 On Friday's show, we spoke about the suspension of Naomi Wimborn-Adresi. Naomi is the co-founder of Jewish Voice for Labor and was suspended last week because of comments made in a CLP meeting. She is the vice chair of Chingford and Woodford Green and both her and the chair of Chingford and Woodford Green CLP, Gary Lefley, were suspended after remarks. They made at a meeting about Corbyn suspension and Keir Starmer's leadership. Recordings of the relevant speeches are available on the Jewish Voice for Labor website. So you can judge for yourself whether you think people were right to feel uncomfortable in the meeting. When we discussed Naomi's suspension, we couldn't get her on the show as there was a confidentiality clause in her suspension letter. However, now Naomi's case has been discussed in the papers, in the press and very publicly she has decided that her enforced silence is no longer justifiable. And I caught up with Naomi earlier today. I started by asking about the status of her suspension. Has she been given any timetable as to what happens next or any chance to make representations? This is entirely up in the air and Gary and I are in a similar position to a number of others who've been administratively suspended. So this is by, according to the delegated powers, apparently, of the general secretary. It has been brought to his attention that things were said that may be in breach of the infamous clause 218. And that's it. So there's no timetable. There's no suggestion that you should put in any representation. There's no charges. There's no evidence presented. It's just you may be in breach. So lots of us have replied saying, I'm sorry, what am I supposed to do about this? When are you going to tell me what the procedure is? And so that's the state most of us are in, certainly the state that Gary Lefley and I are in. So it's either it's either fast track to expulsion, which is possible under the current system, the one that has been heavily criticised by the HRC. The only good thing it said actually was a realisation that the system is completely unfair and unjust and lacking in natural justice. So it could be fast track to expulsion or it could be a long drawn out suspension because while we're suspended, we can play no role in the party. We can't attend meetings. We can't stand for positions and so on. So it's one of the two, but we don't know. Moving on to some sort of broader topics. You're a co-founder of Jewish Voice for Labour. It was an organisation which was very prominent in much of Corbyn's or much of the period where Corbyn was leader. It's now been, I mean, thoroughly demonised and in many quarters marginalised. How do you look back at sort of the past four years and the history of that organisation? Well, still the present history, obviously, but the first four years of its existence, let's say. We're only founded in 2017 by Jews who had joined the party enthusiastically when Corbyn came in as leader at the end of 2015. Because we could see how Jewish fears and concerns, genuine, honestly held fears and concerns were being cynically manipulated. I mean, really, as a result of our experience being perhaps the boldest defenders of Jeremy and his allies for the last couple of years, we could see straight away that this was not about antisemitism. And I think what's happened most recently with the ratcheting up of the silence thing, this is no longer about, there's no pretense really that it's about dealing with antisemitism because what we're doing is we're silencing critics of the leadership over a whole range of issues. So it is now, in our case, it seems that it is illegitimate for a chair of a CLP to express his discontent with the way the leader is failing. In his view, to deal with the Tories and their mishandling of the pandemic and so on. And also, it's not allowed for him to express a view about the way people are being silenced in the party. So you're silenced when you want to point out that there is silencing going on. And the silencing, we've seen it happening. We knew what was going on. We tried to alert people to it, but the sensitivities about the way the antisemitism issue was constantly wheeled out as a justification for not hearing certain people. It's become like, you know, the character in Harry Potter, he who shall not be named Voldemort. Sorry, oops, dear, I said it. There are people like Jackie Walker, like Chris Williamson, like Mark Wadsworth, a whole number of others who have been consigned to outer darkness with the shadow of antisemitism hanging over them, although they are not antisemites and have done nothing that justifies that claim in our view. This is now used as a means of silencing a whole swathe of the political left. And that pretext that making Jews feel uncomfortable for which we must read making a section of Jews with a particular political agenda uncomfortable is now a reason for giving up the right to freedom of speech and democracy in the Labour Party. So if I look back at the last few years, I feel very frustrated that we could see what was going on and see where it could lead. And others were too frightened, too cautious, too embarrassed, too genuinely confused to actually take it on in the way we could see it needed to be done. So that is why we are now facing increasing authoritarianism from the leadership of the party. And it really is a number of people have said this recently, and if not now moments that really if we're not going to stand up and reject the silencing, refuse to be gagged, refuse to accept that a confidentiality clause applies to you, but not to the people who are leaking from within