winning we learn plans are afoot to weaken judicial oversight of the government's activities. Boris Johnson's certainly a man who likes to try his luck.

The move would let ministers set aside judgements that frustrate their decisions. The bill, coming from the green ink biros of Dominic Raab and Suella Braverman, would compile a list of judicial decisions which could be retrospectively struck out if they're not to the government's liking. Quite how this would work on an annual basis is unclear. Casting our minds back to the prorogation shenanigans of parliament's Brexit wars, the eventual judgement ordered Westminster be reopened immediately. And it was duly done. Rescinding the decision by an annual checklist would have been pointless, but if the government had struck it out any legislation passed in the interim would have an interesting constitutional status. This is just one problem operationalising this wheeze would entail.

It's also poorly thought through. As we saw from the Owen Paterson affair, had Johnson let the disgraced former MP for North Shropshire take his punishment it would not have caused anywhere near the damage it did. Often, defeats for the government in the courts tend not to capture the public imagination. But when an issue comes around that does have wider salience, given the arrogance and myopia of Johnson's Tories it's hardly a stretch to forecast them blundering into choppy political waters by setting aside a decision.

Still, we are at a frightening moment. For 40 years governments of both hues have considerably centralised an already over-centralised state and concentrated decision making in the executive's hands. Johnson, despite regularly confusing his libertinism with libertarianism, has enthusiastically embraced authoritarian statism simply because he can. Justified, at least initially, in terms of getting stuff done this contempt for accountability and constitutional niceties dovetails the wave of Brexit anti-elitism, even though it was totally unnecessary thanks to their huge majority. And since the Tories have dialled back their levelling up agenda (quelle surprise), the true purpose of the proposed reforms are revealed: to prevent them, again, from being accountable for feathering their nests and those of the interests they serve.

A grubby moment, but the danger of having this on the statute book is obvious. A Johnson successor, like Dishy Rishi, could easily ride roughshod over the meagre protections enjoyed by the labour movement, for instance, knowing the courts won't call him in. Or whatever hard right nonsense that might emerge from the fevered brains of Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, or, shudder, Nadine Dorries.

The question is will the Tories get away with it? Already, the Paterson affair has shown up a layer of elite Tory support are extremely uneasy with the overt authoritarianism Johnson has embraced, and it part explains the upswing of Tory press criticisms. In other words, he's getting too big for his boots and some far sighted Tories are concerned with the consequences this might have for the legitimacy of their party and, consequently, the political fortunes of their class. Again, once this appears before the Commons there's a chance of a significant Tory rebellion with the more constitutionalist, wetter wing of the party getting over their abstentionist fetish and actually opposing for a change. So far Johnson has easily survived every backbench challenge - if it materialises could this be the one to stop him in his tracks?

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The Labour Right's Self-Destructive Turn

It would be fair to say this place isn't the Labour right's biggest cheerleader. From throwing elections to being racist to keeping their nests nice and feathered at the expense of victory, they are by far the most destructive political trend in Britain. Bar the Tories who keep getting a free pass thanks to their preoccupation with internal party shenanigans.

But there are trends among the Labour right who do pull in different directions. There is the naively pragmatic who go along with its prescriptions because they genuinely believe having no principles (or at least, locking them under the stairs with trade unions and Jeremy Corbyn) is the path to victory. In their own way they are serious about winning elections, and are having their hearts presently stirred by Blair and Brown: The New Labour Revolution. Others are more calculating and believe putting the left back in its box is a necessary precondition to turning outwards to win an election. They were enthusiastic fighters against Corbynism, but know there are limits. The left should be confined to steerage, but not at the expense of sinking the whole ship. And last of all are the scorched earth types who are quite prepared to burn it all as long as a few of them can salvage something from the ashes. Labour's problem is Keir Starmer represents the first group, while taking strategic direction and advice from the latter.

