 The Labour Party bureaucracy allied with Keir Starmer is using every every dirty trick available to stop Labour members exercising their democratic right to defend Jeremy Corbyn. 39 constituency Labour parties have passed motions in solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn and called for the whip to be reinstated. At least 17 more have tried but have had the motion ruled out of order. That means someone's told them you're not even allowed to debate this, you can't discuss this. We have also tonight got an exclusive email which was leaked to us showing the party are committed to preventing anyone debating Starmer's highly political decision to override the ruling of an NEC panel and withdraw the whip from Jeremy Corbyn. So when this was in the disciplinary phase when Jeremy Corbyn was in the official disciplinary channels within the Labour Party they were telling CLP's local Labour parties you can't discuss this suspension because this is within the disciplinary process and that shouldn't be politicized. Now because Jeremy Corbyn is not in the formal disciplinary process he's had the whip removed by Keir Starmer, a political act explicitly political act. They've had to come up with more excuses, different excuses, more novel excuses to silence ordinary Labour Party members. Let's go to this email to see what line they are pushing at the moment to try and shut up Labour members who are saying things that the leadership don't necessarily like. This is an email from the head of internal governance to all regional directors sent today. We are aware that there are a lot of questions incoming around what motions may or may not be in order given developments over recent days to confirm the Labour Party disciplinary case against the former leader has now concluded. However it has become clear that motions around this issue including expressions of solidarity, views around the ongoing process in relation to the parliamentary whip and or the power of the general secretary or the NEC to issue guidance in relation to discussion of this issue are providing a flashpoint for the expression of views that undermine the Labour Party's ability to provide a safe and welcoming space for all members, in particular our Jewish members. Therefore all motions which touch on these issues must be ruled out of order. Later in the email it goes on. Finally as we have previously advised we will not hesitate to take appropriate action including against individual members where our rules and guidance are not adhered to or standards of behaviour fall below that which we expect. We will be reinforcing this message via an email to CLPs in the next day or two. That's from Fraser Welsh who is head of internal governance so that's been sent out to regional directors. It will go out to CLPs but it will be regional directors who are enforcing this kind of thing because as we've seen around the country there are many CLP chairs and secretaries who do want to be debating these motions to express their solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn getting a bunch of them suspended. You'll see in Bristol West which is one of the biggest CLPs in the country. You've had the co-secretaries, the chairs suspended for allowing a motion about Jeremy Corbyn to go forward and now they're banned from having meetings until February. Really, really authoritarian manoeuvres here. I want to focus though on what's in this email because you know we've talked before about how the Labour Party approach to this has been really ad hoc. They've basically made up rules as they go along when they want to avoid outcomes they don't like. The outcome they don't want here is members expressing their solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn. Keir Starmer has made a very political decision to suspend the whip from him. That's basically to, it seems, to appease people within the Labour Party and also avoid awkward headlines. I don't know what he's trying to do basically. We're going to go on to what the whip is asking Jeremy Corbyn to do in a moment. Equally ridiculous. But what they are trying to do is shut up people from expressing any dissent and they're using any excuse possible. So before, as I said, when this was in the disciplinary processes they were saying you can't debate this because it's a disciplinary matter. Now they're saying you can't debate this because possibly if you were to debate this someone might say something which makes someone else feel uncomfortable. So people are now being sort of banned from speaking about something because of what might potentially be said. You know, people aren't being punished for things they've said. People are being prevented from having a conversation because of what might possibly be said. You know, now this is really a, if you get to rule out and ban anyone hearing emotions where they judge that someone might possibly say something which is offensive then we're in very, very worrying territory. Especially when, you know, Keir Starmer, all of these Labour MPs they've had every opportunity to have their voice heard when they go on the radio and say, no, I completely support his whip being removed, blah, blah, blah, blah. Members don't normally get invited onto LBC. They don't get invited onto the Today program on Radio 4. The only way they can express their opinions is through, and be heard, is through the democratic structures of the Labour Party. So basically you're saying Keir Starmer is allowed an opinion, Margaret Hodges is allowed an opinion, all of the Labour front bench are allowed an opinion. But if you, a lowly member, want