Due diligence has been sacrificed on the altar of factional loyalty.

Yesterday Labour frontbenchers were being wheeled out to defend the Party’s candidate in the Rochdale by-election despite the emergence of a recording of him saying Israel had let the 7th October attacks by Hamas go ahead as a pretext to invade Gaza. Last night, the leadership withdrew support for Azhar Ali over further comments he apparently made about Jewish people.

It seems the leadership changed its position after Ali was recorded apparently blaming Jewish media figures for fuelling criticism against a pro-Palestinian Labour MP. So it was evidently acceptable to Labour officials for the candidate to issue a quick apology after being caught promulgating a conspiracy theory – the modern-day equivalent of the ‘9/11 truth movement’ which argued that the 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers were a deliberate ploy to enable a US military expansion into Iraq and beyond. But outright antisemitism was a prejudice too far.

The debacle leaves Labour without any candidate in the Rochdale by-election. Worse, it makes Labour look ridiculous and incompetent just months ahead of a general election. How did this fiasco happen?

Double standards

The answer is simple. Due diligence has been sacrificed on the altar of factional loyalty. If you are from the right wing of the Party, you will get the benefit of the doubt, however indefensible your comments may have been.

A Momentum spokesperson said: “It’s clear that they were trying to save one of their own. And it is equally clear that Labour’s whip and selection processes are neither independent nor fair. The Labour leadership is sacrificing anti-racism for political gain – and achieving neither.”

Worse, there is a double standard in operation. Left wingers in the Party have been far more harshly treated for lesser offences. Edmonton MP Kate Osamor remains suspended despite having apologised for linking the Israeli slaughter in Gaza to genocide on Holocaust Memorial Day. Andy MacDonald, MP for Middlesborough, remains suspended after expressing his wish that “Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty.”

Hackney MP Diane Abbott remains suspended despite apologising for a badly worded letter she sent to the press about racism. And of course former leader Jeremy Corbyn has been not only suspended from the parliamentary Party but barred from being a candidate at the next election.

There is a clear double standard, not only being used against the left, but allowing figures on the right to get away with far more serious offences. Neil Coyle MP had the whip restored after initially being suspended for drunken abuse and making racist comments to a journalist. The MP had also reportedly previously had a complaint of sexual harassment upheld against him over an incident at a past Labour Conference.

Barking and Dagenham Council Leader Darren Rodwell remains a Labour prospective parliamentary candidate, despite ‘joking’ that he had “the worst tan possible for a black man”. Rodwell, who is white, said he had “the passion for the rhythm of the African and the Caribbean” while wearing a kufi, a traditional hat in parts of Africa.

Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman retained the Labour whip after tweeting about a “run on silver shekels” in an apparent reference to a rumour about two high profile Jewish businessmen missing out on peerages.

As Momentum’s head of communications Angus Satow pointed out a year ago: “Labour right candidates with a history of sexist remarks have been let through, too. Take the case of Frank McAveety, a former Labour MSP who was forced to resign after telling a colleague at a Holyrood committee hearing that a woman in the public benches was “very attractive”, “dark and dusky” with “that Filipino look”, and that he would “put a wee word out for her”. The woman was, in fact, a schoolgirl. McAveety apologised for his remarks. Yet McAveety – on the right of the party – was allowed all the way to the shortlist for a seat in Glasgow by the Scottish Labour Executive Committee (SEC, again dominated by the right). It was only after a public outcry, including from the Labour Women’s Network, that the SEC intervened and McAveety withdrew.”

These individuals, however, are all from the pro-Starmer wing of the Party, where lenient treatment appears to be the norm. ‘Due diligence’ does not seem to apply when the primary motive for selection is a factional hostility to the left.

The Rochdale shambles – like previous scandals before it – was entirely avoidable. The leaked report exposing anti-black racism and Islamophobia in Whatsapp messages exchanged by senior Party officials led to the commissioning of the Forde Report – only for Starmer’s leadership to kick it into the long grass for two years.

In his seminal report, Martin Forde KC warned the Labour leadership not to instrumentalise antisemitism and set out how allegations of racism should be tackled in the Party. Instead, the Starmer team continued with a factional approach that prioritised witch-hunting the left. Forde today said there had been a “disparity in treatment” of allegations of antisemitism in relation to Rochdale.

Others go further. Instead of showing clear leadership in the face of the Rochdale Labour candidate’s utterly unacceptable remarks, Labour leaders had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” to make the right call when it’s someone from their wing of the Party, NEC member Mish Rahman has pointed out. He says there are “different standards” for different wings of the Party and due diligence has become “a sham”.

Guardian columnist Owen Jones agreed, as did Andrew Fisher who told BBC’s Newsnight that “the Labour Party’s procedures are entirely factional.” Momentum founder and former Chair Jon Lansman tweeted that “the due diligence which should be done for all Labour candidates isn’t taken very seriously for a candidate who is on the right of the party (and of course candidates from the left get disqualified for purely factional reasons).”

Who pays?

Who pays for this completely unnecessary political car crash? Firstly, the voters of Rochdale, now deprived of a Labour candidate, faced with a grim choice. There’s the posturing George Galloway, whose attempts to weaponise socially conservative and anti-LGBTIQ prejudices in 2021’s Batley and Spen by-election in an attempt to win Asian votes left a sour taste in the mouth for many. There’s still the now disgraced ex-Labour candidate Azhar Ali. And amid an array of openly right wing parties, there’s the former Labour MP Simon Danczuk, whom some local Labour activists are reportedly moving to support, despite his standing on the hard right Reform Party ticket and his earlier suspension from Labour after newspaper allegations that he had exchanged explicit text messages with a 17-year-old girl.

Secondly, the rest of us will pay a price for the Starmer leadership’s factional stupidity. Labour will take a significant hit in the opinion polls as a result of this unprincipled incompetence. If you think the next general election is in the bag, just bear in mind that the Party needs a record swing of 12.7% to win the thinnest of majorities.

As Labour Hub has pointed out: “That’s bigger than Blair’s 1997 swing of 10.2%, which gave Labour a landslide win. Plus, the next general election takes place with little prospect of Labour winning back Scotland, with an unfavourable electoral map following boundary changes and with large numbers of voters disenfranchised due to new voter ID laws.”

And this is in condition where Muslim supporters are deserting the Party in droves and local activists feel bruised and demoralised about Party officials’ factional approach to selection contests and readiness to close down constituency parties for months or years at a time – in London alone, Newham, Ealing and Hackney are all afflicted in this way.

The lesson is clear: the Labour leadership must abandon its factional behaviour and its disdain for grassroots members, who it needs to campaign, if it is to win. Starmer can fight the Tories or the Labour left – but he can’t do both and hope to succeed.

Image: Keir Starmer https://www.flickr.com/photos/190916320@N06/53240561562. Creator: Keir Starmer | Credit: Labour Party. Copyright: Labour Party. Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic