Dr. Sid Lukkassen fantaseerde op 24 maart 2019 in een Whatsappgesprek met Jurriaan Maessen openlijk over het ‘uitschakelen’ van mensen op bepaalde ‘posten’ zodat die ‘posten’ daarna kunnen worden ingenomen door mensen die ‘niet uit dezelfde bubbel worden gerekruteerd’. Ook vroeg Lukkassen zich af of ‘aanslagen nodig zijn’ om bepaalde zaken ‘voor elkaar te krijgen’.
Opvallend genoeg gaat het bij die bepaalde zaken om Lukassen zelf die, volgens eigen zeggen, ‘de meest invloedrijke politiek denker van Nederland en Vlaanderen’ is maar ‘alsnog zelden tot nooit in talkshows of kranten’.
De screenshots van het Ahatsappgesprek tussen Lukkassen en Maessen zijn in handen van Jan Dijkgraaf die ze publiceerde in zijn dagelijkse Briefje van Jan.
Desgevraagd reageert Sid Lukkassen op zijn uitspraken als volgt:
“Als je de hele discussie leest dan zit de vork wel genuanceerder in de steel. Het eindigt juist met de conclusie dat we geweld liever niet moeten willen. Ook is het meer een filosofisch gesprek over een aanbrekende natuurtoestand a la Hobbes.”
Een uitgebreide reactie geeft Lukkassen in een video die onder dit artikel is te zien. In deze video benadrukt hij tegen geweld te zijn en raadt hij het gebruik van geweld expliciet af.
TPO.nl staat niet achter de uitspraken van Lukkassen maar blijft er bij dat iedereen de vrijheid heeft een mening te uiten dus ook Sid Lukkassen. Zolang het bij alleen een, zij het afkeurenswaardige, gedachte blijft die zich niet verder vertaalt in de praktijk is er voor TPO geen reden Sid Lukkassen voortaan als auteur te weigeren of verdere actie te ondernemen.
Meer Sid Lukkassen kunt u hier lezen. Doneren aan Sid Lukkassen kan daar. Of neem gewoon een TPO+-abonnement.
The media vilification of the government adviser is about far more than social distancing
‘Neil Ferguson has been under attack since his team suggested hundreds of thousands of deaths were possible.’ Photograph: Reuters
Wed 6 May 2020 14.05 BST
T
he newspaper frenzy over Prof Neil Ferguson’s love life is just the latest example of a scientist who has been targeted for confronting parts of Britain’s political-media complex with evidence that it finds too difficult to accept.
There is no doubt that Ferguson, who sat on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) before his resignation, was wrong to ignore the government’s social distancing rules. He has admitted as much, even if he did believe that he was at low risk of spreading the Sars-Cov-2 virus because he had already recovered from Covid-19.
But today’s lurid front-page headlines follow a campaign to discredit him by those ideologically opposed to government interventions, and who have used such tactics against scientists in other fields, particularly climate change.
It is a further sign that some media commentators and politicians favour a version of Britain in which politicians and newspaper editors dictate the public’s understanding of biology and physics.
Ferguson has been under attack ever since his research team’s modelling suggested in mid-March that hundreds of thousands of deaths in the UK from Covid-19 were possible if stronger efforts were not made to curb the growing epidemic.
Within a week, the prime minister announced the current lockdown measures. The move was perceived as a U-turn because the government’s chief scientific adviser had days earlier suggested that allowing widespread infection might be an option to achieve “herd immunity” across the country.
Ferguson’s contribution was initially praised, but it was not long before his reputation was under assault from parts of the media traditionally sceptical of a so-called “nanny state”.
On 28 March, the Daily Telegraph published an article alleging that “the scientist whose calculations about the potentially devastating impact of the coronavirus directly led to the countrywide lockdown has been criticised in the past for flawed research”.
The story relied on the views of a handful of critics of how Ferguson’s models were used by the then Labour government to tackle the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The article failed to mention that Ferguson received an OBE in recognition for his important role in the crisis, or that he was afterwards elected a fellow of the prestigious Academy of Medical Sciences.
The next day, Peter Hitchens, in the Mail on Sunday, described the lockdown as “mass house arrest” and identified Ferguson as being “one of those largely responsible for the original panic”.
A few days later the Wall Street Journal published an article by two British commentators that argued “the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically demonstrated the limits of scientific modelling to predict the future”. It singled out Ferguson’s work and complained that “reasonable people might wonder whether something made with 13-year-old, undocumented computer code should be used to justify shutting down the economy”.
Bizarrely, this article was written by Benny Peiser and Andrew Montford, the director and deputy director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was set up by Nigel Lawson in 2009 to lobby against climate change policies. The foundation has a track record of attempting to discredit climate models that show rising greenhouse gas levels risk warming the world to dangerous levels.
The promoters of climate change denial, which include some newspapers, are well used to attacking scientists whose work they do not like. Lawson’s foundation was launched just a few days after the publication in late November 2009 of emails that had been hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. He and other so-called “sceptics” falsely suggested that the emails revealed misconduct by climate scientists.
Within a few hours of his work being misrepresented around the world, the head of the unit, Prof Phil Jones, started to receive threats against his life and the lives of his family. He later admitted that he had even contemplated suicide before numerous inquiries cleared him of any scientific wrongdoing.
It is fortunate that Jones did not succumb after such a concerted assault on his reputation. A similar ordeal apparently caused Dr David Kelly to take his own life after the biological weapons expert was hounded for revealing that the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction had been exaggerated by Tony Blair’s government.
Many other scientists in the UK working on issues that have implications for government policy know what it is like to be vilified, both publicly and privately, for their findings. They are regularly attacked by many of the British media commentators who are currently joining the pile-on to Ferguson.
It is time to put a stop to these media lynch mobs that risk driving Britain back into the Dark Ages. We must continue to base our decisions on the advice of experts such as Ferguson, and reject the irrational arguments of those who want political dogma to trump evidence.
• Bob Ward is policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics
The human cost of the climate crisis will hit harder, wider and sooner than previously believed, according to a study that shows a billion people will either be displaced or forced to endure insufferable heat for every additional 1C rise in the global temperature.
In a worst-case scenario of accelerating emissions, areas currently home to a third of the world’s population will be as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara within 50 years, the paper warns. Even in the most optimistic outlook, 1.2 billion people will fall outside the comfortable “climate niche” in which humans have thrived for at least 6,000 years.
The authors of the study said they were “floored” and “blown away” by the findings because they had not expected our species to be so vulnerable.
“The numbers are flabbergasting. I literally did a double take when I first saw them, ” Tim Lenton, of Exeter University, said. “I’ve previously studied climate tipping points, which are usually considered apocalyptic. But this hit home harder. This puts the threat in very human terms.”
Instead of looking at climate change as a problem of physics or economics, the paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines how it affects the human habitat.
The vast majority of humanity has always lived in regions where the average annual temperatures are around 6C (43F) to 28C (82F), which is ideal for human health and food production. But this sweet spot is shifting and shrinking as a result of manmade global heating, which drops more people into what the authors describe as “near unliveable” extremes.
Humanity is particularly sensitive because we are concentrated on land – which is warming faster than the oceans – and because most future population growth will be in already hot regions of Africa and Asia. As a result of these demographic factors, the average human will experience a temperature increase of 7.5C when global temperatures reach 3C, which is forecast towards the end of this century.
At that level, about 30% of the world’s population would live in extreme heat – defined as an average temperature of 29C (84F). These conditions are extremely rare outside the most scorched parts of the Sahara, but with global heating of 3C they are projected to envelop 1.2 billion people in India, 485 million in Nigeria and more than 100 million in each of Pakistan, Indonesia and Sudan.
This would add enormously to migration pressures and pose challenges to food production systems.
“I think it is fair to say that average temperatures over 29C are unliveable. You’d have to move or adapt. But there are limits to adaptation. If you have enough money and energy, you can use air conditioning and fly in food and then you might be OK. But that is not the case for most people,” said one of the lead authors of the study, Prof Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University.
An ecologist by training, Scheffer said the study started as a thought-experiment. He had previously studied the climate distribution of rainforests and savanna and wondered what the result would be if he applied the same methodology to humans. “We know that most creatures’ habitats are limited by temperature. For example, penguins are only found in cold water and corals only in warm water. But we did not expect humans to be so sensitive. We think of ourselves as very adaptable because we use clothes, heating and air conditioning. But, in fact, the vast majority of people live – and have always lived – inside a climate niche that is now moving as never before.”
