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Over the weekend, an internal Labour Party report entitled "The work of the Labour Party's Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019" was leaked. The report was reportedly prepared to "submit to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) investigation into antisemitism".

As the report is a leak and has not been officially published, there are a lot of varying reports on its conclusions. For example, Skwawkbox, a generally pro-Corbyn outlet has reported that the document:

accuses senior right-wing staff of failing to act on antisemitism complaints – and of working against the party and its leadership in the hope of removing Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

while the BBC takes the subtly different line that the opposition to Corbyn itself was the reason for the failure to act on antisemitism:

Anti-Jeremy Corbyn sentiment within Labour hindered the party from tackling anti-Semitism, says a leaked report.

Meanwhile, LabourList writes that the report:

has laid bare the extent to which disciplinary cases were poorly handled by party staff members, but concludes that there is no evidence antisemitism complaints were treated differently

and the Jewish Chronicle, which has previously criticised Corbyn and Labour's approach to accusations of antisemitism, quotes a former Spad, who:

described it as a report written by Corbynites who then deliberately leaked it, “blaming their antisemitism on other people plotting against ‘Jeremy’, which is itself an antisemitic trope, and now they’re bleating that Starmer won’t send their forgery to the EHRC.”

Given that accounts of the report's findings and conclusions seem to vary wildly based on one's choice of news outlet, what exactly are the true conclusions drawn by the leaked report?

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  • 2
    Why not wait for the conclusions of the officially published report?
    – Golden Cuy
    Apr 13, 2020 at 21:07
  • 10
    @AndrewGrimm Because after it was compiled, the party's lawyers told the party it should not be sent to the EHRC as it would damage their case (source). It is very unlikely that it will be published officially.
    – CDJB
    Apr 13, 2020 at 21:11
  • As an internal investigation of a political party there is no reason to believe that any argument within the body of the document is reported without spin to make things as favorable for the party as possible, and also no reason to believe any conclusion reached (or promises made for the future!) have any relationship to reality. I'm not just saying this about the British Labour party - but about most internal investigations of any organization and of political parties in particular.
    – davidbak
    Apr 14, 2020 at 15:37
  • @davidbak - Indeed. In this case it appears that the report's authors have selectively quoted individuals to try to build a case that the party leadership were hampered by in-fighting and factionalism from incompetent and malicious staffers and the deputy-leadership and that basically Corbyn and his people were doing their best under difficult circumstances.
    – Valorum
    Apr 15, 2020 at 12:42

1 Answer 1

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You can read (all 850 pages) yourself!

The conclusions as stated in the report are:

  • Labour party structures were not equipped to deal with [anti-semitism]
  • An abnormal intensity of factional opposition to the Party leader during this time inhibited the proper functioning of the Labour Party bureaucracy.
  • Party management was for several years unequal to the task of effectively supervising existing procedures and transitioning to more robust and efficient systems.
  • The Party is also now taking proactive and wide-reaching action to remove any influence of antisemites from the Labour Party.
  • There is no evidence that, at any point in [(Party disciplinary body)] GLU's history, antisemitism complaints were treated differently to any other complaints.
  • There is evidence that the lack of robust processes, systems, training, education and effective line management had a significant impact upon the thorough, consistent and expedient handling of all complaints.
  • The Party has introduced appropriate processes [...] to ensure antisemitism complaints are dealt with swiftly and robustly.

I can summarise the summary as "We screwed up", "The factional fighting made it worse", "But everything is better now" (or at least "But we've taken steps to do better in the future".)

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