Backlash after “last Corbynista in power” barred from standing for new regional role purportedly over event with Ken Loach

The leadership of the Labour Party is facing a backlash after it barred a local mayor, dubbed the “last Corbynista in power”, from standing for a new regional role.

Jamie Discroll, the elected Mayor of North of Tyne and a former Chair of Momentum in Newcastle, has been prevented by the Labour Party from standing as its candidate in the race for the first North-East Mayor. Mr Discroll, who has reportedly described the “Corbynista tag” as an attempt to “define us by London Westminster politics,” did not make it into the final three shortlisted for the Party’s candidacy.

Although he tweeted that “no explanation had been given,” it has since been reported that the exclusion stems from his appearance at an “In Conversation” event with the outspoken film director Ken Loach at a Newcastle theatre in March.

Mr Loach was expelled from the Labour Party in August 2021 without public explanation. Mr Loach had been a leading ally of other controversial figures in Labour’s antisemitism scandal, especially those who denied that there was such a scandal of antisemitism. He said at the time of his expulsion: “Labour HQ finally decided I’m not fit to be a member of their party, as I will not disown those already expelled,” adding that he was “proud to stand with the good friends and comrades victimised by the purge. There is indeed a witch-hunt…Starmer and his clique will never lead a party of the people. We are many, they are few. Solidarity.”

In the past, Sir Keir Starmer has promised to sanction Labour members who share platforms with expelled members, but has generally not fulfilled this pledge.

The decision has been greeted with a backlash, including by the far-left Unite union, which warned of “serious consequences” of the decision, and, reportedly, by thousands of supporters.

In addition, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram have also criticised the decision to bar Mr Driscoll, writing to Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC): “Whilst we appreciate the NEC’s important role in upholding standards within the Party, and rooting out any form of antisemitism, racism and discrimination, it also has a responsibility to ensure decisions are democratic, transparent and fair,” adding: “To exclude a sitting mayor from a selection process with no right of appeal appears to us to be none of those things.” They said that Mr Driscoll should be entitled to an appeal process and “deserves to be treated with more respect than he has so far been shown.”

While the prospect of Sir Keir finally keeping his pledge to sanction Labour figures who share platforms with expelled members is welcome, there is concern that there may be a political motivation as well to the decision to bar Driscoll, namely that it undermines a growing Northern power base of senior Labour figures, particularly those who occupy mayoral positions, who may wish to challenge the Party’s more London-centric leadership.

Asked in an interview, Mr Driscoll said that he has not read the full report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into antisemitism in the Labour Party. Campaign Against Antisemitism was the originating complainant in the investigation that led to the report.

Mr Loach, meanwhile, claimed that “the whole antisemitism issue has been substantially revealed as a campaign that is not based on fact. It’s based on political determination to do a number of things, to remove people from the left, to protect the state of Israel, which many people, many Jewish people in the Labour Party, oppose, oppose this campaign.”

Claiming that allegations of antisemitism are used to protect Israel is an example of the Livingstone Formulation. The “Livingstone Formulation”, named by sociologist David Hirsch after the controversial former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is used to describe how allegations of antisemitism are dismissed as malevolent and baseless attempts to silence criticism of Israel. In its report on antisemitism in the Labour Party, the EHRC found that suggestions of this nature were part of the unlawful victimisation of Jewish people in the Party.

Mr Loach’s voice was among the loudest of those who attempt to dismiss Labour’s antisemitism crisis as non-existent and a right-wing smear campaign. He claimed that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was subjected to a “torrent of abuse” that was “off the scale” and that regardless of what he did, the “campaign” of antisemitism accusations was “going to run and run”. He described the BBC’s Panorama investigation into Labour antisemitism as “disgusting because it raised the horror of racism against Jews in the most atrocious propagandistic way, with crude journalism…and it bought the propaganda from people who were intent on destroying Corbyn.”

He was also reportedly behind a motion passed by Bath Labour Party branding the Panorama programme a “dishonest hatchet job with potentially undemocratic consequences” and asserting that it “disgraced the name of Panorama and exposed the bias endemic within the BBC.” John Ware, the programme’s reporter, is apparently considering legal action against Mr Loach for his comments.

In 2017, Mr Loach caused outrage when, during an interview with the BBC, he refused to denounce Holocaust denial. The International Definition of Antisemitism states that “denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)” is a manifestation of antisemitism. Although Mr Loach later sought to clarify his remarks, he has continued to make inflammatory and provocative statements about Labour’s antisemitism scandal.

While speaking at a meeting of the Kingswood Constituency Labour Party, Mr Loach advocated the removal from the Party of those Labour MPs, some of whom are Jewish, who have taken a principled stand against antisemitism. Shortly after that incident, the Labour Party announced that it would no longer use Mr Loach as a producer of their election broadcasts.

The Labour Party was found by the EHRC to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.