to have an opinion on the suspension of the former Labour leader, well, you're not allowed. We might even suspend you if you try. That's the situation with local parties. We're also in a pretty dark situation when it comes to other bodies, other democratic bodies within the Labour Party, young Labour. For example, that's the official party organ for those under 27. So this Saturday, the democratically elected committee for young Labour agreed a statement in support of Corbyn, which they released on Twitter. We can take a look at that. So they write, thousands of young people were inspired to join and support our movement by Jeremy Corbyn in a world with few politicians like him. The removal of the whip despite the lifting of Jeremy's suspension is a betrayal of them and blatant factional interference in disciplinary matters. Instead of disregarding due process, Keir Starmer should immediately reinstate the whip and end these attacks on the left so that we can get on with the task of delivering a socialist Labour government to transform this country. This move distracts from the important findings of the EHRC report, from the critical work of tackling anti-Semitism within the party, and violates a key recommendation of the EHRC report that disciplinary matters must be free from political interference. Now, those tweets, all very reasonable, were posted by Jess Barnard. She is a Norfolk county councillor and a youth worker. She is also chair of Young Labour. She's been a member of the Young Labour Committee for four years, but was recently elected in an Omov ballot, one member, one vote to all young members. She was elected by an overwhelming margin to become its chair. I spoke to her earlier today to ask what happened after Young Labour posted those tweets. On the Monday, I received an email from the party letting me know that the statement needed to come down immediately and alleged that we were using or misusing Labour Party branding to talk about a factional or disciplinary issue. Obviously, I followed that up with the party and I've challenged that, and I do following my statement obviously feel quite uncomfortable being asked to override the vote to the committee and to withhold their right to make statements on political issues within the party. I have responded to the party with about a series of 10 questions asking them to clarify where this rule is and what they're aligned upon based on saying that we can't use Labour Party branding to make political statements. I don't think it's fair to say that this is a factional issue. I think it's an issue of democracy and there really isn't any precedent for the party to intervene in this way. In a policy, we look at European youth wings and political parties. They often really politically differ from the main party, but the party respects that and respects the autonomy. So the party hasn't referred to any rules in Young Labour's broken. I don't believe Young Labour has broken any rules. And whether you agree or disagree with the statement or not, it's a matter of democracy and a matter of a right to young members to have a committee that can vote on political issues and represent them autonomously. With the leadership we've seen at the moment, there is just no way of knowing what the next steps are. I've made it really clear that I won't be overriding the committee. I think it would be completely undemocratic for me to do that. And the mandate that young members have given me, the fact that I stood on was on one that would fight for an autonomous, democratic, socialist Young Labour. I was really clear about that throughout the four-month campaign that we went through. And morally, I can't override this. There isn't any rules that we've broken. I've not had a response from the Labour Party. So I'm really not sure what the next steps are because we need to have a functioning relationship with the party. We need to be able to work together. We all want to see a Labour government. But the party needs to respect our right to make political statements. We aren't just a mouthpiece for Lotto's office. We are a collection of young members who are really passionate about putting a transformative Labour government in power. And so I'm sure that the committee will be continuing to fight for that and that we will continue, as is our right, to be political and to organise young members and to build the structures that they deserve. But obviously, as we can see, it's going to be an uphill struggle for us to do that. But we are going to have to just pull together. And the solidarity we've had from members across the party, both young and older, has been overwhelming. So I think it's clear people really do want a young Labour. That is autonomous, even if they disagree with statements that are put out. So that was Jess Barnard, the chair of Young Labour, who, when she was emailed by bureaucrats in party HQ to say, take down your tweets, she refused. She put up a public statement to say, this is what happened. This is why I'm not going to delete them. I have every right to do this. There are people in CLPs across the country doing the same. Ash, I want to bring you in on this. I mean, who could have imagined when Keir Starmer got elected on that platform of, I believe in unity within the Labour Party that what he would have done within six months of inheriting a party with 550,000 members, he would have first suspended the whip from the previous leader and then basically used every method he possibly can to ban anyone from complaining about it. He's basically shutting down any particular organ of the party that