Spotlight is currently working through the recently leaked 851 Labour Party report into the Party’s Governance and Legal Unit (in relation to antisemitism) to produce a more condensed and accessible version. Below is the first part of this condensed report. It includes a broad overview and starts by explaining how, prior to Jennie Formby’s appointment as General Secretary, there was no consistent system for logging and recording complaints or logging and recording disciplinary investigations. It also explains how Ian McNicol and senior GLU staff appeared to deliberately sit on cases and how some senior staff effectively saw themselves at war with the Leader’s Office and were provided false and misleading information. It then breaks down the numerous factions within the Labour Party and goes on to outline how Jeremy Corbyn’s outstanding success and newly found support was seen as a significant threat to the “Blairite politics of Progress” and explains how Labour party staff were using party resources and funds “to further the interests of one faction” within the party.
In this section we cover everything from internal opposition to the party’s campaigns and manifestos, the actions of certain members of staff who actively worked to undermine Corbyn and keep the left from gaining any influence or control, the role regional staff played in disciplinary cases including initiating cases, proposing decisions on cases as well as investigating and progressing cases (including the extent to which staff would stalk new members on social media in an attempt to remove people identified as from left wing factions), how staff were selected for appointments to the GLU and to senior posts and the vile and demeaning behaviour of some members of staff, including senior staff members, who would target other members of staff and even prepared to sack anyone they considered to be too “trotty”.
This section also covers the relationship between the Leader’s office and Labour HQ (including the General Secretary’s Office and the Governance and Legal Unit) and demonstrates how the GSO and GLU were openly hostile and refused to take any instruction from the leader’s office. It covers activities of Labour HQ / GLU / GSO leading up to the 2017 General Election where staff actively plotted to protect right wing seats by allocated campaign funds and resources along factional lines. Shockingly, it puts Sam Matthews (the so-called whistle blower, interviewed by Panorama on alleged anti-Semitism in the Labour Party) at the very heart of this right wing plot.
To help provide context and show the extent to which this factional behaviour was allowed to permeate throughout the GLU and Labour HQ, we’ve provided a staff list of all the people mentioned in this section of report, along with details of the position(s) they hold or held within the party…
Staff List
Ali Moussavi (Economic Advisor in the Leader’s Office)
Amy Fowler (Fundraising)
Anna Hutchinson (Regional Director, Labour North West)
Anna Phillips (Shadow Cabinet Visits Assistant)
Anna Wright (Press Officer)
Anouska Gregorek (Head of Policy Development)
Ben Murphy (Local Government Officer / Press Officer)
Ben Nolan (Head of Membership / Director: Membership Mobilisation & Communications)
Ben Westerman (Disputes Team)
Cameron Scott (Eastern Regional Director)
Carol Linforth (Director of Conference and Events)
Catherine Bramwell (Labour’s South East press officer)
Ciaran Tully (Regional Organiser)
Claire-Frances Fuller (Head of Internal Governance)
Colette Collins-Walsh (Education Policy Officer)
Dan Hogan (Policy Communications Officer / Investigations Officer in GLU)
Danny Adilypour (Campaigns Manager in the Contact Creator, Targeting & Analysis Team)
Dominic Murphy (Research Officer)
Ellie Buck (Regional Organiser, South East)
Ellie Miller (Campaign and Shadow Cabinet Visits Manager)
Emilie Oldknow (Executive Director – Governance, Membership and Party Services)
Emma Meehan (National Women’s and Equalities Officer / Stakeholder Engagement Manager / Head of Stakeholders)
Fiona Stanton (Regional Director, Labour North)
Francis Grove-White (Labour International Policy Officer)
Fraser Welsh (Deputy General Secretary for Wales)
Greg Cook (Head of Political Strategy)
Hayley Sothinathan (Development director, Fundraising Events)
Hester Waterfield (Development Coordinator / Thousand Club and Research Officer)
Hollie Ridley (Training Development and Community Organising Manager / Election Strategy Manager / Head of Elections and Campaign Support / Director, Eastern Region)
Holly Snyman (Director – Human Resources)
Iain McNicol (General Secretary)
Jack Smith (Senior Adviser on elections and platform planning at Labour HQ)
James McBride (staff at Labour’s Policy Unit leading on economy and business policy)
John Stolliday (Director, Governance and Legal)
Jo Green (Head of Broadcasting)
Jo Greening (Head of International Liaison)
Josh Carrington (Campaigns Analyst)
Joshua Graham (Product Manager, various projects / Acting Head of Digitial Organising)
Julie Lawrence (Director, GSO)
Karie Murphy (Chief of Staff, LOTO)
Katherine Buckingham (GLU Head of Disputes)
Katy Dillon (Press Officer / Labour’s Broadcast Manager)
Kieren Walters (Broadcasting Manager / Head of Press & Broadcasting)
Laura Repton (Regional Administrator)
Lee Gingell (Membership Services and Correspondence)
Lisa Forsyth (Policy & Political Adviser, Leader’s Office)
Louise Withers-Green (GLU Disputes Officer)
Luke Akehurst (Former member of Labours NEC, Labour First Activist, currently Director at ‘We Believe in Israel’)
Megan Wikeley (Campaigns Officer – Materials and Direct Mail)
Michael Rubin (Labour Students National Chair) – named as a pro-Israel activist in the ‘The Lobby’
Mike Creighton (Director of Audit, Risk and Property)
Neil Fleming (Acting Head of Press and Broadcasting)
Patrick Heneghan (Executive Director – Elections, Campaigns and Organisation)
Paul Ovenden (Press Officer)
Rob Sherrington (Regional Organiser)
Sam Matthews (GLU’s Head of Disputes / Acting Director of GLU)
Sarah Brown (Press Officer)
Sarah Mulholland (PLP Secretary)
Sarah Waite (Education Policy Officer / Political Advisor to the Shadow Secretary of State for Education)
Seumas Milne (Executive Director – Strategy and Communication)
Simon Jackson (Director of Policy, Political Research and Messaging, Briefing and Rebuttal)
Simon Mills (Executive Director – Finance).
Sophie Goodyear (Head of Safeguarding and Complaints)
Stephanie Driver (Head of Regional Media / Deputy Head of Press and Broadcasting)
Stephen Donnelly (Campaigns Officer)
Stephen Pattison (Labour & Co-operative candidate for Woodgreen, Stevenage Council Election 2011)
Teddy Ryan (Regional Organiser)
Tom Geldard (Director of Digital).
Tom Hamilton, Head of Briefing and Rebuttal
Tom Watson (Deputy Leader, Labour Party)
Tracey Allen (Manager, GSO)
Before we get started on this section of the report I’d just like to warn people as to the shocking nature of its content. After reading this, it would be hard for anyone not to conclude just how the “Blairite politics of Progress” was so completely at odd’s with the ethos of the majority of the party membership who had campaigned for 5yrs with one driving message above all others “For the many, not the few”. It would appear now that this small but influential faction didn’t believe, somehow, that these words also applied to them.
Condensed Labour Party GLU report on anti-Semitism (PART 1)
In the period until spring 2018 (before Jennie Formby became General Secretary), the Labour Party’s investigation shows that Labour HQ and GLU failed to develop any consistent system for logging and recording complaints or logging and recording disciplinary investigations and tracking their progress. They also failed to develop any consistent system, process or training for investigating and progressing cases or any general guidance or training for staff on decision-making regarding complaints, including antisemitism complaints. They failed to develop any detailed or coherent guidelines for investigating complaints based on social media conduct or how to identify Labour members and how to handle different forms of social media activity. They also did not recommend or enact any reforms to the NEC and NCC disciplinary procedures, so they might be fit for purpose given the massively increased size of the membership and expected increase in caseload, as a result. They also failed to log and investigate complaints of racism as racism.
The report makes clear that very few complaints were therefore passed on to the Head of Disputes, Sam Matthews and he then chose to simply sit on them. In fact it states that Matthews would only be prompted into action when chased up by other staff members. The report continues that despite their incompetence and arguably deliberate inaction, senior GLU and GSO staff, including the then General Secretary, Iain McNicol, repeatedly claimed that all complaints were being dealt with promptly, justified delays and claimed that outstanding issues would be dealt with soon. Timetables for case resolutions were never met, they falsely claimed to have processed all antisemitism complaints and that most of the antisemitism complaints were not about Labour members and then provided highly inaccurate statistics of antisemitism complaints
The report also states that “the GLU when under the management of Sam Matthews, John Stolliday and Emilie Oldknow provided false and misleading information to both the Leader of the Oppositions Office and the General Secretary” and by the time Jennie Formby took over as General Secretary, in April 2018, there was a sizeable backlog of cases that had been sat on for years as well as “a hidden backlog of people reported to GLU for antisemitism, but never dealt with or mishandled”.
The report then speaks of “abundant evidence of a hyper-factional atmosphere prevailing in Party HQ” before Jennie Formby was appointed Gen Sec. and states that this “affected the expeditious and resolute handling of disciplinary complaints.” GLU staff and senior staff with responsibility for managing and overseeing GLU, it says, “were bitterly opposed to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn” and appeared to be “largely interested in work that could advance a factional agenda.” The report concludes that some employees took a view that “the worse things got for Labour the happier they would be, since this might expedite Jeremy Corbyn’s departure from office.”
Contrary to the propaganda alleging that the leader’s office was influencing how anti-Semitism cases were being handled, the report states that the evidence shows that “staff in HQ, including in GLU and GSO, did not take instruction from LOTO. On the contrary, they often openly worked against the aims and objectives of the leadership of the Party, and in the 2017 general election some key staff even appeared to work against the Party’s core objective of winning elections.”
Interestingly the report adds that another issue was that GLU staff at the time didn’t fully understand “what constitutes antisemitism and on what warrants suspension from the Party” and sometimes incorrectly sought “informal resolutions” for serious cases of antisemitism. They apparently ignored the guidelines laid out in the Chakrabarti Report, released on 30 June 2016. These issues, it says, have now been dealt with and this has significantly improved the process and speed of action. Members found expressing anti-Semitic views can now be “expelled within days or weeks of the complaint being submitted to the Party.”
The report then goes on to explain that due to the nature and volume of information requested by the EHRC, the party had to allocate a great deal of staff time to handle the request, not least because many of the GLU staff concerned had left the department prior to 2019. The current GLU staff therefore had to use Labour’s “Subject Access Request” tool – which does a back-end search of all Labour Party emails in order to find the information requested in a chronological fashion. This also provided the party with information it needed to understand what had gone wrong in the past and how to improve practices. That said, the report admits that “former staff left almost no records when they stopped working for the party, resulting in a lack of institutional memory from this period”, which is why, they say “a wider investigation was required.”
The Party email system, it turns out, proved to be a helpful resource because it included all emails sent or received by Party staff throughout this period and, of the several million emails, an estimated 100,000 emails were reviewed by staff for this investigation. Staff were also able to search thousands of messages exchanged on Labour work accounts, on an internal party messaging service, using the Subject Access Request tool. Staff also had access to “two staff WhatsApp group chats established by senior management in Labour HQ for work purposes – “SMT Group” and “LP Forward Planning Group”, both established on 28 September 2016.” The contents of these WhatsApp chats were made available to the Labour Party by one of the groups’ members.
Members of “SMT Group”…
Iain McNicol (General Secretary)
Tracey Allen (Manager, GSO)
Julie Lawrence (Director, GSO)
Emilie Oldknow (Executive Director – Governance, Membership and Party Services)
Patrick Heneghan (Executive Director – Elections, Campaigns and Organisation)
Simon Mills (Executive Director – Finance).
Members of “LP Forward Planning Group”…
Iain McNicol (General Secretary)
Tracey Allen (Manager, GSO)
Julie Lawrence (Director, GSO)
Emilie Oldknow (Executive Director – Governance, Membership and Party Services)
Patrick Heneghan (Executive Director – Elections, Campaigns and Organisation)
Simon Mills (Executive Director – Finance).
John Stolliday (Director, Governance and Legal)
Mike Creighton (Director of Audit, Risk and Property)
Claire-Frances Fuller (Head of Internal Governance)
Simon Jackson (Director of Policy, Research and Messaging, Briefing and Rebuttal)
Fiona Stanton (Regional Director, Labour North)
Neil Fleming (Acting Head of Press and Broadcasting)
Carol Linforth (Director of Conference and Events)
Sarah Mulholland (PLP Secretary)
Holly Snyman (Director – Human Resources)
Greg Cook (Head of Political Strategy)
Anna Hutchinson (Regional Director, Labour North West)
Tom Geldard (Director of Digital).
Seumas Milne also exported and forwarded staff the chat contents of another WhatsApp group, established by McNicol and Oldknow as a work tool to aid communication on 26 January 2017 (final message was sent on 7 April 2018). This group included 4 individuals…
Iain McNicol
Emilie Oldknow
Karie Murphy (Chief of Staff, LOTO)
Seumas Milne (Executive Director – Strategy and Communication)
The report makes a bold statement quite early on…
“It became apparent over the course of this investigation that the factional role played by GLU and other senior Labour HQ staff was not incidental to understanding GLU’s work in this period – it was fundamental.”