your own constituency or indeed from within the government's legal unit. We are on a very dangerous, slippery slope. I don't know what you think, but when Angela Reina says that she will spend thousands and thousands, if necessary, what do you think is meant by that necessary necessary for what? And it is not necessary for dealing with genuine antisemitism to expel thousands of members of this political party. That is clearly absurd. Is it necessary to appease the Board of Deputies of British Jews? Well, the Board of Deputies of British Jews may well be pleased with what's going on, but I don't think they are the people that the current leadership of the party are trying to please. I think they are trying to please those who do not wish to see socialism high on the political agenda in Britain. And I think that was always the agenda ourselves. Most of our viewers going to be very sympathetic to the idea that the antisemitism issue in the Labour Party wasn't necessarily covered in a particularly honest way by the mainstream media. There was a lot of factional manoeuvring going on. But do you ever wonder if potentially JVL, Jewish Voice for Labour, lost more friends than it needed to? So I'm thinking of, say, left-wing Jews, someone like John Lansman who says his experiences of having loads of people under any comment he makes on social media, sort of saying things that very much sort of lead into antisemitic tropes and that potentially people have seen JVL as an organisation who, you know, a lot of the time gets it right when it says that's not antisemitic, that's not a problem, but who have become sort of so committed to saying that's not antisemitic, that's not a problem, that they stop being taken seriously by some people sort of in the middle of the debate? Well, thank you for that question, Michael, because we are often accused of facilitating antisemitism. David Hirsch recently said that I was one of the worst purveyors of antisemitism in the country. Me personally, that was after my Double Down News video went out. So, I mean, I think there's a lot of malice and ill-will in comments of that kind, but we have become increasingly sensitive to the need to explain to people who genuinely want to support justice for Palestine in particular, and who have become so angered at accusations of antisemitism that they react aggressively and that they use language in an insensitive way and they do not have regard for genuine Jewish fears and concerns. And when we do antisemitism education sessions, which are very interactive and holistic, and look at antisemitism in the whole spectrum of othering and forms of racism that are systemic in our society, we have to help people through that. And maybe in the past, we didn't make it clear to people that that's what we were doing because we were constantly on the defensive, on behalf of Jeremy, on behalf of his allies. So it became very adversarial and it was easy for people who were hostile right from the beginning to the entire Corbyn project to pick on these Jews who are standing up and defending Jeremy as, well, we've talked about it before, the wrong kind of Jews, not to be listened to, not to be heard at all. That was Naomi Wimborn at Drizzy speaking to me on Tisgisawa on Navarra Media. If you are enjoying the show, do remember to hit subscribe. We go live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7pm. Aaron, I want to get you in actually to talk about some more of the latest developments in the party very much related to this. So the first involves the question mark hanging over whether or not Corbyn losing the whip was the leadership going against a deal they had signed with Jeremy Corbyn's team. Sienna Rogers, as she tends to do very handily, tweeted out the answers from Starmer's spokesperson at today's media huddle after PMQ, so after Prime Minister's questions. The leader of the opposition, his spokesman, goes and speaks to the media and these are comments from that discussion. Is Starmer's office confident that the publication of communications via legal action will prove there was no deal over Corbyn's reinstatement? That's the question. The answer from the spokesperson, there is legal action going on and you wouldn't expect me to comment on that. What I can say is that we said all along following the decision to suspend Jeremy, there was representatives of Jeremy's team talking to our office because they wanted the matter resolved. It's also no secret we wanted Jeremy to apologise or retract his remarks. Starmer's spokesperson added, there was no deal on reinstatement, no. Asked whether JC's statement was shared with senior staff before being posted, spokesperson said they would check. Now that seems like a pretty key bit of information. The claim from Corbyn's team is that the statement he made which said he would not say that the pain and suffering caused by anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was exaggerated. Just that the number of anti-Semites in the party was exaggerated. Their claim is that that was agreed with Lotto, that's leader of the opposition's office. And if they had given advance notice of that statement to people in Lotto, leader of the opposition's office, that would suggest there was some sort of agreement, tacit or otherwise. Now the fact that that spokesperson can just say, oh, I'll go and ask my people, shows you how terribly this whole issue has been covered by most of the media. Because if that question had been asked on television, then you would have leading Labour politicians in a very awkward situation. But whenever leading Labour politicians go on the television, all