How else can one think through the politics of the leadership's latest escapade? Showing more determination to find the culprit who leaked that report than punishing the vile, scabby behaviour it revealed, in its infinite wisdom the legal team have decided it should name the five people it has narrowed the leak down to, but can't determine who among them did the deed. This is in response to action brought by Emilie Oldknow, who already failed in court to force the release of names and paid heavily for the privilege. Why did the party fight the case then but have now conceded to her demand? For purely factional reasons. The hope is hanging blame for the leak on the five opens them not only to action from the aggrieved scabs who were caught bang to rights, but also the party who would look to recoup costs for the huge sums it voluntarily shovelled into their coffers.

The problem? It's extremely unlikely it would stand up. As the five's solicitors, the notorious (for other reasons) Carter Ruck, have noted "The party apparently admits that its case against the individuals is purely circumstantial and inferential, but has failed even to set out that case properly in correspondence, despite its obligations to do so under the relevant Court Protocol." More members' money wasted on a desperate legal gambit for entirely factional reasons, and that doesn't take on board any counter suit the five might take out against these allegations.

There once was a time when Labour fought hard to keep the courts out of its internal affairs. The independence of the party and the movement from the courts reflected its own attempts to establish its own systems of authority and sovereignty, and because when the lawyers came knocking in the past bearing writs determined to regulate, stymie, and arrest the labour movement's growing power. Since 2016, when right winger Michael Foster took the party to court to keep Corbyn off the leadership ballot, the taboo about court action was well and truly broken. Whether it was leftists litigating the NEC's decision to hike up the supporter status price in the same contest (a daft action from the point of view of the law), or Chris Williamson trying to get his suspension overturned, or the right wingers crying about tarnishing their own reputations, or running to the police for spurious reasons, or begging for a statutory body to come and investigate them, no one bats an eyelid as the party's filthy linen is paraded before bewigged representatives of the ruling class. The courts are just another, albeit rarefied arena of struggle. And a key principle or our movement withers to nothingness.

This doesn't explain why, so here's a stab. For a section of the Labour right more comfortable attacking the left than the Tories, pursuing former staffers and taking them to the cleaners confers a personal sense of satisfaction (even if it will cost the party dearly). Rather, it serves as a warning. If anyone dares challenge what is theirs by right, they can expect to be harassed, pursued, ruined, and traduced. The whole process is driven by people whose brains were broken by their near death experience, and believe future extinction threats can only be kept at bay by an over-the-top, vindictive pushback. It won't work, but it might contribute to Labour's election failure in two years' time.

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Against Internet Authoritarianism

The hypocrite-in-chief tweets "This England team deserve to be lauded as heroes, not racially abused on social media. Those responsible for this appalling abuse should be ashamed of themselves." You could be forgiven for thinking the racist taunting and trolling of the England team simply dropped out of the sky. In reality, Boris Johnson and his government greenlit this abuse once players started taking the knee. Tory MPs aplenty have trotted out the same line in the TV studios, in the media, and on their socials: solidarity against racism is illegitimate, protesting against it at home and abroad is "divisive", and Black Lives Matter is a thuggish, Marxist movement that wants to rewrite history and destroy Britishness. The Tories might have affected a liberal, tolerant, anti-racist pose, but preferred to stoke their usual, doomed culture war nonsense instead. Individuals made the choice to leave racists comments, but they do so in a climate encouraged from the very top.

Unfortunately, whenever there is an outbreak of racism on social media it is immediately met with an authoritarian response. It's understandable. Open expressions of racism in the flesh involves significant social costs if one is not sheltered by position and privilege, and so attempted enforcement of these costs online are to be expected. These mores are ostensibly policed by the (hit and miss) complaints procedures platforms have, which those with long memories will recall were forced on social media firms after some resistance - they do like to pretend they're merely content carriers and not creators, after all. The problem is their inadequacy is well known. One account is banned, but another can quickly get spun up and the battle rejoined. Therefore, some have taken to imposing sanctions of their own. If a racist is stupid enough to say racist things from a clearly identifiable account, screen grabs and emails duly clutter up their employer's socials and inbox. I certainly don't care if some bigot loses their job for being a bigot, but we - the left - need to have a think about this. Call me old fashioned, but as a rule we shouldn't be calling on bosses to police the content of what their employees post online. Yes, it's a way of ensuring racism has its costs, but it suggests employers have a responsibility for the private activities outside of hours of their workers, a normative expectation anyone with a trade union bone in their body should be uncomfortable with. True, there isn't much one can do directly to shut racists and fascists down online, but let's not pretend mess reporting people to their boss, even if they are foul, is an act of militant anti-fascism.