We were blown away by the magnitude,” he said. “There will be more change in the next 50 years than in the past 6,000 years.”
The authors said their findings should spur policymakers to accelerate emission cuts and work together to cope with migration because each degree of warming that can be avoided will save a billion people from falling out of humanity’s climate niche.
“Clearly we will need a global approach to safeguard our children against the potentially enormous social tensions the projected change could invoke,” another of the authors, Xu Chi of Nanjing University, said.
Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past
At Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 2011, from left: James E. Staley, at the time a senior JPMorgan executive; former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers; Mr. Epstein; Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder; and Boris Nikolic, who was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s science adviser.
Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who committed suicide in prison, managed to lure an astonishing array of rich, powerful and famous men into his orbit.
Few, though, compared in prestige and power to the world’s second-richest person, a brilliant and intensely private luminary: Bill Gates. And unlike many others, Mr. Gates started the relationship after Mr. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.
Mr. Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, whose $100 billion-plus fortune has endowed the world’s largest charitable organization, has done his best to minimize his connections to Mr. Epstein. “I didn’t have any business relationship or friendship with him,” he told The Wall Street Journal last month.
In fact, beginning in 2011, Mr. Gates met with Mr. Epstein on numerous occasions — including at least three times at Mr. Epstein’s palatial Manhattan townhouse, and at least once staying late into the night, according to interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the relationship, as well as documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Employees of Mr. Gates’s foundation also paid multiple visits to Mr. Epstein’s mansion. And Mr. Epstein spoke with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and JPMorgan Chase about a proposed multibillion-dollar charitable fund — an arrangement that had the potential to generate enormous fees for Mr. Epstein.
“His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me,” Mr. Gates emailed colleagues in 2011, after his first get-together with Mr. Epstein.
“It was in no way meant to convey a sense of interest or approval,” she said.
Over and over, Mr. Epstein managed to cultivate close relationships with some of the world’s most powerful men. He lured them with the whiff of money and the proximity to other powerful, famous or wealthy people — so much so that many looked past his reputation for sexual misconduct. And the more people he drew into his circle, the easier it was for him to attract others.
Melanie Walker, who had known Mr. Epstein since 1992, joined the Gates Foundation as senior program officer in 2006.Credit...Copyright by World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
Mr. Gates and the $51 billion Gates Foundation have championed the well-being of young girls. By the time Mr. Gates and Mr. Epstein first met, Mr. Epstein had served jail time for soliciting prostitution from a minor and was required to register as a sex offender.
Ms. Arnold said that “high-profile people” had introduced Mr. Gates and Mr. Epstein and that they had met multiple times to discuss philanthropy.
“Bill Gates regrets ever meeting with Epstein and recognizes it was an error in judgment to do so,” Ms. Arnold said. “Gates recognizes that entertaining Epstein’s ideas related to philanthropy gave Epstein an undeserved platform that was at odds with Gates’s personal values and the values of his foundation.”
The First Meeting
Two members of Mr. Gates’s inner circle — Boris Nikolic and Melanie Walker — were close to Mr. Epstein and at times functioned as intermediaries between the two men.
Ms. Walker met Mr. Epstein in 1992, six months after graduating from the University of Texas. Mr. Epstein, who was an adviser to Mr. Wexner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret, told Ms. Walker that he could land her an audition for a modeling job there, according to Ms. Walker. She later traveled to New York and stayed in a Manhattan apartment building that Mr. Epstein owned. After she graduated from medical school, she said, Mr. Epstein hired her as a science adviser in 1998.
Ms. Walker later met Steven Sinofsky, a senior executive at Microsoft who became president of its Windows division, and moved to Seattle to be with him. In 2006, she joined the Gates Foundation with the title of senior program officer.
At the foundation, Ms. Walker met and befriended Mr. Nikolic, a native of what is now Croatia and a former fellow at Harvard Medical School who was the foundation’s science adviser. Mr. Nikolic and Mr. Gates frequently traveled and socialized together.
