I have questions about the Labour report - and I am genuinely interested in the response.

Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party in 2015. He was part of a faction (I’m still not clear exactly exactly how the boundaries are drawn) which did not have much...

... support in the Parliamentary party that was popular amongst membership. As far as I can tell, that faction also took control of the main party committees such as the NEC and NCC and retain control until Corbyn stepped down in April 2020.

As I understand it, and trying to be as fair as possible, the new report which I have read in part demonstrates there was animosity within the Labour Party headquarters at least in the first three years of Corbyn’s leadership until Jennie Formby took over in 2018.

There was also an element of working against the interests of the Corbyn faction as it was understood. Some of the detail is new but it is hardly news that there was a bitter factional dispute in labour throughout this period and it affected many of the party’s activities.

This is my question. At what point does it become the leader of the Labour Party’s responsibility - together with the party structures he controls - to bring the party together, unify the disparate ideological factions, and get on with winning elections?

At what point is the answer to the question of who lost those elections stop being anyone but the leader, his shadow cabinet (all loyalists) and the NEC/NCC? At what point does the responsibility for messing up on antisemitism become the leaders responsibility? Ever? Never?

And what I mean by that is that even though there were many very good people on the ‘left’ of the party, and a huge amount of goodwill from the membership, when does it stop being the fault of internal and external ‘saboteurs’ and become the responsibility of the leadership?

This is what always baffled me about what happened in the Labour Party, that it seemed like unity/winning national approval was never the aim it was all about internal advantage and who won this week’s factional spoils.

Ultimately, there were 2 national elections during this period and both were lost, the second one by a landslide. Will that always be the fault of dark forces and saboteurs? How long would it go on for before it wasn’t? Another five years? Another 10? Forever?

What do people hope a ‘full investigation’ into the WhatsApp communications will achieve? Do you people genuinely, heart of hearts, think that it will somehow absolve Corbyn from responsibility for this period, as if he was just a passenger in the train of his own leadership?

I spoke to lots of people who came from the perspective of this report in the past few years, good people on the left, all of whom recognised how central Jeremy Corbyn and his allies were to the problem with antisemitism, and that he would have to be ‘worked around’

The sad thing about this report is that it paints itself as being self critical but it also uses a sleight of hand - it’s only self-critical about the part of the self which is other people.

Anyway, perhaps the answer to regaining public trust is to make the public realise that everything they thought of Corbyn was a lie manufactured by evil press barons and internal saboteurs. But I’m afraid I doubt it