Labour party staff have no right of reply – Ayesha Hazarika
After a bruising leadership election which saw the Labour party take lumps out of each other on Twitter, on television, in green rooms and at hustings all across the country, it is finally over. But the worst of it might not be.
How the party moves forward is now the only question that matters and both sides will be judged on the actions we take in the weeks and months ahead.
In my view the parliamentary Labour party will have to accept the result, as raw, angry and indeed humiliated as they may feel. The uncomfortable truth is that the leadership is likely to have its second mandate in a year. But I would hope that Jeremy Corbyn has the foresight, emotional intelligence, strategic wit and compassion to understand that seeking political gangland revenge will serve him and the party poorly.
Talk of deselecting decent hardworking members of parliament who are Labour to their core will not bring about much-needed unity. I make this plea to Team Corbyn to not go down that route. And I make an even bigger plea – please do not go after party staff.
I signed a letter earlier this summer about attacks on party staff and I beg the leadership team to dwell on the sentiments it set out. Labour party staff are the most hard-working, decent and damned loyal people you can hope to work with. That is the culture. I worked closely with staffers for almost 10 years when I worked for deputy leader Harriet Harman and never ceased to be amazed by their professionalism, selflessness and devotion. They are loyal to a point of being blindly so. That is what they are conditioned to be like. Attacking them in public in any way is also deeply unfair – as staff, they have no right of reply like politicians do.
Last year, no one had seen anything like the surge of new members and registered supporters. While there was well-documented panic and anxiety from some, the staff – led by Iain McNicol and assisted by hugely impressive executive directors Emilie Oldknow and Patrick Heneghan – remained cool-headed and with a relentless focus on getting the job done in a way which was scrupulously fair even if it meant holidays getting cancelled and setting up a shift system so that ballot papers could be processed 24 hours a day in the face of hostility. The irony is that those staff were often hugely unpopular with those in the party who did not want Corbyn to win, but they put on their tin hats and got on with their job – which was implementing the rules as decided by the National Executive Committee.
So I hope we will see some of the kinder politics in action in the weeks ahead and that the leadership chooses compassion rather than a ‘clearout’. We are, after all, the party of the workers. And if there is an early general election, we will all desperately need every single one of those staff, regardless of what camp we are currently in.
Ayesha Hazarika is a broadcaster and former adviser to Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman
I don’t think anyone is going after Labour staff. What they are looking to challenge is whether the Labour staff have been instructed by their managers to spend huge amounts of time eating into limited Labour resources on bloated/exaggerated claims about Trots. Surely the national count of about 250 Trots. + 1 does not justify spending a chunk of my additional contributions (half of which I have now decided to divert to effective campaigns).
The people responsible need to be accountable for those actions and not be allowed to use diversionary measure of blaming the staff who are only accountable to them. If only a few of those could come out and declare more of the silliness they were asked to work on.
The core coup plotters should be deselected. CLPs should keep a watchful eye on the behaviour of the other Tory-lite MPs.
“..seeking political gangland revenge..”?
Which planet are you on? Jeremy Corbyn has consistently acted in a fair minded and non aggressive way throughout the most vicious attacks we have ever witnessed on a UK Party Leader.
Its time for Progress to either get stuck in and get labour, with its (yet again) overwhelmingly elected, new Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, into office in 10 Downing Street, or to close up its shutters.
Which is it to be?
Very good article. I hope the PLP and various Labour Lords will have the foresight, emotional intelligence, strategic wit and compassion to understand that continuing with their current approach is self indulgent, extreme and poisonous to the party. They need to show they have learned and that there has been an underlying shift in opinion in the party which they should accept. They cannot continue like Canute ordering the tide to turn.