Still, there is sympathy in the wider country for controls on the unruly, extremist spaces on social media. Speaking in the Commons earlier, Priti Patel - no wide-eyed innocent when it comes to stirring the pot - said the government will bring the Online Safety Bill forward. Ostensibly a charter against scammers, terrorists, and paedophile networks it carries provisions that will protect "democratically important" viewpoints. I.e. Protecting whatever bullshit the Tories and their MPs decide to disseminate platforms might otherwise censor or flag. It also expects social media firms to take action against "misinformation", whatever that is. For its part, Labour has decided being seen tougher than the Tories is where the opportunities lie. Wrong, consistently wrong.

Ever since politicians discovered that social media cannot be tamed and its refuseal to afford the reverence they think is due, a wing of mainstream politics have champed at the bit for some sort of regulation. It doesn't surprise me state-backed efforts at privileging the words and thoughts of the establishment are packaged with anti-nonce measures and curbs at suicide glorification. Who could disagree with these laws? Nor that Labour's faltering leadership are smashing the authoritarian button. A smidgen of an understanding is all it takes to know there will never be a system for stamping out racist communications. The removal of anonymity won't make a difference either, as anyone who has spent some time hanging out on Tory MPs' Facebook pages will tell you. What it would do is open users up to a host of dangers - having interests and lifestyles exposed to families that could put them at risk, political activities employers would be all too happy to curb, and naturally those overseas staking their lives organising against repressive regimes - many of whom are good friends to the UK government. If changing anonymity on social media has no effect on you, congratulations on being able to enjoy that privilege.

To be accurate, the government are not committed to curbing anonymous use, which leaves an opening for authoritarian Labour. But instead the bill does consider new laws for criminalising online behaviours, defined as those "likely to cause harm." Compliance with the law gives platforms an incentive to de-anonymise their users to avoid falling foul of the the legislation themselves, but the dividend is even more targeted, personalised advertising. The stick comes with a juicy carrot. Where does this leave the left? With the urgent need to think through relations of power and authority in the digital age. We must resist the drift to constituting ourselves as an apparatus of voluntary surveillance, one that ends up policing platforms for the benefit of employers, bourgeois politicians, and the state. As always, the convincing alternative, the only alternative is the patient work of building our counterweights and working to make our ideas the popular, spontaneous common sense.

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Margaret Hodge's Attack on Unite

Keir Starmer's Labour Party is uninterested in winning elections because his support base and biggest cheerleaders, the Labour right aren't. This is a statement of fact based on the ample evidence of the last six years. Their primary concern, their sole obsession is neither vote catching nor taking seats. This is everywhere and at all times secondary to their main purpose: the crushing and exclusion of the left.

You never have to wait long for confirmation of this thesis. They simply cannot help themselves. They flatter themselves into thinking they're the professionals and the "grown ups", but they'd much rather bash the left than take the fight to the Tories. Take Margaret Hodge, for example. With a fortune of at least £18 million to her name and major share holdings in a tax dodging steel enterprise, she's been the literal bourgeois in the bourgeois workers' party for decades. With her class interests more closely aligning with the party opposite, is it a wonder she's not in any hurry to see the Tories dumped out of office? And so we find her at the heart of the Labour right's latest vendetta.

Firing off a thread last night, Hodge informed the Twitter-travelling public that she had reported Unite to the police. She wrote,

I have recently seen emails suggesting that Unite top officials have been covertly funding political activities. Keeping this secret from its hardworking members ... In these emails, it appears Unite officials, including Howard Beckett, were deliberately orchestrating the deselection of longstanding Labour MPs ... Both @tom_watson and @spellar were allegedly targeted by this plot meaning they were distracted from representing their constituents and had to fend off underhand deselection attempts. Unite should be focusing on the priorities of its members in the wake of COVID-19. Not the political whims of a few trade union barons.