It then adds that this factionalism played a prominent role in the “Validation” process during the 2016 leadership election, when thousands of supporters of Jeremy Corbyn were suspended or excluded from the Party. It references two case studies that showed such factional use of disciplinary processes continued well into spring 2018 and showed how the GLU and Labour HQ were openly hostile towards the Leader of the Opposition’s office (LOTO), preventing them from exercising any effective oversight of the work the GLU or Labour HQ were doing. It further adds that, between 2015 to early 2018, the GLU and Labour HQ was so preoccupied with the factionalised membership “Validation” process that disciplinary procedures were neglected. To be clear, the report states that they were “dysfunctional, slow and flexible to the factional requirements of staff.” They made “highly inconsistent, and often poor, decisions on anti-Semitism complaints” and “failed to act on the vast majority of antisemitism complaints submitted in this period” As another example of factionalism the report points out that “consultation with LOTO on a range of cases was normal conduct under Ed Miliband, but largely stopped when Jeremy Corbyn became leader” and whenever LOTO staff chased action on antisemitism from GLU and Labour HQ, they were frequently met with hostile or obstructive response.
The report states that, having considered the evidence, it became clear that “Much of the Labour Party machinery from 2015-18 was openly opposed to Jeremy Corbyn, and worked to directly undermine the elected leadership of the party.” It continues.. “The priority of staff in this period appears to have been furthering the aims of a narrow faction aligned to Labour’s right rather than fulfilling the organisation’s objectives, from winning elections to building a functioning complaints and disciplinary process.”
Staff refused to obey secret directives from the leader’s office. Instead they chose to pursue their own political agenda, working to remove anyone who supported Jeremy Corbyn and actively “hindering the leader’s campaign in the 2017 General Election”. One comment from a senior staff member summed up the general attitude “death by fire is too kind for LOTO”. As well as Jeremy Corbyn and his staff, some officials, even senior GLU staff, were also hostile toward other Labour MPs including Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband, Sadiq Khan, Emily Thornberry, Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler and even described “most of the PLP” as “Trots” and referred to them as “totally useless” because they’d not launched a coup against Corbyn immediately after he’d been elected leader in 2015. One staff member would later comment, “everyone here considers anyone left of [Gordon] Brown to be a trot.”
Abusive and inappropriate language was normal when referring to Corbyn, other MPs, Labour members and even other staff. Staff discussed “hanging and burning” Jeremy Corbyn. They referred to him as a “lying little toerag” and remarked that any Labour MP who nominated Corbyn for the ballot “deserves to be taken out and shot”. Another commented how one particular staff member who had whooped during Corbyn’s speech “should be shot”, while senior staff members hoped a certain party member on the left of the party “dies in a fire”. The report actually states that Senior Labour staff reserved language that was even more abusive and inappropriate than this when referring to many of the Labour members they were suspending, simply for wanting to support Jeremy Corbyn in 2016.
As it became apparent that Corbyn was going to win the 2015 leadership election as discussion quickly ensued around how they could actually cancel the election. When that failed they immediately switched to planning a coup. One staff member remarked “we need a POLL – that says we’re like 20 points behind” and another suggested spinning it so that Corbyn took the blame for the Remain campaign losing the 2016 referendum. Others hoped for a poor performance in the May 2016 local elections so they could blame Corbyn and push for yet another coup.
Staff actually discussed “coming into the office & doing nothing for a few months” and even joked about “hardly working” during the 2017 general election. They even created a chat group so they could pretend to work and look busy but were really only chatting to each other. During the election, senior staff refused to share even the most basic information with the leader’s office. In fact, they couldn’t even get contact details for the candidates. Labour HQ even set up “a secret key seats team” in the London office to exclusively support right wing MPs and then committed most of their time and resources to that campaign instead of the official general election campaign being run by the leadership’s office, whose aim was to win the election and get Labour into government.
One senior staff member stated that if it was a choice between Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May they’d vote for Theresa May. Others remarked that they hoped Labour suffered an embarrassing defeat, while senior staff wished for bad polling results so they could watch “Andrew Neil rip [Jeremy Corbyn] to pieces” but then dismayed as Corbyn started to pull massive rallies and the polls started to narrow significantly, even remarking how it made them “feel ill”. Then, when it became apparent that the Labour election campaign had proven to be extremely successful and the exit polls were predicting a hung parliament, senior officials, including Iain McNicol and Emilie Oldknow, discussed how to hide their disappointment, suggesting “everyone needs to smile” and “be upbeat. And not show it”. However, Oldknow couldn’t stomach the fact that some MPs were congratulated Corbyn after the election (including Yvette Cooper) and described them as “grovelling and embarrassing”.
Within weeks of the general election being called and as early as January 2017, Iain McNicol, Emilie Oldknow and other senior staff were planning for another Labour leadership election. They were hoping that Labour would lose the Copeland and Stoke-on-trent by-elections and trigger another contest. Iain McNicol discussed it with Tom Watson and told him “to prepare for being interim leader”. The Director of GLU, John Stolliday, drew up the plans and attempted to change the rules in order to replace the ‘one member one vote system’ with an ‘Electoral College system’ in order to guarantee there would never have another left wing candidate. Stolliday, who refers to himself as a political fixer, talked about overhauling selections of parliamentary candidates and overturning CLP AGM results in order to help the right of the Party, while Emilie Oldknow and other GLU staff discussed keeping Angela Eagle’s CLP suspended, at Eagle’s request, to give her team more time to organise against left-wing members before their AGM. GLU Staff also discussed organising NEC Youth Representative Elections on a different election cycle to other NEC elections, to ensure a left-wing candidate would not win and noted that this was signed off by GLU’s Director. One GLU staff commented that Emilie Oldknow expecting them to “fabricate a case” against people “she doesn’t like/her friends don’t like”. Some referred to their work as “hunting out 1000s of trots” or going on a “Trot hunt”. Even ‘liking’ the Greens on a Facebook page was enough to make you a target. Head of Disputes, Katherine Buckingham, even admitted that the “real work is piling up” while she and other GLU staff were engaged in inappropriate factional work.
Factional loyalty also meant that people were being recruited to the GLU team, or appointed to senior roles, who simply didn’t have the appropriate qualification which, of course, also impacted the GLU’s ability to build a functioning disciplinary process for years. Factional work even took priority over the work the staff were being paid to do.
The report makes it clear that the leader’s office had absolutely no authority or influence over the GLU or the party machinery.
The next section of the report starts by breaking down the numerous factions within the Labour Party, both on the right and on the left. It then explains that between 2015-2019 the “Trotskyist” organisations within the party were extremely small and only ever had a few hundred members. Some of the more extreme members were even expelled from the party in 2016. These former members then attempted to join local Momentum groups but this was blocked in 2017 when Momentum changed their constitution in order to exclude people who were not members of the Labour Party.
It then goes on to outline how Jeremy Corbyn’s outstanding success at winning the majority of votes (59.5%) in the 2015 leadership election and also the significant surge in membership around the time of the leadership competition and in the subsequent months was seem as a significant threat to the “Blairite politics of Progress”. The fact that the Progress candidate, Liz Kendall, only managed to scrape 4.5% proved quite a shock and “senior figures in Labour HQ did not view these developments positively.”
The report then explains how, despite the fact that Labour party “staff are supposed to operate neutrally with fairness towards all members and affiliates”, they were, in fact, using party resources (paid for by party members) “to further the interests of one faction and in some cases.. to undermine the party’s objectives”.
Staff members engaging in right wing factional behaviour either already worked in the GLU or were appointed to the GLU. They would even hold the “Senior Director and Executive Director positions responsible for overseeing GLU’s work and managing GLU staff” and also hold positions in the General Secretary’s Office.” It explains that even the General Secretary was engaging in factional behaviour at times. Senior staff even opposed the Corbyn and Burnham campaigns in the 2015 leadership elections. Jo Green, Labour’s Head of Broadcasting at the time, remarked to the Acting Director of Policy and Political Research, Simon Jackson, that “Anyone who nominates Corbyn ‘to widen the debate’ deserves to be taken out and shot” and referred to him as “that fucking trot”. Jackson responded in agreement.. “quite. if the left can’t get on the ballot it shows they’re moribund… putting them on there only validates the views”.
15th June 2015
Here’s an exchange between John Stolliday (who was then a Senior Media Monitoring Officer at the time) and Jo Green. Stolliday would later refer to Burnham’s campaign as “team #failure”
John Stolliday: I bet Ed would vote for Corbyn
Jo Green: ed wants andy to win i am told…
John Stolliday: fucking hell
20 July 2015
Here’s an exchange between Greg Cook (Head of Political Strategy) and Jo Green…
Greg Cook: “such a Trot now” (Cook was referring to a Labour MP)
Jo Green: “yep. like most of the PLP it seems”
Here’s a remark from Jo Green to Simon Jackson about Andy Burnham…
Jo Green: “just panders to what members want. he’ll be a total disaster… the PLP is a joke now .. full of people unable and unwilling to be sensible”
3 August 2015
Here’s a comment from, Greg Cook to Jo Green about Kate Hoey..
Greg Cook: (Kate Hoey) “is better than Corbyn, Abbott, Burnham, Nandy, Lewis and about 150 others”
12th August 2015
Comment from Jo Green, just a month before Corbyn was elected leader..
Jo Green: “physically sick about JC”
13 August 2015
Here’s an exchange between Jo Greening, Head of International Affairs and Acting Director of Policy and Political Research Simon Jackson discussing Ed Miliband..
Jo Greening: “he is pathetic”
Simon Jackson: “probably”
Jo Greening: “I mean wtf”
Simon Jackson: “quite a legacy to leave the party with”…the party “could hang in there trying to stay sensible and wait for the storm to pass”, or “it could plunge in to trot hell”, with “NEC pushing Trotism, staff appointments of Trots” and Corbyn shadow cabinet and staff would be “loads of mad trots”
As it became clear that Corbyn might win the leadership election, Jo Green and Stolliday, who was moving into the GLU soon, discussed delaying or cancelling the election, by claiming insufficient resources to check new members, or by all the other candidates pulling out..
John Stolliday: “Where do you think Iain & Mike are on delay?”
Jo Green: “finely balanced. in the end i think they have to decide on the basis of whether we have resource to do the checks rather than a political decision also the leadership teams would need to sign off delay I am now of the view that the three other candidates could just drop out next week and the whole thing would have to be halted”
John Stolliday: “which presumably would risk a huge argument. That would be ace”
Jo Green: “it would!”
John Stolliday: “Great idea”
Jo Green: “unite could disaffiliate, form a new party”
John Stolliday: “I’ve been assuming that will be the case anyway within a few years, whoever wins frankly it would be brilliant for Labour. Financially tough but absolutely great for the party”
Jo Green: “i think it will happen yeah”
John Stolliday: “Byron must be fucking loving this”
Jo Green: “well as i understand it he wanted andy to win, not sure even his politics are corbyn levels of madness but then again he’ll be wondering what he can get out of it, hateful twat”
John Stolliday: “the mad ones on the NEC all love him – Jennie Formby & Christine Shawcroft”
14th September 2015
Stolliday, who was about to be appointed to a key role in GLU and Labour press officer Anna Wright discuss a planned visit from the newly elected leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, the following day…
John Stolliday: “We were all amazed that somebody has bought dozens of bottles of prosecco, mad”
Anna Wright: “It is ludicrious. I hope the fucking thing is short. Cannot be arsed with small talk”
John Stolliday: “I’m not drinking it, I’m not clapping, I’m going to stay at my desk or leave the office”
Anna Wright: “We need to go up and show face for Team Watson or we’ll end up on a list… Look at that fucker looking statespersonlike, Looking after our secrurity”
15 September 2015
After Corbyn’s visit, Dan Hogan, then a Policy Communications Officer but who would later become an Investigations Officer in GLU (late 2016) and Amy Fowler from Fundraising, discussed Corbyn’s visit with GLU staff member Katherine Buckingham adding her comments later..
Amy Fowler: “How did you think it went when he was in earlier? Stevie P whooped and is now dead to Carol”
Dan Hogan: “people were polite. Stevie P should be shot. Jez’s speech was a total crock of shit. I clapped but i probably didn’t do a very good job of masking what i thought.”
Amy Fowler: “I clapped but I didn’t smile and it takes a conscious effort for me not to smile in those situations”
Dan Hogan: “i couldn’t look at him. my eyes rolled a lot. i probably shook my head”
Amy Fowler: “I feel like he should have maybe addressed the massive elephant in the room that we all kind of hate him But I’m not sure how he could have done that without making me hate this more”
Katherine Buckingham: “I had some drinks in the office until Jeremy came in. and then all I wanted to do was go home”
Senior staff would frequently use the word “Trot” to describe people they didn’t like. In November 2015, Danny Adilypour (Campaigns Officer – Campaign Technology ) referred to Labour MP Rachel Maskell as a “Trot”. Another example was when on the 25 May 2017, Catherine Bramwell, South East Regional Communications Officer, described a Labour parliamentary candidate in Brighton as “the trot candidate”.