Ms. Walker, who had remained in close touch with Mr. Epstein, introduced him to Mr. Nikolic, and the men became friendly.
Mr. Epstein and Mr. Gates first met face to face on the evening of Jan. 31, 2011, at Mr. Epstein’s townhouse on the Upper East Side. They were joined by Dr. Eva Andersson-Dubin, a former Miss Sweden whom Mr. Epstein had once dated, and her 15-year-old daughter. (Dr. Andersson-Dubin’s husband, the hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, was a friend and business associate of Mr. Epstein’s. The Dubins declined to comment.)
The gathering started at 8 and lasted several hours, according to Ms. Arnold, Mr. Gates’s spokeswoman. Mr. Epstein subsequently boasted about the meeting in emails to friends and associates. “Bill’s great,” he wrote in one, reviewed by The Times.
Mr. Gates in 2012 with Mr. Nikolic. The two men frequently traveled and socialized together. Mr. Nikolic befriended Mr. Epstein after Ms. Walker introduced them.Credit...Paul Morigi/Getty Images
Mr. Gates, in turn, praised Mr. Epstein’s charm and intelligence. Emailing colleagues the next day, he said: “A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late.”
Mr. Gates soon saw Mr. Epstein again. At a TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., attendees spotted the two men engaged in private conversation.
Later that spring, on May 3, 2011, Mr. Gates again visited Mr. Epstein at his New York mansion, according to emails about the meeting and a photograph reviewed by The Times.
The photo, taken in Mr. Epstein’s marble-clad entrance hall, shows a beaming Mr. Epstein — in blue-and-gold slippers and a fleece decorated with an American flag — flanked by luminaries. On his right: James E. Staley, at the time a senior JPMorgan executive, and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. On his left: Mr. Nikolic and Mr. Gates, smiling and wearing gray slacks and a navy sweater.
A Vast Charitable Fund
Around that time, the Gates Foundation and JPMorgan were teaming up to create the Global Health Investment Fund. Its goal was to provide “individual and institutional investors the opportunity to finance late-stage global health technologies that have the potential to save millions of lives in low-income countries.”
As the details of the fund were being hammered out, Mr. Staley told his JPMorgan colleagues that Mr. Epstein wanted to be brought into the discussions, according to two people familiar with the talks. Mr. Epstein was an important JPMorgan customer, holding millions of dollars in accounts at the bank and referring a procession of wealthy individuals to become clients of the company.
Mr. Epstein pitched an idea for a separate charitable fund to JPMorgan officials, including Mr. Staley, and to Mr. Gates’s adviser Mr. Nikolic. He envisioned a vast fund, seeded with the Gates Foundation’s money, that would focus on health projects around the world, according to five people involved in or briefed on the talks, including current and former Gates Foundation and JPMorgan employees. In addition to the Gates money, Mr. Epstein planned to round up donations from his wealthy friends and, hopefully, from JPMorgan’s richest clients.
Mr. Epstein thought he could personally benefit. He circulated a four-page proposal that included a suggestion that he be paid 0.3 percent of whatever money he raised, according to one person who saw the proposal. If Mr. Epstein had raised $10 billion, for example, that would have amounted to $30 million in fees.
Ms. Arnold said Mr. Gates and the foundation had been unaware that Mr. Epstein had been seeking any fee. She said Mr. Epstein “did propose to Bill Gates and then foundation officials ideas that he promised would unleash hundreds of billions for global health-related work.”
In late 2011, at Mr. Gates’s instruction, the foundation sent a team to Mr. Epstein’s townhouse to have a preliminary talk about philanthropic fund-raising, according to three people who were there. Mr. Epstein told his guests that if they searched his name on the internet they might conclude he was a bad person but that what he had done — soliciting prostitution from an underage girl — was no worse than “stealing a bagel,” two of the people said.
Mr. Gates, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. He was unaware that Mr. Epstein was seeking fees in his proposal for a charitable fund, Mr. Gates’s spokeswoman said.Credit...Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters
Some of the Gates Foundation employees said they had been unaware of Mr. Epstein’s criminal record and had been shocked to learn that the foundation was working with a sex offender. They worried that it could seriously damage the foundation’s reputation.
