Thread by @EL4JC

Stark headline: 'Labour's hate files expose Corbyn's anti-semite army'. But does the Sunday Times story itself live up to the alarming headline? Let's take a look.

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Obviously EL4C isn't privy to inside information to establish whether the Sunday Times' claims are true. Labour has disputed the figures given and said that emails are selectively quoted. We're just going by what the Sunday Times has itself published.

The most eye-catching claim is that "members investigated for posting such online comments as “Heil Hitler”, “F*** the Jews” and “Jews are the problem” have not been expelled, even though the party received the complaints a year ago."

Note the careful wording.

It gives the impression the people who made these comments have been let off. That's para 2 on the front page.

But an accompanying article inside the paper reveals that actually they haven't been let off, the cases are still going through the system because of the "backlog".🤔

The system should be faster, but we shouldn't attack due process.

People who apparently said completely unacceptable things are now subject to the disciplinary process - which is slow, but they're being dealt with, according to the Sunday Times itself, if you read it closely. 👀

The second big claim is that Corbyn's office, LOTO, interfered in complaints.

The evidence is an email saying Corbyn's political secretary should "have an overview of all complaints that involve elected politicians or candidates."

It strikes us there’s a big difference between having an "overview" of cases that involve labour representatives, where plans would need to be made to replace them etc..... and interfering in the complaints process itself?

Indeed, the accompanying article in the Sunday Times reveals that this email they quote was for the purpose of "explicitly marking the end of the interim period" between General Secretaries, when LOTO was asked for advice on cases - a practice Jennie Formby ended.

So an email that presumably said LOTO would no longer give advice, but that if cases involved elected reps they'd like a heads up, is being used as evidence that LOTO continued to interfere!

We don't know if the heads up idea was even agreed as the Sunday Times doesn't say.

Yet the Sunday Times says the email "reduces to rubble claims Corbyn himself made" that if a complaint is made “it doesn’t come here. I don’t involve myself in the complaint at all”.

Only, it doesn't. It seems to confirm he isn't involved & that's been made explicit internally.

Bear in mind, that quote from Corbyn comes from a private conversation between him and Hodge secretly recorded by her without permission and now given to the Sunday Times to quote verbatim. 😉

The third bit of news is the numbers. "863 complaints overall", half awaiting resolution.

The Sunday Times implies that's comprehensive because it's from a leaked database. Labour disputes the numbers. But, if true, they represent 0.17% of the party membership.

Some "army"!

When Labour recently released its own figure of 673 complaints it was dismissed as an underestimate & a cover up. Some claimed there are 10K complaints.

This puts that to bed. As a proportion of the membership the number of complaints is tiny. 1 is too many but 0.17% is small.

(The difference between the Sunday Times figure and the Labour one might be due to the period covered - the Sunday Times doesn't say over what period the 863 complaints were received, which is a bit lax.)

On the 0.17% figure, if there are 863 complaints that doesn't mean all are guilty. The real proportion will be much lower.

Of course there will be other cases that haven't been reported yet, although people are constantly trawling social media for evidence.

So this figure from the Sunday Times, intended to be damning, actually bolsters the case that while there's a nasty fringe of antisemitism that must be dealt with, there's still, despite a comprehensive leak, no empirical evidence that antisemitism is "widespread" in Labour.

Expect commentators and bad faith actors to ignore these facts.