There was a lot of bitterness toward MP’s who nominated Corbyn to be added to the ballot and they continued to be targeted long after the election. For example, on 28 April 2016, a week before the 2016 London Mayoral election, Jo Greening (Head of International Liaison) commented that she might consider voting for Sadiq Khan after he’d called for Ken Livingstone to be suspended and then added “probably not though”.
Director of Policy and Research Simon Jackson, speculated over a snap general election with colleagues saying he refused to vote Labour and that they should act to protect candidates favoured by the right…
“Ultimately though, who votes for JC? If it’s a choice btwn him & TMay how do WE vote for him?? I mean we’re not fucking mad. Any Labour member who advocates opposing a Labour candidate, or supporting a rival, can be auto-excluded from the party.”
Days later a Labour member was auto-excluded for saying Sadiq Khan would not be getting their first preference vote for Mayor – no small irony considering the fact that neither Greening nor Jackson were prepared to support the Labour Party…
6 October 2015
Simon Jackson and a number of senior staff remarked about the Labour shadow cabinet, which was a broad “unity” line up with only four Corbyn supporting MPs.
Senior staff commented negatively on Dawn Butler MP’s appointment to the Shadow Cabinet, apparently suggesting that her accusations of racism within the Labour Party were untrue:
Simon Jackson: (Iain Duncan-Smith) is “shit” but “the mad thing is he’s better than most of our shadow cabinet”
Emilie Oldknow: “DAWN BUTLER”
Neil Fleming: “Yep. Plp women will go spare.”
Emilie Oldknow: “Good grief”
Frances Fuller-Claire: “Did she not accuse the LP and its staff of being racist this week? Nice.”
Emilie Oldknow: Harriet “white privilege” Harman
26 January 2017
A senior staff member engaged in a racist trope calling Diane Abbott an “angry woman”, while his colleague called her “repulsive”:
Neil Fleming: “Watching QT without the sound on. Abbot is a very angry woman.”
Greg Cook: “Abbott is truly repulsive”
8 February 2017
Sarah Mulholland as PLP Secretary was the main liaison between MPs and the Labour Party. In February 2017 she had a shocking exchange with members of staff in her WhatsApp group where they talk about someone finding Abbot crying in the toilets and telling Michael Crick, a Channel 4 reporter at the time, where she was:
Sarah Mulholland: (Diane Abbott) “literally makes me sick”
Patrick Heneghan: “Abbott found crying in the loos”
Julie Lawrence: 😢
Tracey Allen: “Abbott memorial cupboard works well”
Patrick Heneghan: “Diane in Leon on vic street”
Fiona Stanton: “Shall we tell michael crick”
Patrick Heneghan: “Already have 😢”
The next section the report covers opposition to the party campaigns and manifestos, starting with the 2015 manifesto of Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham who were also considered to be too far left and then goes on to cover what staff thought of the wider Labour membership.
15 September 2015
Dan Hogan commenting on the Labour campaign for the EU referendum
Dan Hogan: “makes a change from trident, rail renationalisation and landlord-bashing”
Dan Hogan: “brace yourself. McDonnell just called for corporation tax to go up”
Amy Fowler: “you’re kidding me..I can’t quite believe it”
27 April 2016
Collete Collins-Walsh, Education Policy Officer, and James McBride discuss a Conservative Party critique of left-wing economics
Colette Collins-Walsh: “Finally, higher tax rates do not necessarily yield more revenues because they reduce incentives to work. What Corbyn fails to understand is that the UK is actually becoming more equal.”
James McBride: “indeed, very true”
29 July 2016
Simon Jackson and Head of Policy Development Anouska Gregorek discuss their opposition to the policy platform of Owen Smith, the rival to Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 leadership election:
Anouska Gregorek: “I’m hoping its a genius plan to pretend these are his policies and then when enough people have voted for him he just quietly sheds policies as they poll badly”
Simon Jackson: “well yes, the only thing that matters is winning BUT”
Anouska Gregorek: “I am holding on to this”
Simon Jackson: “the thing about Owen is, he thinks he should be PM, he really does, he doesn’t realise he’s shit, he’d be another Ed”
14 March 2017
Catherine Bramwell, Communications Officer for South East Region commenting on rail nationalisation, which she believes is unpopular..
Catherine Bramwell: “i hate the trots, i hate the trots, i hate them x a million… all it looks like is trots doing what trots do”
9 April 2017
General Secretary Iain McNicol and Tracey Allen (Manager, GSO) responding to the announcement of a policy of free school meals..
Iain McNicol: “I believe in this policy. Always have but for very different reasons. If you go to a private school. You get school meals. All the teacher’s have to sit with the pupils and they are taught how to eat. Etc etc.”
Tracey Allen: “We should get them all to do their BMI before they go around criticizing ‘poor people’!! I agree with policy but ‘poor kids’ are just as likely to be skinny from bad nutrition and don’t grow.”
Iain McNicol: “Next we will be saying most poor people are criminals. And the best way to reduce future offending is by forced castration.”
Iain McNicol: “Simon M please don’t respond to that policy”
20 May 2017
Senior staff criticise the Leader’s office opposition to the Tories “dementia tax.”
Tracey Allen: “I know I am not a strategist or policy person but am I totally missing something here? Why aren’t the Trots in favour of rich people paying more towards social care and not getting winter fuel allowance?
Patrick Heneghan: “They normally are”
24 May 2017
James McBride, a staff member in Labour’s Policy Unit leading on economy and business policy, commenting after the Westminster Bridge attack. McBride had shared a clip of right-wing Islamophobic commentator Douglas Murray, speaking on BBC Daily Politics, saying that all political parties were refusing to confront the reality that terrorism “comes from the religion” of Islam.
James McBride: “find it difficult to disagree with this”:
James McBride: “we can’t ignore the fact that while one might be more typically ‘terrorist’ behaviour they still derive from the same ideology and western liberal ideology is reluctant to take it on and expose its roots. Which inevitably involve hard questions- even for so-called moderate islam
The Muslim Council of Britain wrote to the BBC about platforming Murray, “a commentator known for his anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic views” and believes that the UK needs “less Islam” and that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”. The council points out that “even the Conservative front bench broke off relations with him many years ago”
The report then goes on to explain how senior staff viewed Labour members and activists as “Trots” and appeared to take a factional approach to the disciplinary process, which nurtured a lot of distrust from the membership. It also shows how senior staff worked to block left wing candidates from being considered for senior roles.
3 November 2014
John Stolliday, later Director of GLU and Anna Wright discussed trying to stop “trots” from being selected as Labour’s candidate for a parliamentary seat in Scotland.
John Stolliday: “We’re in special selections period now, but they’re going to call a special org sub to pretend we’re doing this in a more open way … there is literally no candidate & while they need someone good to come forward they’re desperate to stop the Scotland trots from using it to increase power base… it’s up for grabs so if you have any friends who would be good get them to go for it”
Anna Wright: “And in Edinburgh, No one in the frame?”
Anna Wright: “Okay, I might subtly suggest to one person in particular”
John Stolliday: “Literally no one – they’re trying to stop some of Johann’s people by the sound of it & want someone good who can keep the seat for ages. Plus they’re all worried about Gordon’s seat – they want to do an AWS there but GB has apparently kicked off & told them they can’t – he must have someone in mind”
Anna Wright: “Aye it’ll be some knobber like Alex Rowley, who I note has done some trot nominating”
18 May 2015
Cameron Scott, Scottish Labour’s Head of Campaigns and Communications and later Regional Director for Eastern Region, suggested “some raging trot” from “the unions” would probably become deputy leader in Scotland.
22 July 2015
Dan Hogan expressing his opinion about members who joined the party after the 2015 election defeat.
Dan Hogan: “what sort of person only becomes actively involved in politics after a general election? people who love losing!”
15 September 2015
Dan Hogan: “is Labour in the South East just full of trots?”…… “moderates on the [National Policy Forum] got pretty much wiped out in SE / elsewhere, that didn’t happen”.
In June 2016 Dan Hogan was looking for people who “use your Britain”, “and who aren’t mad trots”. Staff also discussed preventing “Trots” winning places on the NPF or on Regional Boards, as well as the Scottish and Welsh Executives. On 29 July 2015, staff said there would be “rampaging trots” at Labour annual conference, and “stewards [will] need pepper spray” or “body armour”.
18 August 2015
Conversation between Danny Adilypour, Campaigns Manager in the Contact Creator, Targeting & Analysis Team and Jim Harvey in which it’s suggested that Chuka Umuna should have run and they criticise non-Corbyn candidates’ campaigns as “crap” and “dreadful”.
Jim Harvey: “we’re totally fucked. the party is about to be taken over by complete nut-jobs”
Danny Adilypour: “yeah, all the people commenting on twitter, facebook and elsewhere are completely fucking mental. We’re so fucking screwed”
In March 2017, upset with the fact that over 250,000 people had voted for Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, the former GLU’s Director of Risk and Property, Mike Creighton, tweets that the ‘anti-Semitism issue’ in Labour was a “Direct consequence of [Ed Miliband’s] decision to allow the Labour Leader to be selected by Tories and Trots,”
8 October 2015
Director of Policy and Research Simon Jackson and Head of Planning Jo Green discuss the need for the PLP to “get rid of [Corbyn] in the next couple of months or the trots will embed themselves”:
Jo Green: “this is an entryist thing, it’s been set up by lansman and backed by corbyn to sign people up to CLP meetings, shameless”
Simon Jackson: “yep”
Jo Green: “using all the membership records they got during the leadership campaign team fucking trots”
Simon Jackson: “Arseholes, no doubt we’ll stand by and let it happen”
Jo Green: “plp won’t be pleased but they’re totally useless, they should be creating a massive fuss about this”
Simon Jackson: “I’m fairly settled now on the view that they have to get rid of him in the next couple of months or the trots will embed themselves. That means someone sacrificing themselves”
Jo Green: “it has to be done by next summer at the latest. can’t see them doing it before May… yep, but they’re useless”
Simon Jackson: “they’ll have changed the rules to get him back on the ballot paper by then”
Jo Green: “Yep”
29 July 2016
Concerned that Corbyn, was expected to be returned as leader with an increased majority, Simon Jackson remarks “has to go, even if it must be forced”
3 May 2017
The Manager of the General Secretary’s Office, Tracey Allen, remarks on the extent of hate towards party members amongst her colleagues “Josh loves Tory bashing second only to Trot bashing”
10 April 2017
Laura Repton, Regional Administrator and Lee Gingell refer to a colleague as “a massive trot” because she and her mother had applied for tickets to hear Corbyn speaking.
Laura Repton: “omg, its solved, maria is a massive trot”
Lee Gingell: “really?! how do you know? what did you find out?.. Fuck sakes man get them out of my face”
Laura Repton: “she has applied for a ticket with her mum, we would love to hear JC speak, please put us down for the ballot”
Lee Gingell: “wtf, she hears members say all night that they don’t like JC how can she still support”
Laura Repton: “baffling”
Abusive or inappropriate language was common place amongst Executive Directors, Directors, staff in GLU and staff in the General Secretary’s Office. Ironically, GLU staff would openly use language that they would accuse members of using in disciplinary cases.
15 September 2015
Despite the fact that Corbyn’s 2015 shadow cabinet was mostly women (for the first time in parliamentary history) people still found excuses to criticise the fact that the top four posts were still held by men. Greg Cook sent Jo Greening a spoof video of Jeremy Corbyn as Adolf Hitler being overtly sexist and homophobic when someone in the video comments “Dan Jarvis will save us”. A number of staff, including Dan Hogan, watched and shared the video while using party resources and during office hours. Jo Greenings response.. “Love this”
15 June 2015
Head of Press and Broadcasting Jo Green talking to Acting Director of Policy and Political Research Simon Jackson..
Jo Green: “anyone who nominates corbyn ‘to widen the debate’ deserves to be taken out and shot”.
Simon Jackson: “quite.”
15 September 2015
Dan Hogan remarks how staff who “whooped” at Corbyn’s speech “should be shot”
13 August 2015
Conversation between Ali Moussavi, Economic Advisor in the Leader’s Office and Sarah Brown (Press Officer) discussing taking out Corbyn…
Ali Moussavi: “Jeremy Corbyn could end up being like Savonarola. A fanatic priest who deposed the Medicis in a wave of theocratic populism who was then shortly after deposed himself for making Florence a boring place. Jeremy might last even fewer days than Savonarola did. Man Jez is savonarola in so many ways! But we need to finish him”
Sarah Brown: “hanging and burning does seem like overkill. I am going to go read about Savonarola”
Ali Moussavi: “we can figuratively do that but not literally.
