Millions of column inches have been filled with Partygate. When government imposes draconian measures on your civil liberties through legislation and then ignores them themselves, this is understandable and in the public interest, so more than "fair game".
I have noticed however that Labour sleaze gets rather less attention. With Rachel Reeves and Jess Phillips both under investigation, given their high profiles, one might reasonably expect a legacy media storm of "foul". Not so.
This got me thinking. I am aware that others maintain assiduously details of all Labour's known transgressions major and minor from Westminster to West Bromwich and one tweet later, they shared their intelligence with me.
The only surprises were:
- The sheer scale of criminal activity and creative accounting;
- How little of it is reported outside of right leaning often alternative (typically social) media.
Suffice to say, to publish it all would require lengthy serialisation.
This is not Diane Abbott and John McDonnell pulling out of a "Stop the War" rally. Or Angela Rayner's "scum" rant.
It is not Dawn Butler or Lloyd Russell-Moyle's suspension from the House of Commons for unparliamentary behaviour. It is not Keith Vaz's cocaine orgy with male prostitutes.
Nor is it Beijing Barry Gardiner taking hundreds of thousands of pounds from an agent of the Chinese Communist Party and giving her son a job with unrestricted access to the parliamentary estate.
It is not even 14 Labour MPs blaming NATO for the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the exposé by Tom Harwood on Paulette Hamilton, Labour candidate in the safe Birmingham Erdington seat (as disturbing as that was).
These are criminal acts, most of which have led to jail time. For every Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitken and Neil Hamilton, there is a Nazir Ahmed, David Chaytor and Elliot Morley.
I am grateful to everyone who provided intelligence but must give mentions to 2 people in particular.
- Gill Sewell freely provided a wealth of detail rich background, for which I am eternally grateful;
- Jay Reacher has been maintaining a list of many of these indiscretions on his Twitter feed for some time and multiple Twitterbuds pointed me his way.
Here are a selection of Labour MPs and a Lord who have all received criminal convictions and with one obvious exception, imprisonment.
1. Claudia Webbe, the Leicester East MP (who succeeded Keith Vaz) was handed a suspended 10-week jail sentence and 200 hours of community service for threatening an acid attack on a woman, who cuckolded her. Time for a recall petition perhaps;
2. Fiona Onasanya, the former MP for Peterborough, who was sentenced to 3 months in prison for perverting the court of justice after she lied to police to avoid a speeding conviction;
3. David Chaytor, the former MP for Ramsbottom who tried to use his ailing Rossendale based mother as a cover for fiddling his parliamentary expenses and received an 18-month jail sentence;
4. Eric Illsley, the former Barnsley MP who was jailed for 12 months for dishonestly obtaining some £14,500 of taxpayers' money over a 3 year period;
5. Denis MacShane was the MP for Rotherham for 18 years and served as Europe Minister under Tony Blair between 2002 and 2005. He deliberately created misleading and deceptive invoices totalling £12,900 and was sentenced to 6 months in prison. Who knows what part he played in the cover of up of child abuse by Pakistani Wahhabi Muslim rape gangs in his constituency;
6. Jim Devine, former MP for Livingston was sentenced to 16 months' imprisonment for expenses fraud. The former trade union convenor and former Chairman of the Scottish Labour Party made false claims totalling £8,385;
7. Elliot Morley, former MP for Scunthorpe and Minister of State for Climate Change and the Environment was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment on two counts of false accounting for expenses fraud totalling over £30,000. He was subsequently expelled from the Privy Council, the first such expulsion since 1921.
8. Disgraced "Lord" Nazir Ahmed was found guilty in January 2022 of the attempted rape of a girl and of a serious sexual assault upon a boy. On 4 February 2022, Mr Justice Lavender sentenced Ahmed to five years and six months in prison.
In short, threats of violence, attempted rape and sexual abuse, lies and repetitive acts of fraud. This is the Labour Party that Keir Starmer is trying to lead out of the political wilderness.
As former Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir Keir will be familiar with being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.
Labour is riven with identity politics. Momentum still has a vice like grip over many of its power bases, not least the NEC. They cannot even shortlist a candidate to replace the late Jack Dromey in a seat they have held for 77 years who is unsure whether the bullet or the ballot box is the way forward for black people to progress the United Kingdom.
I hate echo chambers and pile ons in equal measure. I believe in balanced and fair reporting of the facts, not just those which are convenient.
It is well documented in previous posts that I am no Borisphile and am no longer a member of the Conservative & Unionist Party, so in compiling this piece, I have stuck to my values. Given the weight of available factual content, it was not difficult.
After much thought, I have settled on this piece remaining, for now, as a "stand alone" to give balance to the Partygate narrative. That said if there is appetite to rip the band aid off Labour's misconduct epidemic in more depth, I will consider a serialisation of their perpetual misconduct.