In early 2012, another Gates Foundation team met Mr. Epstein at his mansion. He claimed that he had access to trillions of dollars of his clients’ money that he could put in the proposed charitable fund — a figure so preposterous that it left his visitors doubting Mr. Epstein’s credibility.
Flying to Florida
Mr. Gates and Mr. Epstein kept seeing each other. Ms. Arnold would not say how many times the two had met.
In March 2013, Mr. Gates flew on Mr. Epstein’s Gulfstream plane from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to Palm Beach, Fla., according to a flight manifest. Ms. Arnold said Mr. Gates — who has his own $40 million jet — hadn’t been aware it was Mr. Epstein’s plane.
Six months later, Mr. Nikolic and Mr. Gates were in New York for a meeting related to Schrödinger, a pharmaceutical software company in which Mr. Gates had a large investment. On that trip, Mr. Epstein and Mr. Gates met for dinner and discussed the Gates Foundation and philanthropy, Ms. Arnold said.
And in October 2014, Mr. Gates donated $2 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. University officials described the gift in internal emails as having been “directed” by Mr. Epstein. Ms. Arnold said, “There was no intention, nor explicit ask, for the funding to be controlled in any manner by Epstein.”
Soon after, the relationship between Mr. Epstein and Mr. Gates appears to have cooled. The charitable fund that had been discussed with the Gates Foundation never materialized. Mr. Epstein complained to an acquaintance at the end of 2014 that Mr. Gates had stopped talking to him, according to a person familiar with the discussion.
The relationship, however, wasn’t entirely severed. At least two senior Gates Foundation officials maintained contacts with Mr. Epstein until late 2017, according to former foundation employees.
Ms. Arnold said the foundation was not aware of any such contact. “Over time, Gates and his team realized Epstein’s capabilities and ideas were not legitimate and all contact with Epstein was discontinued,” she said.
Days before Mr. Epstein hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell on Aug. 10, he amended his will and named Mr. Nikolic as a fallback executor in the event that one of the two primary executors was unable to serve. (Mr. Nikolic has declined in court proceedings to serve as executor.)
Mr. Nikolic, who is now running a venture capital firm with Mr. Gates as one of his investors, said he was “shocked” to be named in Mr. Epstein’s will. He said in a statement to The Times: “I deeply regret ever meeting Mr. Epstein.”
Set up to fail? Labour’s not so independent Inquiry.
We have been sent this critical analysis of the Terms of Reference for the leaked Labour Party Report investigation by a party member.
The Terms of Reference, discussed below, “appear to demonstrate some fundamental failings on the part of the leadership to put in place a robust process”.
“The nature of these flaws is such as to fatally undermine any claim the inquiry can make to independence, and taints its activities and conclusions before it even starts…”
Last month, apparently unnoticed by the mainstream media (with the somewhat surprising exception of Sky News) outrage erupted across the UK left following disclosure of a leaked report of an internal investigation of the Labour Party (“The Work Of The Labour Party’s Governance And Legal Unit In Relation To Antisemitism, 2014-2019”). The report appeared to include direct material evidence of the conduct of party personnel during the period of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
Many, from both within the party and more broadly across the political spectrum, were deeply troubled by the implications of the findings in the leaked report.
First, because this substantial piece of work seemed to include material evidence of a culture which inhibited, even sabotaged, the then Leadership’s drive to root out antisemitism from the party – evidence directly relevant to the ongoing investigation being conducted by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
Second because it seemed to expose evidence of a wider culture within the party apparently operating to subvert the election campaigns run by Labour, undermine the leadership and destroy the prospects of a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn.
Keir Starmer and Angela Raynor swiftly and correctly responded to the outrage with the following statement:
“We have seen a copy of an apparently internal report about the work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism. The content and the release of the report into the public domain raise a number of matters of serious concern.
We will, therefore, commission an urgent independent investigation into this matter.
This investigation will be instructed to look at three areas.
First, the background and circumstances in which the report was commissioned and the process involved.
Second, the contents and wider culture and practices referred to in the report.
Third, the circumstances in which the report was put into the public domain.
We have also asked for immediate sight of any legal advice the Labour Party has already received about the report.