they get asked is, oh, why don't you kick him out quicker? And because of their obsession with denigrating Jeremy Corbyn instead of asking difficult questions of Keir Starmer, we are none the wiser about what has actually happened. And also, I mean, if Laura Coonsburg just wanted a scoop, I think the fact of Keir Starmer sort of being shown to be a hypocrite would have been a good story. I can't work out why she's not interested in pursuing this, which means that a spokesperson can say, oh, were we aware of what he was going to say? I'll check. I mean, it's phenomenal, right? I'll tell you something. Laura Coonsburg, I think, is without doubt the worst political journalist in this country, which is a problem for us, by the way, because she's the political editor of the BBC, which has a huge share of TV, online and radio news market. It's a huge problem for us that she's so bad that Sienna Rogers is infinitely better on this issue than pretty much every single major political editor, whether it's Robert Peston, political editor of ITV, whether it's Tom Newton Dunn, my goodness me, was political editor of The Sun, whether it's Laura Coonsburg, which weren't really powerful people in setting the agenda who don't give a damn about the truth. And you're right. As journalists, you would suspect, at the very least they want a good scoop, which this would be, the former director of public prosecutions misrepresenting private conversations he had with his predecessor, the former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. Yeah. Well, we don't know. We don't know. Well, that's the question that should be asked of him. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's the question that should be asked of him. And it's a very sexy question. And if he says no, I deny it. He's denied it. Great. There you go. And here's a challenge now for any sort of broadcast journalist out there, Laura Coonsburg or Robert Peston, or somebody on Times Radio, if you have a senior figure from the Labour Party, or the Shadow Front Bench, on, ask them, get this on camera. Was there a tacit agreement, or even an explicit one, between Jeremy Corbyn or representatives of Jeremy Corbyn and the leader's office? Because that's what Jeremy Corbyn's side is saying. And that's what Keir Starmer's side is not denying, by the way. I've just got to go and ask somebody that doesn't really fill you with much confidence. And as we've said, this is not just the leader of the Labour Party, somebody who wants to be the next Prime Minister. This is somebody who is in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service, right? So it's not just the question of, is he fit to be leader of the Labour Party, if this is found to have been the case? What does it say about somebody who gets to the very top of the criminal justice system in this country when they and people around them are so relaxed about this? Can you imagine if a representative, Jeremy Corbyn, said that in the press spokesperson's hard laugh at the PMQs? I'll get back to you. It would have been the leading story for the rest of the day. BBC, Channel 4, Sky News, ITV, LBC. Crazy. And yet, here, crickets. It's the Labour List that it's you and me talking about it on Navara Media. So we know a few things here. Firstly, that the media is not playing an even battle on this. They're incredibly partial, they're incredibly biased. We knew that. I think more concerning is the questions that have to be asked of Keir Starmer. The guy wants to be the Prime Minister. Do your job and actually scrutinise him. It's really important. It's not just about Corbynistas on the left, you know, trying to be proven right. It's really important for the public at large. It's in the public interest for you to do your job with a leader of your position. As indeed you should with all politicians. I know it's incredibly hard. I know you do all of these kind of excessive gestures with Jeremy Corbyn and then actually ignore the people with power in this country. But for once, just perhaps try. So there's the challenge. On TV, get a recording of somebody on Labour's front bench denying there was any kind of conversation between Starmer's office and Corbyn's office. Because if they do that and it's proven otherwise, I think that would be a very interesting document to have in the public domain. I want to bring up an open letter which was signed by 182 chairs and secretaries from 129 CLPs. It was an open letter to David Evans, which was published just this afternoon. And it is sort of expressing their disquiet at how the General Secretary has handled the issue of people wanting to demonstrate their solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn or show their disquiet at the way that the Labour Party is currently being managed. I'll go to some of the most important paragraphs. So they write these 182 chairs and secretaries. Our party membership and its collective discussion in local branch and CLP meetings are vital to building an effective local party. Unfortunately, the recent emails from you placing restrictions on items of party business that can be discussed in meetings accompanied by threats and suspensions are undermining our efforts to build up our local parties. The policing of discussion on a decision which has received a lot of media attention is also demanding a great deal from volunteers who take up the role of administrators to facilitate and encourage dynamic campaigning local parties. Our local members and party officers are all volunteers, many of whom work very hard for the party. We feel that your recent guidance only puts us further into the firing