Sarah Brown: “you don’t get my joke”
Ali Moussavi: “I didn’t think it was a joke”
17 September 2015
Days after Corbyn was elected leader of the party, John Stolliday (who was then moving into a key role in GLU) remarked to Anna Wright how she hadn’t used the word “cunt more in the last 48hrs than you have in your life up until that point” . She responds.. “yesterday I called the Leader of the Labour Party a sexist cunt”. She then adds how that might have been “uncomradely”, to which Stolliday responds..
John Stolliday: “It’s not your job to be comradely to the leader, it’s your job to protect and present the ongoing functions of the Labour Party, which will exist long after any incumbant leader”
Anna Wright: “Yeah but I have slagged him too much”
John Stolliday: “That;s what Japes is for”
Anna Wright: “Yes. I think calling him a sexist fucking cunt was too much though”
Staff and even senior staff would freely use mental health slurs against members of the Leaders Office and Corbyn supporters in general. Stolliday referred to the Executive Director of Communications, Seumas Milne, as a “total mentalist” and “nutter” and had previously told him to “cock off”. Simon Jackson, Head of Policy, would refer to Corbyn supporters as “nutters” who had “Invaded” the Party and Anouska Gregorek, Head of Policy Development, joked about them getting “F U JC” – “Fuck you Jeremy Corbyn” – tattoed on their foreheads.
10 April 2017
Conversation between Simon Mills (Executive Director – Finance) and Tracey Allen (Manager of Gen Sec Iain McNicol’s office).
Simon Mills: “Dropped 634 paying members last week. 392 joined. Who are these people…?”
Tracey Allen: “Mentalists?”
9 May 2017
Conversation between GLU’s Head of Disputes Sam Matthews and Teddy Ryan, Regional Organiser..
Sam Matthews: “Fuck ’em. Someone’s got to stand up to these progressive alliance wankers”
Teddy Ryan: “tell me about it… clive lewis is the biggest cunt out of the lot”
Sam Matthews: “it’s like outlook-whack-a-mole… yes. yes he is”
9 March 2017
Aa WhatsApp chat demeaning and mocking the appearance of female Political Advisors…
Sarah Mulholland: “Simon apparently the PADs have stopped wearing bras.”
Sarah Mulholland: “Hi Tom G! Sorry, this isn’t meant to be for chat about undies. But there are nipples out at the PADs meeting and not a single tie.”
Tracey Allen: “Even the female ones!! Very retrograde demonstration technique. Will they be burning them next ? 😢”
Julie Lawrence: “Thank god this doesn’t happen in Southside”
Sarah Mulholland: “Sarah Vine is wearing a see through, flesh coloured, skin tight top and no bra. No wonder Trickett speaks so highly of her.”
Sarah Mulholland: “*Pine not Vine”
21 May 2017
Emilie Oldknow makes sexist and derogatory comments about Laura Murray, a young female member of staff working for the Leader’s office, after the Express Newspaper ran a story about
her inheriting a share in her mother’s home (which is by no means a unique event but presumably they chose to single out Murray as she worked for Corbyn).
Tracey Allen: http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/807191/Corbyn-Labour-aide-children-save-money-inheritance-tax
Emilie Oldknow: “You’d think with all that money she could afford to buy a jacket and a bra”
8 March 2017
Ian McNicol, Simon Mills, Emilie Oldknow, Julie Lawrence and Tracey Allen talk about Karie Murphy, Chief of staff at the leader’s office…
Iain McNicol: “KM wants any savings from KROW to fund community organising. Does she not realise we haven’t even funded the campaigns.”
Simon Mills: “What a fuckwit. We don’t have the money to pay Krow so cutting it does not create cash for Cos”
Emilie Oldknow: “I got told today that when Karie found out about Gorton, she was throwing things round the office…”
Julie Lawrence: “Ha! Crazy woman.”
Emilie Oldknow: “I laughed out loud”
Julie Lawrence: “Keep poking the bear 😢”
Tracey Allen: “Definitely crazy snake head lady rather than plucky Scottish heroine”
Emilie Oldknow: <Media omitted>
Patrick Heneghan: “Bitch face cow”
Julie Lawrence: “That would make a good dartboard”
Tracey Allen: “Medusa Monster”
22 November 2016
Emilie Oldknow and friends making derogatory and abusive comments about staff at the leaders office, namely the Chief of Staff, Karie Murphy and the Political Secretary, Katy Clark…
Emilie Oldknow: “Fuck off pube head”
Emilie Oldknow: “I’m too busy slagging you off”
Mike Creighton: “Can I just point out from my sick-bed there is too much disparaging talk about old folk on this timeline. Salt of the earth dontcherknow.”
Tracey Allen: “Who is pube head?”
Emilie Oldknow: “To talk to you about Jon Trickett’s diary”
Emilie Oldknow: “Katy”
Emilie Oldknow: “Katy had the exact same clothes on yesterday”
Emilie Oldknow: “Smelly cow”
Tracey Allen: “Didn’t she do that at conference too?”
Emilie Oldknow: “Yes. Same clothes. Four days”
Patrick Heneghan: “Probably slept in them”
Patrick Heneghan: “Disgusting”
Emilie Oldknow: “Karie is actually fat too”
Emilie Oldknow: “There’s a good old role in that photo”
Emilie Oldknow: “Roll”
27 February 2017
The language used in many of the above comments and insults coming from GLU staff and management are far more serious than many of the comments that Labour members were suspended for in the 2016 leadership election but senior staff, including Mike Creighton, took no action and even indulged in the shocking abuse.
Patrick Heneghan: “Take a look at @maxshanly’s Tweet..” (since taken down)
Patrick Heneghan: “Outrageous”
Emilie Oldknow: “That’s funny”
Emilie Oldknow: “He’s got mental health issues”
Patrick Heneghan: “Still outrageous”
Sarah Mulholland: “And ps. I hope Max Shanly dies in a fire.”
Julie Lawrence: 😢
Mike Creighton: “That’s a very bad wish Sarah. But if he does I wouldn’t piss on him to put him out.”
Sarah Mulholland: “Wish there was a petrol can emoji”
Patrick Heneghan: “Take a look at @maxshanly’s Tweet..” (since taken down)
Patrick Heneghan: “What a dick”
Tracey Allen: “Couldn’t find suitable emoji for him!”
The next section covers how staff actively worked to undermine Corbyn and keep the left from gaining any influence or control. It concludes with a sequence where senior staff discuss helping Tom Watson to leak confidential party documents.
The experience of staff at the leader’s office was that certain people at Labour HQ, the GLU and GSO were engaging in factional behaviour. They were being obstructive and had deliberately adopted a “go slow” attitude towards work. They would also frequently issue negative briefings about the Labour Party to the press and were ultimately engaged in a campaign to remove Corbyn as Labour leader and to ensure that the Labour Party did not succeed in elections while Corbyn was leader.
11 September 2015
John Stolliday discussed his moving into GLU with Tom Hamilton, Head of Briefing and Rebuttal…
John Stolliday: “Bit of a gear change but should be fun”
Tom Hamilton: “you’ll be JC’s enforcer”
John Stolliday: “er no – i’ll be on the barricades for the resistance”
12 August 2015
Sarah Brown & Jo Green talking about how they can avoid doing any work.
Jo Green: “i feel physically sick about JC.. also divided on what to do -on the one hand don’t want to just walk away, but on the other, how can i do my job?”
Sarah Brown: “yes, i feel the same”
Jo Green: “i think all of us must feel the same really. Paddy will just go, i know that.”
Sarah Brown: “but i also think, a) he won’t be here long, and if nobody good is left when that happens we will be in deep trouble b) if we stay, we might be able to have some positive influence.. yes Paddy will go but i pointed out to him that it might be a short period of time JC is here for so he might just do a work to rule type thing or take extended holiday”
18 August 2015
Danny Adilypour and Jim Harvey referring to the leadership as “complete nut-jobs” and talking about how they need to fight back..
Danny Adilypour: “We’re so fucking screwed”
Jim Harvey: “yes, i’m now leaning towards irrevocably fucked rather than just utterly fucked”
Danny Adilypour: “yup”
Jim Harvey: “SDP?”
Danny Adilypour: “Ha, nah we all have to stay and fight. It’s gonna be brutal and take forever, but it’s the only option”
14 September 2015
Stolliday and Press Officer Anna Wright speculate over how Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones might react if the leader’s office announced the Shadow Welsh Secretary without talking to him first..
Anna Wright: “if they annc Shad Welsh Secy before they speak, Carwyn is going to go on broadcast and slag JC”
John Stolliday: “good”
Anna Wright: “Yeah I hope it happens”
22 September 2015
Stolliday and Jo Green discussed the result of the Leadership election and Stolliday advises Green to try to get a redundancy payout without lifting a finger, rather than resign…
Jo Green: “this organisation is a fucking dying brand. We’re fucked”
John Stolliday: “We’ve already been fucked for the last 7 years. Not sure how much more I can take”
Jo Green: “yes indeed. i am praying for redundo next year. i think it’s likely. i’m not sure i can last until May though and my guess is they will happen next summer. we’ll see, hard to walk away from 11 years service. it’s basically a year salary.”
John Stolliday: “You’ll be entitled to a decent chunk. Worth staying for it even if it means coming into the office & doing nothing for a few months”
Jo Green: “i think that is quite likely.”
23 September 2015,
Days after Corbyn is elected leader, Stolliday and Kieren Walters (Broadcasting Manager / Head of Press & Broadcasting) talk about how they think Jeremy’s days are numbered..
Kieren Walters: “how long left do you reckon?”
John Stolliday: “for whom?”
Kieren Walters: “JC”
John Stolliday: “I think May elections will be the start of his downfall”
Kieren Walters: “yes, think so”
John Stolliday: “Hopefully new leader in place at conference 2016”
Kieren Walters: “or immediately after Christmas that is often when things kick off”
John Stolliday: “I reckon there will be some sort of plot post Xmas, but he will have enough support to limp on until we get wiped out in Wales & Scotland & local elections”
Kieren Walters: “good analysis I think”
John Stolliday: “We’ll see. My fear is the PLP are too bloody deferential and don’t take action”
15 September 2015
Jo Green and Sarah Waite discuss Corbyn’s election
Jo Green: “the more madness the quicker it ends”
Sarah Waite: “god what if it doesn’t, what if all this talk of members joining just goes on and everyone is like ok, well we must be doing ok. We need a POLL that says we’re like 20 points behind”
Jo Green: “yes but he will have a little honeymoon. Won’t last long”
15 September 2015
Dan Hogan encouraging Amy Fowler to join the “Labour First” mailing list..
Dan Hogan: “what’s your non-party email address?”
Amy Fowler: [provides her gmail address]
Dan Hogan: “are you on the Labour First mailing list?”
Amy Fowler: “no, but I should be”
Dan Hogan: [sends her a link to the “Labour First” sign-up page]
Amy Fowler: “Thanks”
Amy Fowler: “are you going to be a key contact in your clp?”
Dan Hogan: “yeah. i’ve also said i’ll help set up a group in Wandsworth once I’m out of OBG102”
Dan Hogan: “if you email him, drop my name in 🙂 ” – assumed reference to “Labour First” national organiser Luke Akehurst
Amy Fowler: “I will email him. Though I don’t know how much help I’ll ever be from my clp.”
In October 2015, Jo Green remarking on leaks to the press… “this place is like a sieve”. In January 2018, Disputes Officer Louise Withers-Green remarks that Hogan is “a leaky cauldron”.
8 October 2015
Simon Jackson and Jo Green discuss getting “rid” of Corbyn…
Simon Jackson: “i’m fairly settled now on the view that they have to get rid of him in the next couple of months or the trots will embed themselves. That means someone sacrificing themselves”
Jo Green: “it has to be done by next summer at the latest.”
Following the extremely successful December 2015 Oldham by-election, seen as Corbyn’s first “electoral test”, Katy Dillon and Lisa Forsyth couldn’t supress their disappointment…
Katy Dillon: “the result on thursday was bittersweet, could not believe it”
Lisa Forsyth: “It’s in spite of him tho. Hopfullly May will be the boot…”
Katy Dillon: “course it is but all his little disciples dont know that”
Lisa Forsyth: “Cos they are bats*t crazy.. Total nutters”
April 2016, following a meeting with Luke Akehurst, Francis Grove-White (Labour International Policy Officer) tells Jo Greening that it was “very encouraging to hear how organised they are regarding conference”
29 April 2016
Ben Murphy and Hollie Ridley discuss prospects of removing Corbyn being removed..
Ben Murphy: “I think he still has solid support in the membership – just have to hope bad performances and all of this weakens him”
Hollie Ridley: “and they all lapse there membership”
Ben Murphy: “aye”
13 June 2016
Greg Cook and Jo Greening discussing how to blame Corbyn if Remain lose the EU Referendum…
Jo Greening: “so greg, what the hell is going to happen in this referendum?!!!!”
