In a while I have to go and record a podcast about taking down the Thatcher government with a bootleg Bertie Bassett, but for now let's go with round three of this thread.

Emily Thornberry is described as taking the "bold decision" to tell an event commemorating the Balfour Declaration's centenary that Corbyn "was, in effect, a Zionist". (page 99) I have like, no recollection of this.

Here we have the "they're saying the Jews have got to you" quote about Thornberry not tabling a motion about Trump moving the US embassy from a senior LOTO staffer. This can only be a handful of people and whoever this is and whoever was saying this shouldn't be in the party.

Luciana Berger (rightly) gets a sympathetic couple of pages introducing her and explaining her role in bringing the mural to public attention. I don't think we agree on much politically but what happened to her was shameful. (Pages 100-101).

Andrew Fisher told colleagues that the mural was the first time in his career Corbyn had done something that Fisher couldn't defend (page 102).

Jewdas get a decent write-up: "mainly millenial and maintained an anarchic social media presence", "they expressed their anti-Zionism in bawdy and deliberately provocative terms", "such politics - and irreverence - were well with the Jewish tradition".

"Not an illegitimate stance, but one outside the discourse of mainstream British Jewry and antithetical to its representative bodies". However...

I had not heard this - Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner had been at the Jewdas Seder too, but fled upon spotting Corbyn!

I very much like Rabbi Laura, who is just leaving the post of Senior Rabbi of the Reform movement (and is very much on the left and is generally great) - but yes the book says she didn't want to be photographed with Corbyn, sensing the political storm.

Plus the anti-capitalist beetroot makes an appearance. This is all page 103.

This minor detour into anarchist vegetables, with disapproving quote from Wes Streeting, segues into the already-reported bit about Murphy drafting possible things Jeremy could do (this is now 2018) to smooth things over - which mostly came to nothing.

Some stuff about the IHRA decision - book claims that Milne (who is coming out of this a little better than his terrible reputation in some circles might belie) did not impose the decision about the IHRA examples on Corbyn, but that Corbyn imposed it on the party.

(Though it also reports Milne supporting him in that - I did say a /little/ better. This is page 107.)

Some stuff about the IHRA definition and who was advising him on it. Don't feel like this is for me to weigh into but it's essentially talking about people Corbyn knew well for a long time being a big influence on him here.

( I'm pretty uncomfortable with the aides who are quoted saying people (who are Jewish, described as "Islington set", JVL people who I can't say I agree with but even so) being "constantly in his ear" because in places it feels...

like the comments of the aides themselves might be going over into antisemitic tropes. Dunno. Don't think it's mine to call and not going to say much further, just, this bit gave me pause, you know?)

The book is quite clearly about mostly giving direct quotes here so these are the words of the aides.

Laura Alvarez forged an unlikely friendship with Shraga Stern?!

Plus she regularly read the Canary (!)

Some stuff around why the IHRA stuff went south with JLM, with some frankly farcical stuff that would be a comedy of errors were it not sure serious. (page 110-111) You know how in TV where there has been a drastic misunderstanding which could be fixed if people just checked...

... Before they did things? That.

This isn't to dismiss the seriousness of it but seriously: the number of times the LOTO office appears to have stood on a rake it did not need to stand on just after standing on on another rake...

First appearance of MP for the Internet Cybersuperhighway, Open Labour's own Alex Sobel.

Pete Willsman fuming that the sixty-eight rabbis were all Trump fanatics remains obviously shocking (page 112), but let's remember in particular that one of them was Rabbi Laura, she who was at the Jewdas Seder earlier. Just an utterly nonsense view that showed how little...

... He cared to know.

There then follows an extended account (pg 113-127) of the Hodge incident, the fall out of that, and the rest of that sorry summer. This is hard to summarise, I guess because - as it did in real life - it just feels like one sorry thing after another.

Ian Austin really doesn't come across well, I have to say, egging Margaret on in the first place and then leaking some of the colourful language she'd used to him but not to Corbyn.

Actually essentially every aide - Murphy, Milne, others - has at least one OK bit in this part. The overall story is one of Corbyn essentially being so upset at people being upset with him and thinking he was racist that he essentially shut down, dug in, wouldn't budge.

There's a bit where he worries that the Jewish community are getting special treatment, and Murphy is like (after the fact, reporting herself) "fucking yes, there's a problem [...] if we don't stand up for a minority then nobody should vote for us".