As per her signature style, she couldn't resist the dishonest flourish at the end. While it's true Unite officials were not supporting members under pressure from Covid-19, that has more to do with the disease, let alone the pandemic not existing at that time. But the rest is the usual bullshit you can expect from this quarter. Tom Watson, readers will recall, was spending more time pursuing his scabby Project Anaconda, subsequently flirting with the LibDems, and attending to his property portfolio than anything resembling opposition to the Tories. And as for John Spellar, when he wasn't ranting incoherently in parliament he held glum Brandhall Labour Club get togethers plotting their take down of Corbyn's leadership. Both men and their following of satraps and temporarily embarrassed right wing Labour MPs had declared war on the membership and would rather the party be a smoking ruin as long as they could be the kings of the ashes.

The real target in all this is Howard Beckett. With Gerard Coyne not looking like he'll get enough nominations to make it onto the ballot (good), their hopes lie in an anyone-but-Beckett winner. Howard Beckett, as readers will know, is pitching for the Len McCluskey continuity vote and has made loud noises about Labour's dismal failures. Most worryingly for Keir Starmer's leadership and a clutch of useless MPs, has pledged to turn off the cash taps unless the party pulls its finger out. He's the candidate to beat with a punchy social media campaign and, as it appears, the momentum. Whether he'll win the general secretary election remains to be seen, but without any political arguments to answer his rise nor any pull in Unite the Labour right can call their own, Hodge has turned to the law in the hope the plod can intervene and derail his candidacy.

There are a couple of things here. We know this is a transparently factional move because she showed no such concern when the misuse of party members' money by right wing party staffers came to light (nor did she have anything to say about their sitting on antisemitism cases for political advantage either). Second, I'm no lawyer but if Unite is utilising money for political purposes, which making cash available for literature aimed at party members is, this is no more unlawful than any other union producing branded material endorsing candidates for selections - or saving sitting MPs from deselection for that matter. Did the unions who idiotically mobilised to save her skin from deselection run it by the members first? The third calculation in play is by making a song and dance about reporting Unite to the police, the right are trying desperately to attach connotations of wrongdoing and possible illegality to his candidature, linking it with the frantic efforts to suggest there was something corrupt about the building of the union's new conference centre.

That Hodge is a party member let alone a sitting MP is nothing short of a disgrace, but it reminds us once again what the Labour Party is. It's not a safe space or a nice place. It's a site of struggle, a stake in and location of class struggle in this country. Someone like Hodge and her fellow rightwingers aren't there to "help people" or win elections to form governments. All they care about is securing their position and protecting their standing, a preoccupation that coincidentally helps keep Labour a party safe for the bourgeois interest, and works to demobilise and break up the collective strength of working people. If this means lying about opponents, and dragging Labour through the mud, they will do it. After all, they're not going to be the ones suffering the consequences of another decade's worth of Tory rule.

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Emilie Oldknow and the Rare Comeuppance

Every day brings joy for some, tragedy for others. It might confer a windfall, or saddle one with crippling debt. Falling into the last category is the Labour Party's former head of governance, Emilie Oldknow. She took the party to court to force the release of the five names it suspects leaked last year's report into the disciplinary process. The report which, incidentally, repeated verbatim hundreds of 2016-2017 WhatsApp messages between the then head of governance and her right wing cohorts at party HQ. And in a rare moment of justice being seen to be done, she failed. Or, to give what happened the precision of accuracy, her legal bid completely cratered. The presiding judge rejected Oldknow's argument, did not grant her plea to make Labour pay costs (she's now on the hook for an estimated £120,000), and to rub it all in refused leave to appeal the verdict.

Readers will recall the leaked report revealed what many suspected all along: that senior staff sat on antisemitism complaints, sabotaged Labour's election campaign, leaked material to the press, and happily assisted MPs actively undermining the leadership. These magi who fancied themselves sorcerers of the dark arts were stupid and arrogant enough to not only document their scabbing but back the entirety of their conversations up on Labour Party servers. Their own words damned them and should, to put matters politely, be sent packing from the labour movement. In light of the report, the fact Oldknow persists at the top of the Unison bureaucracy is nothing short of disgraceful.