Greg Cook: “I still think Remain will win”
Jo Greening: “phew”
Greg Cook: “But at least if not, Corbyn will clearly be seen to be responsible”
Jo Greening: “yes”
4 November 2016
Policy Officer Dan Hogan asks a colleague “how do we make the NPF Brexit session as difficult and unhelpful to McDonnell and Corbyn as possible?” and
27 February 2017
Patrick Heneghan, talking to Senior Staff in the SMT WhatsApp group, says he hopes the LibDems win the Manchester Gorton by-election.. “Just had discussion at strategy meeting. We will meet Steve and Andy next Monday – we are looking at all 3 in May but select in Gorton within 4 weeks. Katy will speak to you/Iain… From karie… They didn’t include us in the discussion… Well let’s hope the lib dems can do it”
28 February 2017
Senior staff including Iain McNicol discuss how to delay changing over to ‘One Member One Vote’ (OMOV) to maintain the advantage in their favour..
Iain McNicol: “How many student members do we have. Has a check been done on those to see how many are actually students.”
Patrick Heneghan: “Turns out the membership system only stores those who pay student rate. About 29k… Labour students not paying that rate are not tagged in membership system…Half labour students national cmte pay different rate… Balloting on that basis would not be robust… Potentially open to challenge… What a shame but they will need more time… They will write to you to ask for help in understanding how to sort this within membership system.. Ok”
Tracey Allen: “And what is his reply?”
Patrick Heneghan: “Whose reply?”
Iain McNicol: “Mine. That’s fine.”
Patrick Heneghan: “We can draft that too. But let’s not reply too fast.”
Tracey Allen: “I only meant in brief. Not actual draft… I understand we’re playing politics here but wondered what next stage of strategy is”
Patrick Heneghan: “We look at the issues… They appear to large to resolve this year… Ask party for a plan to change way system works… Delay omov”
Tracey Allen: “Delay. Procrastinate. John Mann did 2 years as Nols Chair in 80s to keep Trots at bay. Worked then”
6 March 2017
Emilie Oldknow talks to staff in the General Secretary’s Office about how she intends to make sure her allies have a majority on the Manchester Gorton selection panel and also how she plans to undermine the wishes of the Leader’s Office:
Julie Lawrence: “Em, do we need TW on officers?”
Tracey Allen: “I’ll go and spk to her”
Emilie Oldknow: “Yes. He’s coming. Lucy is sorting”
Julie Lawrence: “Fab”
Emilie Oldknow: “FYI Glenis isn’t going to remove RLB from panel so we will probably end up with 6…”
Emilie Oldknow: “Lucy thinks she will”
Julie Lawrence: “Largest panel ever 😢”
Emilie Oldknow: “Yes. Which I think Ann will push against but let’s see where we get to”
Iain McNicol: “Hilarious”
Julie Lawrence: “Ann just told me she’s doing it”
Emilie Oldknow: “Yep… TW getting twitchy and Diana not on. Can we get on with this and Gorton?
Julie Lawrence: “Next item”
Emilie Oldknow: “We have to get on with this!!!… Tom needs to go… I’m literally hiding in my office On my own… Oh my god.. I’m dying!!!!
Patrick Heneghan: “What’s happening?”
Emilie Oldknow: “Trying to remove RLB.. Eeeeek… Say proposal to remove RLB… and that need to be voted on… Iain… Nancy should not speak!!!… John will need vote to remove RLB… He will push that… Iain – don’t take Katy… Nancy is a fucking idiot… Hahahaha… Oh my god. Tin hat time… I’m scared… Eeeeek”
Julie Lawrence: “Nancy spitting feathers”
13 April 2017
Senior staff talk about helping Tom Watson leak confidential Party documents.
Emilie Oldknow: “I think this needs to be cc’d to TW”
Patrick Heneghan: “He will leak it”
Emilie Oldknow: “In addition, the George S meeting wasn’t any worse than any of the other meetings we did”
Tracey Allen: “Oh awful – for her too. And just think you could be in Jamie’s with me and your team 😢”
Emilie Oldknow: “He won’t leak it as it criticises Sion”
Tracey Allen: “Good”
Emilie Oldknow: 😢😢
Patrick Heneghan: “I think we ask for meeting with tw and jc”
Julie Lawrence: “He can leak it after elections if its useful”
Patrick Heneghan: “Cover for tw to be ccd”
The next section covers the role regional staff played in disciplinary cases including initiating cases, proposing decisions on cases as well as investigating and progressing cases. It also covers the extent to which staff would stalk new members on social media in an attempt to remove people identified as from left wing or pro-Corbyn factions.
17 August 2015
Danny Adilypour and Teddy Ryan discuss CLP nominations.
Danny Adilypour: “It was scary how many Trots turned up for the Streatham meeting last week”
Teddy Ryan: “how close was it”
Danny Adilypour: “Liz beat Corbyn by 2”
Teddy Ryan: “christ. That’s unreal”
Danny Adilypour: “Yeah it’s terrifying. That’s part of the reason we’re nervous about Vauxhall”
Teddy Ryan: “surely vauxhall will be fine”
Danny Adilypour: “I think it will be, but you just can’t take anything for granted at the moment”
14 September 2015 (two days after Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader),
Regional Organisers discuss how Labour HQ view of Corbyn.
Ellie Buck: “if he hasnt gone within a few months a lot of staff will leave”
Rob Sherrington: “John McDonald will be the catalyst for the plp to get rid of him.
Ellie Buck: “Hopefully”
18 January 2016
Ellie Buck jokes that her role is about “fighting tories and trots by day, criminals by night”
December 2016
Fraser Welsh exclaims how part of his work involves “not conceding CLPs to Corbynite bullies”
November 2015
Welsh regional staff discuss “putting together a list of trots who want to come to the corbyn event tomorrow” and their disappointment that they couldn’t refuse them entry.
January 2016
Rob Sherrington and Ellie Buck discuss hand picking an audience for an upcoming Labour event and choosing only “sensible people”(i.e. no trots allowed).
Rob Sherrington: “bloody hell, that’s a task.”
Ellie Buck: “innit”
October 2017
Teddy Ryan and Ciaran Tully express concern over Momentum’s job advert for new “regional organiser” positions. New appointments could “fuck up regions… basically doing our job but motivated”. At the same time they felt the appointees would not be “good enough”, describing the role as “very badly paid”. One of them remarked how the new staff would extremely motivated to “do the groundwork we cannot be arsed doing and they will engage the members in a way we cannot be fucked with.”
May 2015
After the 2015 election and during the run up to the Corbyn leadership campaign later that year a surge of people joined the Labour Party as full members, or as registered supporters, to vote in the leadership election. A number of senior and junior staff, including Dan Hogan started investigating new members and supporters, mainly by stalking them on social media, to identify and remove anyone they considered to be “trotty” or a “twat”. Staff even discussed “hunting out 1000s of trots” and used phrases like “trot busting”, “bashing trots”, “trot spotting”, “the trot hunt” and “trot hunting”. Senior staff like Simon Jackson were known to “go on about trot busting” another was said to be “celebrating every time he finds a trot”
Danny Adilypour referred to himself as “trot smasher in chief”. Cameron Scott declared that the “priority right now is trot hunting” and Dominic Murphy suggested they “call the purge ‘trot or not’”. Murphy and Katherine Buckingham even discussed how it felt like they were “playing trot or not” while the “real work is piling up”
22 July 2015
Dan Hogan remarks “for what it’s worth, anyone who writes in [to the policy team] who doesn’t sound like a trot-lodite, i’m giving to the membership team to see if they can convince them to sign up as a supporter [and get a vote].”
5 August 2015
Simon Jackson calls Guardian journalist Owen Jones “an arsehole” and talks about getting him off the panel of a Young Labour conference event and how people like Jones should be disallowed a vote in the leadership election.
Simon Jackson: “it seems to be reason for disallowing people a vote in the leadership election”
Sarah Mulholland: “that is for the saving of the Labour Party! not a vendetta against a mad person”
Simon Jackson: “Young Labour need to not be trots, that is not a vendetta”
Sarah Mulholland: “if only they weren’t, my life would be so much jollier. Rosie is going to speak to you about trot purge”
10 September 2015
Dan Hogan and Amy Fowler discussed “purging” someone for having “liked” some Facebook pages or retweeting the Green Party. Hogan also describes “perusing the Stop The Labour Purge FB page” and “getting even by just purging everyone who shared it” and “hunting through all the anarchists and trots who shared it to purge them too”. Fowler expressed concern that Hogan was “fixating” and even suggests “Can you maybe just try to let it go?”
The report then goes on to explain how Hogan was so busy “Trot busting” that when, in 2017, at least 170 people (who had been identified as Labour members) were reported to GLU for antisemitism, they were simply not acted against. Hogan was one of two Disputes officers employed by the party to deal with these complaints at the time.
12 August 2015
A number of senior staff started to express concerns over some of the reasons people were being purged. NEC member Alice Perry expressed about some of the people staff had flagged. She noted how one individual (Tony Smart) had been flagged for donating to the People’s Assembly, while another (Caroline King) was flagged for some fairly innocuous Facebook likes… “We can’t block people just because they like the people’s assembly and UK uncut. I wouldn’t consider these to be far left either”
By the 21st August, the GLU had produced a list of 238 rejected members that included…
- Someone who “Retweeted Class War”
- Someone who “Retweets the [National Health Action] party and appears to have been a supporter of them”
- Someone with a “Pattern of retweeting Green Party material and expressing support”
- Someone who retweeted a Mark Thomas tweet saying “Dear Labour… get fucked” after many Labour MPs’ abstained on the welfare bill, which was opposed by many Labour members.
Some of the GLU comments on this list included…
“green party supporter – likes on facebook”
“likes a lotta greens on FB”
In fact, there were so many issues with the GLU list that the Head of Disputes, Katherine Buckingham, would later remark (in 2016) how “there were so many mistakes last year that the NEC essentially told us that everyone should get an appeal”.
The report now describes how staff were selected for appointments in the GLU and senior posts and touches on the right wing factional culture even within the upper echelons of the party (excluding the leader’s office).
It would appear that many of the staff appointed to Labour HQ were former members of “Labour Students”, an organisation historically run by people from the “right” of the party and who have a culture of calling people to their left “Trots”. Staff even discussed jobs being “stitched up” for Labour students.
January 2016
Sam Matthews enquired about a Labour vacancy (Campaigns Officer – Campaign Materials and Direct Mail). Matthews was encouraged to apply by another staff member even after he himself expressed concerns even after he admitted he wasn’t qualified… “I’m mediocre (at best) at copywriting :/ – and got rejected from that job the last time I went for it”. The staff member then assured Matthews he had a good chance of getting the job because the team “know you”
Sam Matthews: “Won’t it be a stitch up for a Labour Student though?”
Unnamed staff member: “Maybe under the Sarah regime, but now we’re under Tom management”.
Sam Matthews: “As an aside, could you give me a heads up if it does end up being a stitch up for someone? I’ll probably go through with it anyway to pop back up on their radar that I want back in, but it would be useful to know.”
Unnamed staff member: “I’ve not seen any evidence of it to be honest, but that might be because Tom is less blatant about such things.”
17 February 2015
Conversation between Emilie Oldknow and Emma Meehan regarding a job in the Compliance unit.
Emilie Oldknow: “Sarah tells me that your sister is looking for a job?”
Emma Meehan: “Yeah she is”
Emilie Oldknow: “We have an admin role coming up in the compliance unit. It is a bit boring, helping Margaret with donation reports etc but it gets her in the door and gives her some experience? Do you think she would be interested?”
Emma Meehan: “Yes she definitely would, she’s been looking for admin work in London. shes pretty new to the party”
Emilie Oldknow: “Okay great. That means she will be completely maleable….”
Emma Meehan: “but it would be really good experience for her”
Emilie Oldknow: “Mwah ha ha ha”
6 July 2015
Staff members discuss how the ex “labour students” currently working in the office all support Liz Kendall’s campaign for Labour leadership
July 2016
Ten people from “Labour Students” were recruited specifically to work on suspending and excluding Labour members and supporters prior to the 2016 leadership election.
17 May 2016
Josh Carrington hears a press officer talking about “smashing Trots” and referring to members as “mad Trots” and remarks how similar it is to Head Office where “you slowly realise that everyone else is much more right-wing and consider anyone left of brown to be a trot”. Some staff even referred to Joshua Carrington as “a trot” and would warn each other to be careful of what they said in his presence. In fact, just four days after the 2017 general election, Anna Phillips messages Ellie Miller to remind her that “josh is a trot” and remarked how “he seemed happy with the result”
Ironically, Joshua Carrington actually took part in the 2015 “Trot hunt” and referred to left-wing staff associated with the leader’s office (during the 2017 general election) as “Fucking Trots”. He would even make fun of the leadership in front of supporters. However, it’s understood that Carrington didn’t support Liz Kendall’s bid for leadership, which is probably the real reason why he also got labelled a “Trot”.