In the meantime, we ask everyone concerned to refrain from drawing conclusions before the investigation is complete and we will be asking the General Secretary to put measures in place to protect the welfare of party members and party staff who are concerned or affected by this report.”
Many of us took comfort from the promise of a truly independent investigation. It promised a balanced and transparent examination of what has been going on inside one of our main political parties, untainted by political manipulation following the change in leadership within the party. A chance to break the conspiracy rumours, or prove them once and for all, to clean house and reset the party under its new leader.
Well, we now know more about the proposed investigation into Labour’s leaked report and it does not make good reading.
Labour’s NEC has appointed barrister Martin Forde QC to lead, with the support of three Labour peers. Terms of Reference have been disclosed. These appear to demonstrate some fundamental failings on the part of the leadership to put in place a robust process. The nature of these flaws is such as to fatally undermine any claim the inquiry can make to independence, and taints its activities and conclusions before it even starts.
* First, the panel consists of 3 Labour Peers. This irredeemably compromises any claim to independence.
* Second, It is to be led by a legal figure, who, though distinguished in his field, appears to have no material experience of conducting exercises of this kind, based on his Chamber’s published CV. He is without doubt a distinguished and accomplished lawyer. However, his CV suggests little which would make him the obvious choice to front a major investigation like this one.
* Third, the terms of reference are flawed and narrow in that they do not clearly enunciate or oblige investigation into some of the key issues to have emerged from the report and instead suggest a focus for the investigation which centres on alleged racism, sexism and discrimination (which may well result in the neglect of these other key issues for the reasons set out below). Moreover they leave the scope of the inquiry to the discretion of Labour Peers. This is obviously unacceptable.
Puzzlingly, commenters on the left currently appear to be ignoring most of these key failings.
It is time for people to speak out urgently.
The presence of Labour Peers
The issue is not, as widely reported on leftist blogs and social media chatter, just the identity of the chosen Lords (as flawed as that clearly is).
The issue is independence.
Replacing one Peer for another would not remedy this issue. The only solution is that no one affiliated with the Labour Party should sit on the panel. How can the inquiry ever claim any independence with senior Labour Party figures on it? This currently clearly runs a significant risk – indeed the likelihood – of political manipulation.
This is a very unusual and completely inappropriate step in the conduct of a significant independent investigation. It makes the inquiry political and taints any findings.
If Labour wants to put this issue to rest by inspiring confidence in its genuine desire to consider the issues fully – this is not the way to do it. If Keir Starmer is to fulfil his promise of an independent inquiry – this is not the way to do it.
The chair may call for evidence on structures from whomsoever he wishes, but if he needs ”wingperson/persons” on the panel these should, and would typically be, other trusted senior independent figure(s) from outside the party.
His CV appears to include no experience of leading a panel of investigation at all.
His practice appears to be as a defending barrister, predominantly in the field of medical law. He appears to focus on defending doctors in disciplinary hearings. London is not short of legal personnel amply qualified and experienced to run this process. In that context, the appointment does not inspire confidence that this choice is suitable.
The logic of his appointment is difficult to justify.
The Terms of Reference.
Third, an analysis of the Terms of Reference (as published on Labourlist) shows them to be flawed and narrow – leaving the possibility that key issues will remain uninvestigated.
The key paragraph as to the ambit of the investigation is as follows:
“1. The truth or otherwise of the main allegations in the report (the panel shall determine which are the most significant allegations which require investigation but they shall include the extent of racist, sexist and other discriminatory culture within Labour Party workplaces, the attitudes and conduct of the senior staff of the Labour Party, and their relationships with the elected leadership of the Labour Party); “
This appears to be carefully drafted to appear expansive – yet it operates to close down investigation. The paragraph excludes, for example, consideration of:
The relationship between “senior staff” and others within the party outside the “elected leadership”. This would exclude, for example, any investigation of collusion between staff members and, for example, MPs and their campaign teams, or senior ex members of the Blair administration or their PR teams, or members of the House of Lords. This is a key problem because if these allegations have substance it is necessary to establish whether these were just “bad apples” or “using loose talk but doing their jobs” or (as suspected by some) part of a broader conspiracy which could well have included MP and members of the HL, or at least have drawn comfort from such high ranking individuals (this being in the wake of and consistent with the toxic culture of the so called “Chicken Coup” against Corbyn). Any consideration of this key issue is very likely to be ruled out by the Terms of Reference as drafted.