There's no need to review their abysmal shenanigans again. What does deserve consideration is how the revelations have been handled. It was an early test for Keir Starmer, and one he effortlessly fluffed. Announcing an inquiry into the report's contents, he appeared more concerned with locating the source of the leak than punishing the wrong doing at the heart of the party apparat. Almost a year on we still await the Forde report, ostensibly because the Information Commissioner's Office is peering into the party's affairs. A long delay then, a coincidence. And also a pattern of behaviour. Recall last July when Dear Keir shelled out hundreds of thousands to former staff members suing the party for having the temerity of defending itself against the rubbish John Ware Panorama documentary on Labour antisemitism. A case, incidentally, the party stood a good chance of winning in light of the leaked report. Keir ponied up the reddies to make the headlines go away. But don't worry, at least some of them were disciplined for their attacks on the party. It was subsequently revealed our scabs received a light tap on their wrist and allowed to carry on their merry way, pockets and purses bulging with members' cash.

This is demonstrative, again, of the party's rotten culture. According to my little birds tweeting from their perch at Southside, the Keir/David Evans partnership are determined to modernise the party's operation. For them, scabby behaviour is less a matter of factionalism and more symptomatic of dysfunctional organisation. The management consultant nonsense is their way of overhauling everything and replacing broken processes and redundant roles with a fine thrumming campaigning machine focused on winning elections. This has meant (ludicrously) scrapping the community organising unit and clearing out perceived dead wood. These include a sliver of dabblers with infernal practices who've not only risked bringing the party into disrepute but might find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

The problem isn't just the modernisation drive is clunking and brutal and dumb. It is anti-democratic and authoritarian. "Professionalising" the operation means empowering the party's administrators at the expense of members' rights and decision-making powers. The haughty manner with which David Evans suspended 50 lay officers, only two of whom have been reinstated, is a naked imposition of the new regime, of treating volunteers as if they're employees expected to be on-brand and snap to attention. The three-part reasoning for this is the Fabianism at the root of "Starmerism", the self-evident clear out of annoying leftists, despite the costs, and following the road map to success according to one Tony Blair. Yet in the end this will give us a hollowed out party where bullying behaviour is the norm, and unaccountable apparatchiks are put in place to wreck the party should another left insurgency surge through the ranks. At least this is why the so-called hard men of the Labour right are riding the Starmerist bandwagon. The more things change the more they stay the same.

And this is way Keir's leadership has treated the scabs with kid gloves. They are his kind of people, the ones who were unlucky to get caught out but, when the chips are down, share identical political projects: keeping Labour a safe pair of political hands, a party that won't rock the boat for British capitalism if the B Team's services are called upon. Emilie Oldknow's case is rare because here's a creature of the Labour right fully caught out and now having to pay for her hubris. As for the rest? They have escaped sanction for now, and if Keir Starmer has his way they will escape sanction in the future.

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The Use and Abuse of Shamima Begum

1. Friday's court victory for the government is horrific. The Supreme Court's decision to reject her application to return to the UK to fight her case and upholding Sajid Javid's decision to strip her of UK citizenship sends a message to everyone born of migrant parents that they're here under sufferance. At any time their rights can be taken away at the flick of the Home Secretary's pen and be treated as if they're a foreign national of a country they didn't grow up in, do not know and, in all likelihood, wouldn't accept them either. Shamima Begum has been denied the right to a trial, the right to a defence, and a right for the chance at rehabilitation. And now the same shadow is cast over millions of Britons if the government of the day deems it politic to revoke their citizenship.

2. This is a reprieve for national security, so argue some dickheads. Apparently the very presence of this woman would lead to "increased risks of terrorism." There's the suggestion she's an unrepentent jihadist, that returning to Britain to stand trial would somehow embolden radical Islamists, and there's a good chance securing a conviction would be difficult thanks to the lack of evidence beyond hearsay. In other words, the UK state should wash its hands of a troublesome citizen and dump her on the Kurds because she presents too many unknowns. Talk about a lack the state has in its own legal system.

3. The politics of all this doesn't really have anything to do with the specifics of Shamima Begum. She was a useful foil who came along at the right time for the Tories to burnish their tough-on-terrorism credentials. That she was a schoolgirl effectively groomed by her recruiters doesn't matter: here we have a brown Muslim woman onto whom was poured every Islamophobic trope, every doubt about the "loyalty" of British Muslims, and every punitive cruelty the Tories and their base reserve for appropriate non-people. For Tory divide-and-rule to work, they need scapegoats. And scapegoats need their demon figures. Begum fit the bill.

4. Legal judgements are never just legal judgements. The law, especially the peculiarites of the English legal system, is class rule codified. And as the Supreme Court is an arm of the state, it is hyper conscious of this fact and how the government are minded to curb its powers following its ignorant waffling about "activist judges" - rhetoric imported directly from the United States. Having ruled against the government on prorogation and noting lower courts had recently ruled Matt Hancock's procurement practices unlawful, self-preservation dictated a certain interpretation of the law in Begum's case.

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Labour's Rotten Heart

Is there something rotten at the heart of the Labour Party? Yes and, I'm afraid to say, 'twas forever thus. The latest victims of shenanigans are the three hopefuls shortlisted for Liverpool's mayoral elections. Having pulled the plug on the final selection meeting, the party today declared it was reopening applications, scrapping the all-women's shortlist, and barring the shortlisters from standing. Anna Rothery, whose candidacy had received an endorsement from Jeremy Corbyn and the backing of Unite said she would take legal action if the decision is not reversed.

In typical Labour fashion, the whole thing was handled appallingly. No explanation was forthcoming about the decision, releasing a pitiful non-statement saying the party wanted a candidate who would "stand up against the Conservatives, lead Liverpool out of the coronavirus crisis and fight for the resources that the city desperately needs." Candidates were not even informed that their bids had been given the heave ho. And so, where there is a vacuum of information speculation rushes in.

While much has been made about the politics of Anna Rothery, my first instinct wasn't a question of compatibility between her (soft left) positions and the world according to Dear Keir, but more an issue of tidying up. Given what has happened with Joe Anderson, the former mayor who resigned under a cloud of corruption allegations, there might have been a concern all of the candidates were considered too close to the ancien regime. And so while Unite has had its nose put out of joint by the suspension, so too has Unison who are normally considered reliable by LOTO. A clean break with what went before appeared to offer a good explanation. Avoid embarrassment, and put as much distance between the party and fall out from whatever happens with the Anderson case.

But, as per Skwawkbox's story, my spies in the belly of the beast back their reporting up. The overturn did not come from the top but within the regional apparatus. Less a case of hobbling the left candidate and more one of installing a favoured son of the bureaucracy, as the cancellation of the AWS attests. Anna suffered not because she was the leftist, but simply because as per Ann O'Bryne and Wendy Simon, she was in the way of someone else.

Either way, while knowing the factional details are important for the minutiae of inner party manoeuvring, the point of principle remains. Stitch ups were bad when the right did it. They were no better when the left pulled the same. And now the right are back in charge, here we are again. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Remember, when there was the merest suggestion the party's complaints system was going to abide by due process and no longer be a factional football, a certain someone made their displeasure known.

Therefore best of luck to Anna if she goes down the injunction route, but unfortunately I don't hold out much hope for success. Shabby manoeuvres are fine as long as they're consistent with the rule book and NEC rulings. Natural justice doesn't exist in the party. This serves to remind us that if Labour is to change a strategy is required to transform it from top to bottom, to enhance democratic decision making, due process, and bring the parliamentary party to heel. We had this opportunity, and the left will forever rue the day Corbynism didn't push change harder. And sadly, the task becomes more difficult as every outrage, rotten move, and terrible tactical positioning repels good people from the party. Legal challenges won't stop the right and the apparatus. And neither will giving up.