Ben Nolan on the digital team was also described as “troty” because he saw the “increase in membership as a good thing”. Some staff even referred to the digital team as “trot corner”
22 June 2015
Jo Green refers to Jack Smith as “that little Trot”, while Sarah Mulholland refers to him as “a right trot” and then remarks how “he’s pals with all the young labour trots. So we need to be really careful”
17 July 2015
Stephen Donnelly warns colleagues about Jack Smith
Stephen Donnelly: [Jack Smith] “is a big ‘ol trot and dead pally with all the Young Labour trots”.
Sarah Mullholland: “hows he been allowed to work here”
Stephen Donnelly: “TULO, the Trade Union Liaison Organisation. Lovely guy, but the enemy as far as these chats are concerned”
Michael Rubin: “Annoying he’s here” – “viper in the nest”
Eager to conceal the fact that staff were working on the “Trot hunt” “ Patrick Heneghan advised that in order to keep Jack Smith from finding out they would “have to work secretly and stop broadcasting”. He then adds “I christened myself the Trot Catcher this morning, and then I remembered…” this is “operation ‘don’t let jack smith know we’re kicking out trots’”
Another target was Ben Soffa who had been working for the TSSA union and was head of Digital on the Jeremy Corbyn leadership election. After the 2017 election, Soffa got a job as head of Digital in Labour HQ but other staff had already labelled him a “Trot”
7 December 2015
Simon Jackson and Jo Green discuss Ben Soffa.
Jo Green: “getting second hand reports from the trot in digital not exactly joined up thinking.”
Simon Jackson: “quite”
13 May 2016
Greg Cook and Patrick Heneghan discuss Ben Soffa.
Greg Cook: “You can see who all the Trots are in the building. They all want Ben’s postcards”
Patrick Heneghan: “too many.”
October 2015
Job applications from people assumed to be a “Trots” were frequently dismissed. Here’s an exchange between Simon Jackson and Jo Green discussing the appointment of a new “International Officer”, from a ‘thinktank’
Jo Green: “that’s good. so not a trot either presumably?”
Simon Jackson: “no, good politics”
January 2016
Greg Cook tells Stephen Pattison that the applicants he’d seen for a specific vacancy were all “Trots” and remarked “If i can get away with it, I won’t employ anyone for the [role].”
14 February 2017
Fraser Welsh talking about his tactic to filling a post for a director’s job… “it may be sensible politics to give responsibility of mobilising all the trots to someone who is a bit troty, so that when the trots don’t do anything, and we lose badly, it’s a trot that gets thrown under a bus”.
Staff also expressed an expectation that colleagues would be hostile to Corbyn supporters and would mock the idea of “chatting” with “Corbynite mates”
4 August 2015
Senior staff discuss their disgust at another staff member for supporting and defending Corbyn, which Stolliday deems a sackable offence.
Sarah Brown: “so did you just hear KS… saying a corbyn leadership will make it easier to recruit a new digital team”
John Stolliday: “No? Really???”
Paul Ovenden: “brilliant”
John Stolliday: “she must love corbyn… She is a green after all”
Paul Ovenden: “she does – I saw her on Facebook mounting a passionate defence of him.”
John Stolliday: “Find me screenshots & I’ll have her sacked for breaching staff code of conduct”
5 January 2017
Hester Waterfield expresses her unhappiness over having to work with a staff member who she considers to be “a corbynite”
Hester Waterfield: “the other person i [will be] managing is def a corbynite”
Hayley Sothinathan: “that is going to be so awks”
Hester Waterfield: “i am just going to have to learn to have a professional persona”
9 April 2017
Iain McNicol would also openly complain about the leader’s office (who he called “fucking twats”) attempting to appoint staff he considered “fellow trot travellers”
Iain McNicol: “The irony of them complaining about recruit process. It is actually beyond irony. Family, friends, friends of family and fellow trot travellers come get a job. No interview. Infact you don’t even need to fill an application in. Fucking twats. Don’t do the meeting next week as I want to be in it. Maybe you could start by asking loto what qualifications any of them have…. Of”
Emilie Oldknow: “Hahaha…Brilliant Iain”
In the lead up to the 2017 general election, some staff from the leaders office moved to Labour HQ to work on the election. This allowed the leader’s office to ensure that some left-wing staff could step into HQ vacancies in the press team after the election. A number of existing HQ staff would refer to the newcomers as “Trots”. Neil Fleming and Katy Dillon labelled future press officer Sophie Nazemi as “Sophie the Trot” and “trot sophie”. Ellie Miller would refer to staff at Labour HQ as “all stupid trots” and Ben Murphy would refer to the leader’s office as a “gang of trots”. Neil Fleming once complained about, what he referred to as, “the entirety of LOTO Comms” being “in Southside today” and exclaimed how “Awful” it was and that he was “coming in to see Iain next week” and would “have a go at him about it”. Fleming felt it was “not up to the party to give them desks when parliament has already given them one.” Colette Collins-Walsh would describe her colleague Georgie Robertson from the press team as “Georgie the Trot Princess” and would complain that with Robertson, Sophie Nazemi and others joining the press office would soon be full of “trots”.
23 December 2016
In a conversation about the leader’s office, Tracey Allen (Manager, GSO) suggests to Julie Lawrence (Director, GSO) that they should “burn incense… to ward off Trots”
Tracey Allen: “Ah yes. Now it’s coming back to me. Maybe we can burn incense in the office to ward off Trots.”
Julie Lawrence: “We’ve tried everything else so why not.”
Tracey Allen: “Ha ha ha”
11 February 2017
Iain McNicol and GSO staff try to prevent Leader’s office from finding out who leaked private party polling data.
Iain McNicol: “Patrick do you have Michael at BMG mobile number. It looks like drop box has leaked. I need to call him urgently. Also can you do me a list of who has access. Ta”
Tracey Allen: “07545 xxx xxx”
Patrick Heneghan: “Top of my head, Me, Isabel… Loto [Leader of the Opposition] do not know that.. Loto staff. Simon and jack I think… Staff in trickett offices… Again don’t know who.. Tricket told them not to give his access.. Us access… I got email from bmg saying access to it ends today… That will be about contract ending.. Basically access was tricketts decision and only he or leah will know the full list of people he allowed access… I’m guessing Simon and jack.. Cos I heard something about karie getting angry they had access”
Emilie Oldknow: “Karie told us on Tuesday that her and others now had access too”
Iain McNicol: “Karie said it is digitally recorded so will know who has access. She also said John McDonnell had called Michael.no idea what said… OK. Sounds like the northern testing that was done on individual politicians. JC John mcd RLB. Etc. He is not sure if Sunday times have document or just loose talk… He said from our end Patrick, Greg C, Isobel, Tim. He thinks that is all who have access”
Patrick Heneghan: “Wasn’t sure about greg… I did email him stuff tho”
Simon Mills: “BMG think contract is being extended so access should remain”
Patrick Heneghan: “Must be automated email linked to original contract date”
Emilie Oldknow: “Great. Another leak investigation. Just what we all need… Just thinking about it.. I think Iain needs to email BMG and tell them not to pass information on who has access on to anyone but either you or me”
18 April 2017
Patrick Heneghan (Executive Director – Elections, Campaigns and Organisation) remarks “Loto [Leader of the Opposition] campaigns team… Need to be redeployed…To the job centre”
2 October 2017
Oldknow remarks how she can predict what Karie Murphy would say about the election result at an upcoming meeting… “It was all down to LOTO and Momentum” and then referred to another senior staff member at the leader’s office as an “an egotistical maniac”.
October 2017
LOTO Stakeholder Manager Laura Murray asks the GLU & GSO if the digital team could “organise for there to be a section of the new Labour Party website where the Labour Party rulebook and agreed Codes of Conduct are accessible to members?” and also if the Chakrabarti Report, which had somehow disappeared off the Labour website, could be made “available to read on the new website?”…
John Stolliday: “no particular objection”
Emilie Oldknow: “John will reply substantively, but we should not include the confidential NEC reports on the labour party website. This will end up being a stick to beat us with and is something we have never done before.”
Laura Murray: “it was a case of it being re-uploaded?”
Emilie Oldknow: “My strong view is that other reports (and this one) should not be on the website”
11 January 2018
Jeremy Corbyn had personally requested that Labour’s social media accounts post messages on Twitter and Facebook to remind Labour members of the deadline to vote in Labour’s ongoing NEC elections. The concern was that new Labour members (who were overwhelmingly left wing), would be inexperienced and would need prompting.
As it was not in the interest of the right of the party to encourage more left wing members to participate in the election, Emilie Oldknow emails Labour’s social media manager Chloe Green try and stop the reminders going out…
Emilie Oldknow: “Where and whom has this come from?”
She insists emails sent by the Electoral Reform Services would be sufficient and, in her opinion a “much better use of communications”.
Emilie Oldknow: “Iain [McNicol] has also said no to this.”
Chloe Green: “We had the request from Jeremy himself, via Jack Bond. James Schneider has also given us the go-ahead… I’m happy either way, but of course it’s not my call to make – how should we proceed?”
After checking with Corbyn’s social media manager Jack Bond and LOTO spokesperson James Schneider, Oldknow realised it had been signed off “as fine from a comms POV” but still wasn’t happy…
Emilie Oldknow: “Ok. We have a comms plan with ERS – that is, they are sending out specific emails to those who haven’t voted yet rather than a scatter gun effect which will just generate more questions than it answers. I would prefer to stick to this plan.
Jack Bond: “this came from me… I am unsure why we wouldn’t want to promote elections on social media. JC has spent 2.5 years talking about us being a mass, open and democratic party. Having elections that are promoted on social media demonstrates this is the case. And of course, some people will see the posts and be motivated to vote… On the various elections (internal and external) I’ve worked on, I’ve always thought GOTV was quite important and reminders in different forms are helpful. In addition, ERS, in my experience are not reliable. Didn’t they miss an NEC candidate off the form? It would be great to also have ERS’ email plan with reminders as JC’s page would like to co-ordinate. But again, I know from trying to co-ordinate this at the start of this NEC election process that they do not give specifics. Can this be reconsidered please and could the Labour Party channels promote the NEC elections?”
Emilie Oldknow: “There is already a communications GOTV plan with our balloting organisation. They send specific emails to those people who they know have not voted. In terms of having an actual effect, this is much more effective than a Facebook or Twitter post to everyone, including voters. So, we can all agree that GOTV is a good thing and we are an open, democratic party. Hooray! It is wrong to say that ERS are unreliable. You are wrong in the accusation you make. They did NOT leave anyone off the ballot paper. If this has been joined up from the beginning then of course we could send the timetable of the reminders, but the first me or my team heard about it was an email this afternoon. I had no idea there was any desire or requirement for this to happen.”
Following a call, Bond dropped the request and suggested that they meet to plan some “social media from the Labour Party” for the next NEC elections. It’s understood that the decision to drop the request came about after an intervention by senior staff (Oldknow and Ian McNicol) who wanted to block a request from Jeremy Corbyn.
13 January 2017
Senior Labour HQ staff plan for a potential leadership succession even before the election….
Julie Lawrence: “I may be jumping the gun here, and JC is a proud and selfish man with a team to match, but if we lose these elections we could have another leadership election. We should set up at some stage a discrete WG to go over rules, timetable scenarios and staff servicing the process. Just so we’re prepared. Like Operation Cake.”
Patrick Heneghan: “Hope…”
Julie Lawrence: “Yeah”
Iain McNicol: “OK Julie can you pull together. Operation Cupcake”
Julie Lawrence: “Yep”
Emilie Oldknow: “Iain and I spoke to TW about this”
Julie Lawrence: 😢
Patrick Heneghan: “What does that mean”
Emilie Oldknow: “It means Iain told TW to prepare for being interim leader”
17 April 2017
Theresa May calls a snap general election. Some staff in Labour’s Head Office, including GLU and GSO, see this as an opportunity to remove Jeremy Corbyn and immediately start looking for a successor.
18 April 2017
Tracey Allen: “Karie cancelled meeting at 11.15 – they know nothing!”
Patrick Heneghan: “I’ve spoken to her… they called no 10”
Tracey Allen: “Could her husband be terminally ill or something? Must be personal surely… What did No10 say?
Patrick Heneghan: “Fuck u karie u silly cow… ”
Tracey Allen: “Jeremy who?”
Emilie Oldknow: “I will be down later on today”
Julie Lawrence: “What about leadership election afterwards if it happens?”
Emilie Oldknow: “Said yes to that”
Julie Lawrence: “Very good”
14 May 2017
Director of GLU John Stolliday produces documents outlining procedures, codes of conduct and staff purdah rules for a “Labour Leadership Election 2017”and includes a timeline with the process beginning on 12 June 2017 and the result being announced on 19 August 2017.