line and is affecting the mental and physical health of chairs and secretaries, many of whom are standing down from their posts because of the stress. They also point out that losing all of these motivated volunteers would cost Labour in next year's local elections. Now, Aaron, the number is pretty significant there. So 182 chairs and secretaries from 129 CLPs. Now, there are only, I mean, I presume 650 CLPs because there's one for every constituency. It might be slightly different because I know in Scotland they're connected to the constituencies for the members of the Scottish Parliament, but it's going to be around 650. And you've got 120 people, chairs and secretaries, so the most significant person in 129 CLPs signing this quite strong letter basically saying the position you've put us in is unacceptable. And you've got, I think, 70, 80 CLPs of past motions in support of Jeremy Corbyn. So you're looking at at least a quarter of the party's apparatus, the people running the party of a big problem with this. Who are willing to go public on it? Explicitly, I think you're probably looking at probably a half. I think that's fair. I mean, that would be what we see in opinion polls, for instance, amongst internal party members. It presents huge problems for Labour for next May. And already you see people around Kirsten are getting their excuses in in terms of what may be underperformance next year. I think Labour will do quite well just because, well, let me caveat this. If there's a vaccine and it's done as well as it looks like it will be, I think the Tories will get a big bounce off it. But I think Labour will do okay. I think they'll hold their own. However, there's an element here of expectations management. And I think they have no money. I said this to a few months ago. I said, Labour's going to have a big problem with money next year. You weren't so sure. It's one of the few times we've disagreed and I've been proven right. But I could still be wrong. The donors can still come. It's not until next May. They've got problems with money. They've only, I believe under Starmer's leadership had 200,000 pounds come in from private donors while they've lost a great deal more from members leaving from the unions cutting funding. And they've got a demobilized, increasingly angry member ship. And then I think, so those are the internal problems come next May. Then if you're the public, we've just had 60,000 people die. We've got the high street in collapse. Arcadia and Debenham's went last week. That's 25,000 jobs. And Kate Green, who's the Shadow Education Secretary, is talking about how universities should accept the IHRA. You know, this is like Change UK's Twitter feed, but it's the kind of major talking points of the party of opposition. And I said this on Twitter and people were saying I'm an anti-Semite. The person who came up with the IHRA, the person who came up with it, I think it's Kenneth Stern, isn't it? He said specifically it should not be used in this manner. It's not a controversial thing to say actually. And there are many organizations out there which have pushed back on it. So like I say, it's this sort of weird niche Twitter culture was talking point, which is being articulated by a senior person in the Shadow Cabinet as the country faces real crisis. And I think the average person looks at that and they say, well, I don't like Boris Johnson, but the Tories are talking about the economy, jobs, getting Brexit through. They're talking about climate change. They're not going to do much about it, but rhetorically they're trying to address it. And Labour are talking about the last leader who's been suspended in the IHRA. I mean, it doesn't really add up to a serious political party. And so I think that absence of seriousness, I think the problem with regards to resources and money and the fact you've got a sort of demobilized, depressed base and membership. I don't think it all goes well for next May. I think Stammer can turn it around. But I think another four months, like the last four months, I think Labour have got big problems. And you know, they're coming out of 2020. What's Stammer done? What a terrible first year for his leadership. It was on a plate for him. The media is trying to, you know, be as nice as they can to him, not challenging at all. He had support from across the party, much the left had voted for the guy. Where's Labour on policy? No idea. Where's it on media strategy? New media, no idea. It's losing members. It's losing trade union support. And none of the private donors that they've sort of talked about coming have come. The only big story we've had with private donors is this David Abraham's chap saying that black South Africans preferred apartheid. Who, by the way, he was receiving a letter from Keir Stammer a few months ago saying, we've changed. It's now a party you should feel welcome to donate to. I bet he feels welcome to donate to. The sort of racist clap trap he was talking about. It fits right in with where the Labour Party was in the mid-2000s. So Labour have big problems. And I think what's perhaps most important is that people beyond the left are recognising this, I think. Keir Stammer's not a busted flush. He may still be the next Prime Minister. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is small cracks are becoming much bigger. And I think people who were previously quite confident in him now aren't so sure. And a big reason why is his handling of Jeremy Corbyn case. And it's happened in the last month. It's quite a recent thing. So we'll see. I think it does feed into a broader set of problems for Keir Stammer.