The attitudes and conduct of members of the disciplinary team who were not “senior staff”. Query what this means. Does it, for example, include the investigators who played a key role? Is it just Iain McNicol? Why limit the inquiry in this way when the issue is the “culture” within the party?
Query even, whether this remit includes looking at relationships with officials working for the leader. It certainly does not appear to directly require investigation of the relationship of the team with the likes of John McDonnell or his staff.
Instead, the focus of the paragraph is placed squarely on racism, sexism and discriminatory culture.
Given the involvement of the Chair with the Windrush Compensation Scheme, it seems not unreasonable to suppose that race and discrimination is set to be a key focus. The Terms of Reference are clearly intended to guide him in that direction.
As serious as that allegation is, it misses several key points.
The key issues which party members and the public need answers to – whatever the nature of the behaviour – include the following:
Were the events accurately described and did they in fact undermine the fight on antisemitism and/or have the effect of misleading the public and/or the leadership regarding the success of the disciplinary process?
Is there evidence of an intention to sabotage of our democratic party and institutions, and is there evidence of an intention to subvert the Labour election race(s) and the leadership’s chosen campaign?
Did the alleged conduct (including the alleged reallocation of Labour Party funds) evidence a criminal act or an act of gross misconduct?
Crucially, does the evidence point to a broader systematic campaign to undermine the elected leader of the party and if so who was implicated?
Equally crucially, does the internal Labour Party investigation establish any allegation of antisemitic behaviour by the Corbyn team, or any desire to cover it up?
How can a serious inquiry leave such questions unasked in its Terms of Reference? Why do the Terms of Reference not create a clear path for disciplinary or other legal proceedings?”
It will be very easy for an inquiry such as this to find there was no racist, sexist, or discriminatory intent, or to slap wrists for loose talk in personal emails. Or for a “fall guy” to emerge leaving any broader plot unexamined.
Most importantly, this approach leaves it open for the inquiry panel – crucially – including 3 wholly non-independent Labour peers – not to consider any of those issues at all. Labour Peers are to have a hand in determining the scope. in context, this is totally unacceptable, and far removed from the independent inquiry the party faithful were promised.
Combined with other issues – such as a potentially constrained timeframe and/or budget, and/or a lack of power to compel the delivery of witnesses and evidence (non of these details have yet disclosed to my knowledge) this will all seriously diminish the inquiry.
It is fatally flawed before it begins, unless the structure is radically changed.
The Terms of Reference continued
The Terms of Reference go on to require consideration of:
“2. The background and circumstances in which the report was commissioned, written and circulated within the Labour Party, with its advisers and any other individuals external to the Labour Party, including the question of the purpose for which the report was commissioned and prepared, and the circumstances in which the report was put into the public domain; ”
It is interesting that, whilst the promised investigation at para 1 of the Terms of Reference has shrunk in scope, this paragraph extends further than previously indicated (the phrase “individuals external to the Labour Party” was never discussed). Why has this become an issue? the drafting suggests the draftsperson knows something we do not, and is determined to ensure that it is aired. Time will tell.
Finally, the Terms of Reference look to:
“3. The structure, culture and practices of the Labour Party organisation including the relationship between senior party staff and the elected leadership of the Labour Party, as the panel think appropriate having regard to their investigation as a whole.”
This adds little to 1, but note the key role attributed to the Labour Lords in determining scope. Again, this is completely unacceptable in an independent investigation.
What is missing?
Aside from the obvious flaws outlined above. The published Information leaves a number of other key questions unanswered.
Where is the power to compel witnesses and documentation?
Where is the information on timescale and budget?
Who provides the secretariat?
Where is the confirmation that findings will be published in full?
All of these elements fundamentally impact the review. They MUST be identified and published if this investigation is to be credible.
Without wishing to diminish the serious issue of racism – if this process becomes simply a discussion about people being nasty to, or about, Diane Abbott, as bad as that is, the whole investigation is worth little, will go nowhere and achieve nothing. This isn’t in the interests of the Labour Party, or for that matter, open democracy in this country. We should be shouting about it as loudly as we can – now.