27 May 2017
Stolliday produces an ‘Electoral College Rule Change’ document, proposing to replace Labour’s ‘one member one vote’ (OMOV) election system with the old Electoral College system that existed before the 2013 Collins Review. The Electoral College system gave MPs one third of the vote, the regular members accounted for only one third and one third went to affiliated union members. A move clearly designed to disenfranchise the membership and which, given the current makeup of the PLP, would ensure left wing candidates would not get onto the ballot or be elected in a leadership contest even with the support of the majority of the membership. With the OMOV system, Corbyn won decisively in 2015 (with 59% of the overall vote) and again in 2016 (with 62% of the vote).
These plans were drawn up in the midst of a general election when non-essential work is normally put on hold and staff get reassigned to campaign duties, so it’s unclear if Stolliday had been authorised to do this work (and, if so, who authorised him) or if he did this of his own volition. There is a possibility he could have been authorised to do this by Emilie Oldknow or by Iain McNicol.
19 April 2017
With the election campaign barely underway, staff celebrate about being able to remove Jeremy Corbyn from campaign literature…
Fiona Stanton: “Is jc now off the flying start leaflet again”
Patrick Heneghan: “Yes”
Tom Geldard: “Yes”
Fiona Stanton: “So sad”
Sarah Mulholland: “There is a god”
Carol Linforth: “The 😢of god”
22 April 2017
Senior staff plan to protect Tom Watson’s seat in West Bromwich East..
Patrick Heneghan: “Ok. But we need to throw cash at Tom’s seat.. Even if just 50k for that”
Emilie Oldknow: “We should do this”
Patrick Heneghan: “We can’t let him lose for want of money.. We’re in meltdown.. 25 points down and they’ve not started on us”
Iain McNicol: “Lets talk monday. Am off to bed. But obviously protect toms seat.”
21 April 2017
As part of a plot to sabotage Labour’s election campaign, staff discuss using their tried and tested “go slow” tactics in order to make the election more difficult to win for Corbyn’s team and the Labour Party as a whole. They joked about “working hard or hardly working”
1 May 2017
Various Labour HQ press staff, including Head of Press Neil Fleming, set up a chat platform to “communicate through… so we arent on our phones all the time” and so they can pretend to look very busy by “tap tap tapping away” at their keyboards. Director of Policy and Research, Simon Jackson, discusses “taking redundancy” with Anouska Gregorek, Head of Policy Development, rather than support a Labour Party led by Corbyn.
Anouska Gregorek: “It’ll be fine maybe we can take redundancy and go travelling during the election”
Simon Jackson: “if we’re all paid off we can pool cash & start a consultancy”
24 April 2017
Senior staff discuss the need to prevent the Head of Digital, Ben Soffa, from finding out where digital campaign funds were being spent. Ben is a left-wing staff and was based at Labour HQ.
Patrick Heneghan: “Simon. We need to stop digital campaign budgets going to Ben soffa for approval.. He can’t see what we are doing with digital spend”
26 April 2017
Staff discuss the possibility of an “encroaching leadership election” and what could be done to oppose engaging new members, while others discuss how to avoid Karie Murphy (Jeremy Corbyn’s Chief of Staff) so they wont have to work with her. Some even joked about Jeremy Corbyn’s office being sacked as soon as the election was over, and expressed concern about having to share an office with them for a few weeks.
Megan Wikeley: “how troty is ben Nolan.. i feel he sees our increase in membership as a good thing, which is always worrying”
Josh Graham: “he talks a good game.. but he also wants to make all the new members more involved, which i am anti”
Tracey Allen: “Karie near your desk looking for you Em – not sure if you are still avoiding.. Shes asked me to find you – I pretended to text.”
Emilie Oldknow: “Hahaha.. Have spoken to her.. Staffing matter”
Tracey Allen: “They need more staff to help Jeremy lose”
Tracey Allen: “Staff team Corbyn ….ready to join the dole queue”
John Stolliday: “I could probably only name about a third of them”
Patrick Heneghan: “Guilty. All of them.”
Neil Fleming: “In our office from next week 😢”
28 April 2017
Steve Howell had recently been brought in (by Jeremy Corbyn) to work on communications and strategy for the 2017 election campaign. Senior staff immediately go on the attack. Incidentaly, to provide some context, the office was dealing with a plumbing problem at the time and this had caused a smell of sewage to spread.
Patrick Heneghan: “Steve now annoying half the staff”
Iain McNicol: “Progress”
Greg Cook: “Showing your true colours, Iain?”
Neil Fleming: “God this is going to be a long 6 weeks… Im hating this already”
Carol Linforth: “Only half … who are the other half ?
Patrick Heneghan: “Everyone currently in the district room”
Greg Cook: “Seems a civilised guy.. Knows what he thinks”
Simon Jackson: “Amateur hour”
Carol Linforth: “I am told ‘steve’ has moved upstairs already because of the smell …….”
Simon Jackson: “Can we make the smell worse?… Urgent action points: don’t empty 2nd floor bins; buy Simon nose pegs.”
29 April 2019
Simon Jackson shares an article in the “LP Forward Planning” WhatsApp group about how “Only a ballot-box massacre can save Labour” – https://capx.co/only-a-ballot-box-massacre-can-save-labour/201
2 May 2017
Labour HQ staff attempt to block a routine request, from the leader’s office, to pass on contact details for all Labour candidates selected to fight the election.
Sarah Mulholland: “Anyone know who Robert Donnelly is?”
Tracey Allen: “Isn’t he campaigns team LOTO?”
Fiona Stantonl: “He called me today asking for a list of candidates for jc.. Referred him to stollers”
John Stolliday: “I told him candidates not yet endorsed by NEC. When they are the candidate liaison team will be able to send any communications to them.. But we’re not handing over private information for hundreds of candidates when we have a system and structure”
Emilie Oldknow: “Yes. Basically he keeps asking for the same information from various people because governance have said no.. We’ve told LOTO this is not acceptable”
Anna Hutchinson: “He told Fatima in my office that John Stolliday had told him to ask Regional offices for the list. We haven’t sent it.”
Patrick Heneghan: “He is also asking regions to send him briefing notes on all seats”
Sarah Mulholland: “Yes he has asked me for all mps and candidates personal contact details. Of course saying no, just wanted to check who he was.”
Emilie Oldknow: “That’s a complete lie”
3 May 2017
Sarah Mulholland: “That daft boy who’s after details for all the MPs/candidates just called me. He’s got the details from the Scottish office but nowhere else. I reiterated what I’d said in email that I’ll happily send stuff out for him. He is very confused and at one point said ‘but I’m from the eighth floor campaigns team’ 😢”
5 May 2017
At times during the election campaign, Labour HQ staff had to share space with staff from the leader’s office. There had been an issue with the sewage system in the building so people were forced to have to work alongside each other.
Patrick Heneghan: “Katy d kicking off a bit”
Julie Lawrence: “Should someone talk to her?”
Tracey Allen: “I have this morning extensively and Iain has this afternoon. They seem to understand we need to give it another day (supposedly smell being fixed tomorrow) Otherwise we need plan B. Katy’s problem is not just smell – it is the trots. She is struggling to cope. They sound most unpleasant. At least all ours are corralled in ‘The Squat’ area [8th floor Kitchen]
Julie Lawrence: “Assumed it was trots and results.. 33 days?”
Patrick Heneghan: “I just talked to them all”
Emilie Oldknow: “Is it the smell? When I went down there yesterday it was ok”
Iain McNicol: “The smell is not too bad.. Not great.. It is the people”
Emilie Oldknow: “Ok. They are going in to units this weekend.. Yes, That is a major problem which needs to be sorted out”
7 May 2017
Senior staff expected poor results in the election start blaming the Leader’s Office.
Sarah Mulholland: “From pals knocking in Staylbridge and Wirral South this weekend. Death by fire is too kind for LOTO 😢”
May 2017
During the 2017, Labour HQ assigned resources in a factional manner. They also assigned staff to a “secret key seats team”, permanently based in a separate building (Ergon House) and they hid all this from the Leader of the Oppositions Office (LOTO). Both Sam Matthews, Head of Disputes, and Sophie Goodyear, Head of Safeguarding and Complaints, worked on this project and other key Disputes staff such as Ben Westerman and Louise Withers-Green also appear to have been involved or aware of it.
Catherine Bramwell: “there is a secret key seats team arriving in ergon house permanently…”
Stephanie Driver: “ooo interesting on the key seats team, who will be part of it?!”
Catherine Bramwell: “lots of secret meetings going on here…I think it’s all secret to loto, I’ll let you know but think it’s a brand new team moving in on Sunday”
Stephanie Driver: “Brill. I endorse this plan. And will keep said plan v much to myself.”
Sam Matthews even asked to be back-paid at a higher pay rate, reflecting his increased responsibilities between 12 May and 8 June 2017, which he said included “direct responsibility for budget management, procurement of services, dealing directly with a range of suppliers and managing more than twice as many staff as normal – with a range of very different skills from the disputes team (such as designers, copy writers, videographers etc).” Sophie Goodyear suggested to Matthews that it “might be worth mentioning the level of budget management”, to which he replied “I don’t want to put the scale of budget in writing” and goes on to state that he knows that the party could “afford this”, because “I left 100k in that budget”.
This project had been given a budget code GEL001 that appears to have been deliberately misnamed as a budget for “Generic Campaign Materials” and Sam Matthews looks to have been in charge of printing materials.
18 May 2017
Sam Matthews was given a budget of £75,000 to spend on the “Key Seats Team” project.
29 May 2017
Sam Matthews “Key Seats Team” project budget is increased to £175,000. Matthews had already billed £89,000 for printing.
30 May 2017
Matthews gets another budget boost of £61,300 on the GEL001 code.
The total assigned budget for key seats printing was £225,842 and by the end of the election, Matthews had reported spending £135,014. This included £42,975 specifically attributed to “Sam Matthews Key Seats Printing”. This left an under spend of £90,000 (close to the figure Matthews had mentioned to Sophie Goodyear).
The remit of this secret ‘Key Seats’ project appears to be to funnel resources to protect key right wing seats. This took resources away from marginal seats which, given the “Corbyn surge” (both in numbers of party members able to target those seats and in Corbyn’s own growing popularity amongst voters, as the polls would reflect during the progress of the campaign), had a good chance of converting to Labour if they hadn’t been starved of resources. Instead, key right wing figures in safe seats who were supported by the secret scheme – Tom Watson, Yvette Cooper, Angela Eagle, Heidi Alexander, Chuka Umuna, Rachel Reeves – all returned increased Labour majorities in the 2017 election.
11 May 2017
Senior staff at Labour HQ appear to relish the prospect of Labour experiencing a bad result:
Sarah Mulholland: “The kitchen are whooping and cheering Jeremy’s words to the nation.”
Julie Lawrence: “Shut the front door 😢”
Tracey Allen: “Aaah they should make the most of it. 28 days and they’ll be ashen and in tears 😢😢”
12 May 2017
Senior Staff deride speeches by Jeremy Corbyn.
Frances Fuller-Claire: “BREAKING: War is bad and killing babies is wrong.”
Tracey Allen: “And as I can’t even make sure my tie is done up properly on the most important speech of the election you should put your lives in my hands”
14 May 2017
Tracey Allen: “Simon J/Sarah. Have we got standard direct mail letters, partic for green voters”
Greg Cook: “The Leader of the Labour Party is a Green.”
15 May 2017
Despite the fact that Labour was the only major party to produce a fully-costed manifesto, senior staff would belittle LOTO staff as incompetent and even singled out Dianne Abbott’s, suggesting she lacked intelligence. Abbott is Britain’s first black female MP and has had to endure an unprecedented number of racist attacks, over many years, from people attempting to belittle her intelligence. Dianne has had to endure a level of scrutiny and mockery that no white politician has ever endured and yet here we have senior white Labour staff members expressing similar views.
Greg Cook: “They look like they are busy on calculators…£49.5 billion, £49.6 billion. Oh no, we missed the cost of abolishing driver-only trains…£80.5 billion…”
Tracey Allen: “Diana Abbott school of calculus. They cannot cope with this level of scrutiny and responsibility. Welcome to real politics!”
19 May 2017
Senior Labour HQ, Press Office and GLU staff relished when policy disagreements among Shadow Cabinet members played out on national television and even called for a “reckoning” when Corbyn was no longer leader.
Julie Lawrence: “Nia slapping down Emily Thornberry [she calls her ET] on Trident. Labour’s defence policy in chaos.”
John Stolliday: “I bet they try to sack Nia”
Patrick Heneghan: “Ha ha.. Well she set out the party position”
Neil Fleming: “Just seen Nia’s interview. What a bloody hero. She doesnt bullshit and shes just just stabbed corbyn and thornberry.”
Patrick Heneghan: “Yes she did”
Neil Fleming: “Thornberry is awful. She should pay in the reckoning.”
20 May 2017
Senior staff finding it difficult to stomach the fact that Labour campaign was gaining momentum. Corbyn was pulling massive rallies and had just filled Prenton Park football stadium (in Birkenhead), and a video of the rally had gained over 600,000 views on Twitter
Julie Lawrence: https://twitter.com/DavidPrescott/status/866001515382702080
Tracey Allen: “OMG I think this is what is making me feel ill!!!”