wants to protest this. I mean, what is overtly a political move? I did think that this was something that was going to happen. I didn't have the kind of optimism for Keir Starmer's leadership that I know that many other people did. And I'm not just talking about people who voted for Keir Starmer. I know people who were very heavily invested in Rebecca Long Bailey's campaign. But when Keir won with 10 pledges, which promised that he would stick to Corbyn's economic policy, but there would be a change in leadership style and emphasis on professionalizing the party outfit, there are lots of people who are like, you know what, that sounds really good. I'm willing to have the left be a junior partner in a Labour leadership, which is sort of led by broadly soft left principles. And the reason why I didn't feel all that optimistic is that one, I think that Keir Starmer has always been something of, he's quite a ruthless political operator. He knew what it would take to become Labour Party leader. I think that he pursued that goal since 2015. And I'm not saying that as a derogatory thing at all. I'm saying that those were his goals and he achieved them. One of the ways in which he achieved them is by moving the Labour Party towards a much more remain and pro-second referendum position that gave him a certain standing amongst a very pro-remain membership. And I don't think that there was going to be a Keir Starmer who would stop there. He doesn't just want to be a leader of the Labour Party. He wants to be Prime Minister. He thinks, well, what does the country like and what's it dislike? Well, it really dislikes Jeremy Corbyn. So I'm not going to make it a line in the sand for my leadership to treat this man who was my predecessor in a way which is fair. I also think that Keir Starmer feels, and this is me completely speculating here, but we're speculating here, but bolstered by words in my ears from some well-placed sources. I think that he feels a sense of frustration that the anti-Semitism issue is continuing to dog his leadership despite him not being Jeremy Corbyn. And he hasn't prepared for that. He hasn't prepared for that one bit. And I think that he really underestimated the extent to which anti-Semitism as a wedge issue would be wielded against him. He wouldn't be allowed to move on from the issue unless authoritarian brutal action was taken to marginalise or indeed exclude the left from his party. And I think that the signs of this were kind of always there. I think when it comes to Labour Party democracy, one of the things that just said is, you know, it's not a factional issue. It's an issue of democracy. Unfortunately, the history of the Labour Party shows that any attempt to democratise the party is itself a factional issue because you have a parliamentary Labour Party and also a party machinery which is not representative of the views of its membership. You have a parliamentary Labour Party and a staffing culture which is significantly to the right of its membership. So any attempt to empower that membership, whether it's a youth wing or whether it's CLPs, is going to be met with factional resistance because it is in itself a weakening of a particular faction's power. So that's one thing where I do disagree a bit. As for where this is going to go, I think that Keir Starmer strategically has ended up in a bit of a cul-de-sac and I think that is because he underestimated the extent to which antisemitism would become a test for him, a test for whether he would be subject to factional attacks or not, and he's hemmed in by the fact that the left is in a much stronger position now than it used to be. In terms of the membership, in terms of parliamentary representation, in terms of places on the NEC, you know, getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn is not going to be any easy feat as we've seen in the last few days. There is still a way out of this and I think it's by climbing down from the position where you judge whether or not the party is institutionally antisemitic whether or not one man is in it. And I think that this has been a core of the problem. People use the word institutional with regards to racism not in its actual meaning. They're not actually interested in the kind of process or institutional culture which produces unequal outcomes, right? And that's what institutional racism means. That was its meaning in the McPherson report. What they're using institutional racism to mean in this case, in the case of the Labour Party and antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn, is does the Labour Party as an institution think that Jeremy Corbyn has a home here? Because as long as he does, it will be judged to be institutionally antisemitic and the word institutional there basically just means bigly racist. And that's obviously completely untenable because you've got an EHRC report which identified problems with procedure and problems with rules and now you've got a test of whether or not it's institutionally antisemitic in the court of public opinion and also amongst the Labour Party right and amongst the Jewish community leadership, the Board of Deputies being one which says that well the rules will be deemed to fail for as long as they allow Jeremy Corbyn to be here. And you can't just rewrite and rewrite rules to get rid of one person. Completely untenable. It's going to be a kind of death by a thousand cuts for Keir Starmer's own moral authority and his leadership. The first thing he can do is actually climb down from some of these really impossible tests that have been set for him and that he's set for himself.