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Section 44 Does Not Protect You

In recent days, I've seen activists on social media bandying around Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 as a sort of get out of jail free card when being forced into an unsafe workplace by an employer. Unfortunately, this is very much not the case. Below is a guest post from comrade AD, a long-time union organiser, about what Section 44 does and doesn't mean and it makes grim reading for any employee. Getting better legislation, like all things worthwhile, means fighting for it ourselves - and not relying on others.

1. Employers can fire people for not turning up to work. Or even for threatening to not turn up. Or even for no reason at all. It might well be “unlawful” for them to do so. But just because a law says that something shouldnt be done - it doesn’t stop them doing it.

2. That’s because employment protection in this country is not proactively enforced in real time. You can’t call the police or the council or the coastguard or a vicar to intervene if you are sacked.

3. Instead it is left to a collapsing, underfunded, archaic and unfriendly employment tribunal system to retrospectively review possible breaches of employment law where people manage to navigate the labyrinthine procedures for bringing individual claims. The current backlog for claims to be listed to be heard is about two years.

4. If you don’t want to go to a workplace you consider to be unsafe, you absolutely can cite Section 44 ERA 1996 as a defence for your actions. But an employer may just decide to ignore you and either not pay you or just sack you instead, many safe in the knowledge there are few jobs out there for you to go to and that there would be many years before they could be held to account.

5. If you are summarily dismissed by your employer because they say it’s gross misconduct for you not to turn up then you would have no income from that moment, and by extension no rights to any Universal Credit around job seeking as the state sees your unemployment as brought on by your own action.

6. Welcome to Britain. I wish it was not like this and have spent my life trying to change things but to no avail.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

Sunday's meeting of the Jewish Labour Movement was interesting. In the first half of the day, Angela Rayner brewed up a storm on social media. She said "thousands and thousands" should be suspended from the Labour Party if they don't "get real" about antisemitism. What this means is anyone's guess, especially when the Deputy Leader herself went on to Newsnight a couple of weeks back and said Jeremy Corbyn's comments about the political uses of antisemitism were true, but that he shouldn't have said them. Or perhaps we're looking at something a bit more blanketing. As readers know, the ban on constituency parties taking business about this case has been justified by the General Secretary as an anti-antisemitism measure, of protecting Jewish members because some might find discussion of disciplinary processes uncomfortable. This absurdity has given Angela Rayner and Keir Starmer free reign to frame this issue and talk it over with non-Labour JLM conference attendees like Joan Ryan and Mike Gapes, but not a privilege afforded to the people who pay the wages of the party machine and have worked to give Angela and Keir the offices they enjoy.

In the law laid down to constituency officers, the recommendations of the EHRC report itself are ruled not competent business. To even suggest an independent complaints process might not be a good idea is, according to the mood music coming from the top, evidence of not "getting real". A mite embarrassing when, in his contribution to the JLM conference, Peter Mandelson himself criticised the report's recommendation for an independent complaints process. To quote LabourList's Sienna Rodgers, she reports "I’m worried about one thing. That is this recommended approach by the EHRC of an independent process." He says the NEC should "take ownership" of process and "an independent process can’t do that." Unfortunate, but unlikely he'll receive a gentle phone call from the dear leader about what the line is.

Mandelson is right to be concerned. The introduction of an independent process is a thin end of a wedge. But first a bit of history. Throughout the labour movement's existence, the party and the unions have been wary of court intervention into their affairs. In more recent times the 1980s and 1990s saw legally enforced assaults on workers' organisations, with stringent rules applied to the regulation of labour and what unions can and can't do. These weren't about "cleaning up" the unions (still some way to go), though they did have the knock-on effect of ensuring union money moving into politics was the most tightly scrutinised and therefore the cleanest money there is. No, these measures were about tying unions up to make them less effective in disputes. If the efficacy isn't present, what's the point? Sustained membership decline over decades was partly thanks to the legalistic chains thrown around our organising capacity.

This suspicion toward the uses of the law goes back to the very founding of the labour movement, how early organisers were harassed, arrested, imprisoned, and transported has left a cultural legacy of institutional independence, of our movement's mindedness to sort its own affairs and generate its own forms of sovereignty, up to and including dispute resolution. This attitude persists on the left, considering its fidelity to a broad understanding of class and class power. And it has persisted on the right because it confers them a free hand. If they control the leadership body of the organisation they're ensconced in, they are, effectively, the law within that institutional space. For different reasons, left and right have a common interest in keeping the movement's governance structures independent of outside oversight.

This mutual understanding came undone early in the Corbyn years. In July 2016 following the parliamentary party's first rebellion against the membership, former party candidate Michael Foster took Labour to court against the NEC's decision to allow Jeremy Corbyn to defend his leadership without having to go through the PLP nomination process. His argument relied on uncertain words in the rule book, which the NEC subsequently clarified in its ruling giving a Corbyn defence the green light. The challenge was always going to be a hiding to nothing, and his legal counsel duly relieved him of thousands of pounds for a no-hope case. But the taboo was broken. Subsequently a group of members took legal action against the party for the rules the NEC placed on voting members and the suppoerter category for the second leadership contest between Corbyn and Owen Smith - their initial success was overturned at the Court of Appeal and the NEC's decision upheld. In both cases the NEC acted within the competencies conferred upon it by the rule book, nor had acted unlawfully and so its decisions stood. Yet one thing that went virtually unnoticed at the time was the activity of our friend Tom Watson. While most of the PLP were hoping and praying for Foster's success, the then Deputy Leader publicly opposed court action. He defended the principle of party sovereignty and autonomy. You see, he understood how central this was to any future consolidation of power by the Labour right.

Fast forward to the last couple of years, the demand for an "independent" complaints process shows how little the current Labour right understand themselves and the conditions most conducive to their factional operation. During the 1980s, the right's hold on the NEC and party machinery, and not forgetting the crucial institutional backing of the trade union apparat, meant hundreds of leftists - mostly, but not entirely Militant supporters - were slung out the party without any pretence to even-handedness or natural justice. It's all there, lovingly documented in John Golding's The Hammer of the Left. In 2020, the right's power is not what it was. Major unions are not in their pockets, and if Unison elects a left candidate for Genereal Secretary they won't be able to rely on them either. A substantial proportion of the membership are rebellious, but, crucially, the right have boxed themselves into a corner. Angela Rayner might talk tough to the rightwingers who fill out the JLM's membership, but under existing arrangements she has no formal power to expel anyone. And both she and Keir Starmer are now compelled by the EHRC - and their own repeated promises - to hand that power away.

Why does this matter? One should not be naive about "independent processes", their character, and their political content, but it does introduce a new dynamic into proceedings. The expulsion demands Labour MPs have raised over the years are already, according to the EHRC, a politicisation of the complaints process and therefore unwelcome. By instituting an outside semi-judicial body, this can no longer happen. Second, as a formally independent body it will adjudicate on the basis of party rules but will necessarily draw on wider legislation on racism, harassment, and discriminatory practice when determing the outcomes of complaints. It will also be expected to operate on the basis of natural justice, otherwise its decisions are even more open to legal challenge by "defendants". And, crucially, the independent panel is not subordinate to Labour's NEC. This is where the problems lie for the Labour right. Mandelson fears such a process because it introduces the rule of law into the party. Frame ups become harder to manage if hard evidence is required. Getting rid of inconvenients and annoyances is tougher if one can't cook the panel beforehand. And where does it stop? Are the party's hideous working practices under threat? And what about the pervasive stitch up culture when it comes to candidate selections?

This is why Mandelson is worried. Not out of any principled reason. He broke ranks with the party's establishment because he knows what the score is. He was there in the 1980s and understands where the power bases of the right are, and how it should be exercised. Therefore to see his epigoni, whose formative years were not conditioned by a struggle with the left, forget all the lessons he learned by willingly giving away a lynchpin of their institutional power must be mind-boggling and infuriating. It repesents an unnecessary weakening of their capacity to run the party as they see fit, and it must gall to see them not just welcoming it, but arguing for it. It's too late to backtrack now. Wouldn't it be funny if the consequence of anti-Corbyn agitation turns out to be a new set up making shadowy, secretive, factional politics that much more difficult?

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