Neil Fleming: “Has everyone in the north west gone a bit loopy Anna??”
26 May 2017
Jeremy Corbyn made a speech in response to the recent terror attacks in London and Manchester. Carol Linforth (Director of Conference and Events) thought it was funny to book the speech in the same room where Ed Miliband had announced his resignation. Later the same day, Francis Grove-White, Labour International Policy Officer, and Jo Greening, International Affairs advisor express dismay over a recent YouGov poll showing Labour gaining support. The conversation then devolves into a full on attack on the Labour left and how to remove the party leader.
John Stolliday: “Is that the room where Ed Miliband resigned?”
Carol Linforth: “No comment”
Tracey Allen: “Ha ha”
Francis Grove-White: “How are we actually in the same party as these vile, opportunistic morons?”
Jo Greening: “I am furious..FURIOUS.. I have never been more ashamed to work for this party”
Francis Grove-White: “Ditto”
Jo Greening: “and I have been very ashamed in the past! they are vile.. you are right.. have you seen the line on soldiers?”
Francis Grove-White: “Yep… The speech is astonishing on so many levels. It’s so woefully written, intellectually incoherent, factually inaccurate and devoid of any attempt to be constructive or analytical that it is in effect a Donald Trump speech. It’s easy to forget that only yesterday morning they were briefing that they would be easing back into the campaign slowly and not doing anything political.. I despise these people more than ever”
Jo Greening: “excellent analysis.. me too.. I hope I see not a single one of them today”
Francis Grove-White: “I actually felt quite sick when I saw that YouGov poll last night”
Jo Greening: “no its great”
Francis Grove-White: “Not that I think we will end up there or probably anywhere near”
Jo Greening: “and I shall tell you why.. it is a peak.. and the polling was done after the Manchester attack.. so with a bit of luck this speech will show a clear polling decline and we shall all be able to point to how disgusting they truly are (now obviously we know it was never real – but that isnt the point in politics!)”
Francis Grove-White: “Yeah I’m sure that’s right..My fears are that: a) the speech won’t go down as badly as it deserves to thanks to the large groundswell of ill-informed opposition to all western interventions. And b) they will use that poll to claim they were on course to win and then Manachester happened. And whether or not JC goes, lots of the membership will buy that argument. Like after the referendum when they distorted the polling and claimed we had overtaken the Tories before the “coup” happened”
Jo Greening: “if this speech gets cut through – as I think it may – it will harden normal people against us definitely.. in the face of a terror attack normal people do not blame foreign intervention.. they blame immigration.. whats more – all they will hear is we dont want to respond strongly.. we want peace with ISIS.. it all plays into a bigger picture of how they see corbyn.. so I have a feeling this will cut through.. you are right on the second point.. it has to be up to the MPs though to demonstrate how toxic he is on the doorstep throughout.. but that this speech particularly was toxic and Manchester had happened when that poll was in the field.. on the supporters.. I personally think we are going to do very badly in deed and I think it will shock a lot of them how badly we do, including JC, so everyone has to be ready when he is in shock.. it has to be clean and brutal and not involve the party at all in my opinion.. those crazy people who now make up our membership never want us to win in anycase.. they are communists and green supporters.. even if Manchester hadnt happened and we got smashed..they would have never changed their minds”
Francis Grove-White: “Yeah that’s true.. I agree with all of that. And I think you’re right – most people will see this speech for the nonsensical and ill-judged turd that it really is”
Jo Greening: “the crazies wont – they will love it”
Francis Grove-White: “Yeah of course – but the wider electorate and floating voters.. I CANNOT WAIT to see Andrew Neil rip him to pieces over it tonight”
31 May 2017 to 3 June 2017
Senior staff indulge in 4 day conversation attacking Corbyn and expressing their dismay and shock over changing polling data, as results start to get tighter. Different polls had very different results, even closer to election date so they were still hoping it would be a significant defeat for Labour.
Patrick Heneghan: “Westminster voting intention: CON: 43% (+1), LAB: 33% (-1), LDEM: 11% (+2), UKIP: 4% (-), GRN: 3% (-1) (via TNS_UK / 25 – 30 May)”
Neil Fleming: “Always loved TNS. Gold Standard.
Patrick Heneghan: “Take a look at @jon_trickett’s Tweet – https://twitter.com/jon_trickett/status/870343944596574209?s=08
Tracey Allen: “What!!!!”
Julie Lawrence: “Ich bin ein Trot!”
Iain McNicol: “I am a Corbyn.. That doesn’t make sense”
Tracey Allen: “I am a hamburger”
Iain McNicol: “I am a trot.. That makes complete sense.. Ich bin prime minister”
Julie Lawrence: 😢
Tracey Allen: “I am getting seriously weirded out by all this P M talk. I don’t think I can cope with the idea. 6 more bloody days is too long..”
Patrick Heneghan: “Take a look at @britainelects’s Tweet – https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/870592083060543488?s=08 – [Westminster voting intention: CON: 45% (-4), LAB: 40% (+6), LDEM: 7% (-)]
Neil Fleming: “Wowser”
Julie Lawrence: “Nooo, really?”
Patrick Heneghan: “Westminster voting intention: CON: 40% (-6), LAB: 39% (+5), LDEM: 8% (-), UKIP: 5% (+2) (via @Survation / 03 Jun)
Neil Fleming: “😢.. Wtf is going on. Polling industry may as well fold up.”
Tracey Allen: “It is doing my head in.”
Julie Lawrence: “😢”
Tracey Allen: “Long 5 days to go”
Patrick Heneghan: “Westminster voting intention: CON: 45% (+1), LAB: 36% (-2), LDEM: 8% (+1), UKIP: 4% (-1) (via ORB / 31 May – 01 Jun)
Neil Fleming: “Good old ORB”
4 June 2017
Senior staff expressed frustration at the enthusiasm and support Jeremy Corbyn had engendered in activists and continue to attack supporters as “Trots”:
Fiona Stanton: “He refuses to go without seeing them. The crowds appointed leader a nutjob. Desire from team jc to avoid sombre speech followed by selfies.. So crowd was negotiated into 2 rooms inside hotel. For sombre speech v2 and v3. Jc does big rahrah.. Hes still on speech 3”
Iain McNicol: “Photos please”
Fiona Stanton: <Shares Media>.. Most ridiculous visit ever. I do not know how kat copes with them
Greg Cook: “Presumably because she’s a Trot like the rest of them.”
Tracey Allen: “Quite!”
Greg Cook: “Hopefully the sheer hypocrisy of that speech will make his views on STK and abolishing the army a legitimate topic.”
Patrick Heneghan: “Take a look at @jon_trickett’s Tweet: – https://twitter.com/jon_trickett/status/871433303794089985?s=08
Greg Cook: “Absolutely right. It shows in detail what a lying little toerag he is”
7 June 2017
Senior staff mock Diane Abbott’s illness and rejoice in bad polling results for the Labour Party. They even joke about wanting to physically attack Corbyn supporters attending the final rally at Union Chapel in Islington or, as one of them put it, go “knock some trots”:
Tracey Allen: “You mean “I’ll health” surely”
Patrick Heneghan: “Surely GSO need to organise a get well soon card”
Iain McNicol: “And some flowers.”
Julie Lawrence: “Surely LOTO do that on behalf of the party”
Tracey Allen: “#prayfordiane”
Sarah Mulholland: “But but but but but Lyn Brown is as daft as a brush.”
Neil Fleming: “And nasty with it… #BringBackDiane”
Patrick Heneghan: “Westminster voting intention: CON: 46% (+1), LAB: 34% (-), LDEM: 7% (-1), UKIP: 5% (-), GRN: 2% (-1) (via @ICMResearch / 06 – 07 Jun)
Carol Linforth: “We got v close to the police stopping the event. There 4 police swots here) [Carol is referring to the final rally at Union Chapel in Islington]
Patrick Heneghan: “Omg”
Julie Lawrence: “Blimey.”
John Stolliday: “Truncheons out lads, let’s knock some trots.”
Patrick Heneghan: “Water cannons please”
8 June 2017 (Election Day)
While most Labour supporters were working hard to get the vote out, senior staff joke about going out for drinks, away from Corbyn’s staff, to celebrate the expected defeat and mock Labour activists for pushing to get voters out. The tone became rather subdued as the exit polls started to come in showing, despite all their efforts to sabotage the campaign, Labour had won many more MPs and cost the Conservative Party their majority and that there might even be a chance of Labour forming a coalition government. Staff even expressed shock and disappointment at the result.
Patrick Heneghan: “We’ve got old star upstairs booked for tomorrow from 3ish”
Neil Fleming: “Loto/Number 10 invited? 😢”
Patrick Heneghan: “No.”
Neil Fleming: “Hahahaha”
Senior staff reacted with incredulousness, rather than support, to Labour activists campaigning on a train they were taking:
Tracey Allen: “Oh God. U can’t even get away from them on the train and read ur paper in peace. The Corbynistas are ‘knocking up’ on my train. Whole new strategy.”
Sarah Mulholland: <Media omitted>
Tracey Allen: “Apparently it’s the meeja wot lost it for Jezza”
EXIT POLLS START TO COME IN…
Julie Lawrence: “Patrick if anyone in war room needs some safe space time they can come to gso”
Tracey Allen: “More like in need of counseling!”
Emilie Oldknow: “What’s the atmosphere like there?”
Simon Mills: “Depends which side of the building!”
Patrick Heneghan: “Awful.. Help”
Simon Mills: “Split between euphoria and shock”
Julie Lawrence: “We are stunned and reeling.”
Tracey Allen: “They are cheering and we are silent and grey faced. Opposite to what I had been working towards for the last couple of years!! 😢”
Emilie Oldknow: “We have to be upbeat.. And not show it.. And at least we have loads of money now…”
Julie Lawrence: “Not if we go into coalition and lose short money… “Steve” walking the floor”
Emilie Oldknow: “Oh no”
Patrick Heneghan: “Everyone needs to smile… I’m going into room of death”
Emilie Oldknow: “Everyone needs to be very up beat”
Julie Lawrence: “Its hard but yes”
Iain McNicol: “I’m not in smiling and mixing and doing the 2nd floor.. Everyone else needs to do the same…It is going to be a long night.”
9 June 2017
The bitterness continued into the next day.
Sarah Mulholland: “Scottish friends at the count say Rhea Wolfson doing well on samples…”
Emilie Oldknow: “Brilliant.. Gets her off the NEC”
John Stolliday: “Eddie Izzard on”
Julie Lawrence: “One highlight”
John Stolliday: “If Ellie Reeves wins as well”
Fiona Stanton: “Emily thornberry is sooo horrendous”
Tracey Allen: “We will have to suck this up. The people have spoken. Bastards”
Sarah Mulholland: “What were our loses again – Winnick, Meale, Flello and Engel. Was there another I’ve missed? 😢”
Greg Cook: “No, the other losses were Copeland and Blenkinsopp’s seat”
Sarah Mulholland: “😢.. Thanks Greg”
Tracey Allen: “We have a letter ready to go to them on Monday Iain”
Sarah Mulholland: “Kensington and Chelsea? I’ve just woken up and confused by Twitter. Did we gain it???”
Patrick Heneghan: “Count again at 6pm”
Sarah Mulholland: “Omg. That Emma Coad is a grade 1 tool”
12 June 2017
On receiving a message of congratulations on the campaign, Director of GLU Stolliday responds “very interesting result…”
Anna Phillips messages Ellie Miller “remember [Joshua Carrington] is a trot” – “he seemed happy with the result this morn”. Noting that “josh won £80 on the GE result”, which meant “he was right and we were wrong”.
Ellie Miller: “should have bet on trump and brexit too. bet against what you want and at least make money out of it!
Anna Phillips: “yeah, at least you’d get something good from the disappointment”
13 June 2017
Senior staff find it difficult to stomach Labour MPs expressing their support for Jeremy Corbyn and commenting on the positive election campaign result.
Emilie Oldknow: “Loads of unity… It’s really embarrassing seeing all these people grovel.. Saying how he was brilliant”
Julie Lawrence: “Oh god.. Iain, understand Andy Kerr is calling you after 7. He’s on hols but he texted to say fine about the review. So will send email out tomorrow morning.”
Emilie Oldknow: “That sounds fine then”
Julie Lawrence: “😢.. Also Ann B in tomorrow for a property meeting so no doubt will be round GLU/GSO for catch up
Tracey Allen: “Grovelling. This is what we have been reduced to 😢”
Emilie Oldknow: “Angela Smith talked about how amazing the regional office was and they wouldn’t have done it without them”
Patrick Heneghan: “Did Mike A speak?”
Emilie Oldknow: “No.. Yvette. Grovelling”
15 June 2017
Senior staff continue to express bitterness over the positive election result.
John Stolliday: “A week since that exit poll…”
Julie Lawrence: “Post traumatic stress”
END [Part 2 of the Condensed Labour Party GLU report on anti-Semitism to be published later this week.]
