The Labour Party being the Labour Party and incapable of hitting a deadline, they decided to release their own version of Julius Caesar bang on a month after the Ides of March.
I doubt you’ve read it, and who could fault you? It’s about 800 pages, and Lee Child has a new paperback out.
This monster work is a collection of leaked emails, WhatsApp messages and other correspondence showing the struggles at the heart of the party.
It was put together as part of Labour’s submission to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, investigating them over anti-Semitism claims.
Leaked
But when Labour’s lawyers refused to release it, the report was mysteriously leaked. And I’ve read it. All of it.
I’ll be honest. I ran out of Netflix and there’s not much else to do really.
I read it in the style that most people who have anything to do with politics read books or reports like this one.
You scan the index really quickly looking for the names of people you know.
You then turn to those pages looking for something terrible written about them. Bad really, but that’s how it has worked since time began.
The antics revealed were hardly steeped in Roman-style intrigue. Julius Caesar? It was barely Frankie Howerd. Amateur hour. Embarrassing.
It spelled out the resistance to the Corbyn project that came from within the Labour Party itself, with senior officials conspiring among themselves in their attempts to derail things.
One of the most damning sections shows the party’s probe into anti-Semitism was sabotaged by staff.
It raises questions about what could have been different. And what motivated people who work for the party, and are handsomely rewarded for it, to work against their colleagues.
It’s not a good look, to say the least.
Neither is the language used in various emails to describe Corbyn’s team.
Corbyn’s senior adviser Seumas Milne is branded a “mentalist” his chief of staff, Karie Murphy, as “Medusa” “crazy” and Diane Abbott “repulsive.”
On a side note, it raises the question, how arrogant do you have to be to write those things down? There is a stratum in politics at the moment of people who feel that, after watching a couple of episodes of The Thick of It, they are masters of the dark arts.
Without fail, usually within seconds of meeting them, they describe themselves as politics addicts. They’re half right. They share the recklessness and sweaty desperation of the addict.
Anyways. The report. The left of the party has called for a reckoning. The right are more concerned with who was behind the leak.
The unions are circling in the background. New leader Sir Keir is faced with a difficult decision just weeks into the job. I doubt he was expecting a smooth ride – but this came earlier than anyone thought.
So what to do? Sir Keir’s early holding statement was met with indifference. He has promised to investigate not just the contents of the report, but where it came from. This middle course made no one happy.
He has, however, little choice right now but to use caution and tread lightly.
The modern Labour Party is, after all, a maze built on a minefield.