Just this sense of it all really cutting into his self-image as a people-pleaser and an anti-racist and all of it, as around him more politically-minded people and people who can see more clearly the problem beg him not to drag his heels.

Genuinely this is a bit to read yourself. Much of the rest of this so far hasn't focused much on Corbyn the person, but this part genuinely shows his feet of clay and his fundamental flaws. And it's not like I don't feel sorry for him - it sounds like it was miserable...

... But he was making a lot of other people very miserable too. Just... it just reads as torrid.

There's a concept in card gaming called "tilt". When you "tilt", it's because you've started to lose our something goes awry, and it gets to you, it stops you making good decisions, and it is a positive feedback loop - it strips you of your ability to make decisions.

It seems to me that what is being described here is tilt. Corbyn was fundamentally knocked and all those little maybe-flaws and ructions began to accelerate. He tilted.

In pinball, a tilt is when you knock the board and it locks all your flippers, and all you can do is watch the pinballs spiral down into the gutter, along with any chance of a high score...

It was after this summer that I fundamentally felt, on a personal level, unable to ever again feel enthused about the party under his leadership. I know for many people who had just clung on, this was also the case.

Not that I had felt great in the past but it was just a sort of watershed moment for me.

I think it should have been earlier. For those of us on the left but who hated this stuff, I think there is (has been) some long dark teatime of the soul stuff about thinking about what we ought to have done. I still don't know. We were just minor activists, right? But you...

You always ask "what more could I have done"?

Anyway. Ugh. Now time for me to take a break to podcast. Next chapter contains a lot of hot Brexit action.

Alright, so: this chapter (page 128) starts with a claim that Keir never wanted to be Labour's Remainer in Chief and that actually he was determined to see Brexit delivered, and told Alistair Campbell so.

"In the square-jawed lawyer from North London, the grand old man of Tory Euroscepticism [David Davis] found someone on whom he could depend."

"He [Starmer] had never believed in Norway: better to be a rule-maker than a rule-taker" - strongly against EEA membership here.

Then we have Chequers and conference 2018 (happening after the torrid summer, of course).

"The point of the compositing meeting was for LOTO to ensure [the Brexit motion] was pointless" (pg 131) - truly the candidate of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy.

Campbell and Mandelson compared to old lags getting together for one last heist w.r.t. People's Vote.

It's funny how I really thought a People's Vote was a decent idea at the time. I'm not sure what to think now, now that's it's so clear it was kind of a Labour right Trojan horse. Were those truly my thoughts?

Amusing line about the post-Southside gang being ironically a bastion of member-led democracy with People's Vote. But actually a serious point here: to a degree People's Vote successfully captured that membership energy again.

Interesting that Chessum's history before AEIP isn't mentioned much.

Some amazing Thornberry bants as she reapeatedly said "the customs union" instead of "a customs union" in interviews, LOTO would bollock her, and she'd said that of course it had been a slip of the tongue and she usually said "a" and it didn't matter. Then do it again next time.

Some really interesting stuff about Keir in this. He helped People's Vote but not a lot. Cautious, careful... but with an overall objective.

Very much the "Love Corbyn Hate Brexit" place was where a lot of people I knew were at, it's interesting to read about the careful manuovering of PV to use that energy.

Account of the long TUC meeting to get to "support all options on the table including a public vote" makes it sound like the meeting from all hell.

Keir is quite good at people management is what you get from this.

Fascinating bit of accident of history where "Macavity" McDonnell accidentally contradicts the new Brexit policy and causes Keir to publicly say at conference that Remain is still on the table.

"Fisher, who others in LOTO saw as a de facto Starmerite"... (pg 142)

Basically the picture is paints is the through an accident JMcD caused Starmer to take the key action that would make him Mr Remain - it screwed the project but may well have won him the leadership.

one for the alternative history nerds

Huh. I had not even heard of Iram Chamberlain before this (Jeremy's private secretary after Laura Parker).

Claim here that she was personally loyal to Jeremy, not the Project - and here the Project and what Jeremy wants were diverging (pg 145)

Clashed with Murphy over antisemitism: Chamberlain thought allegations were being used to shift his position on Zionism, Murphy took a hard-headed pragmatic view.

This is quite court politics stuff (ironic given Aram's surname): what we're seeing here is a breakdown on relations between those serving the leader and those serving the Project, according to the book.

Some quite difficult stuff here - Chamberlain was struggling to get security clearance, Murphy is suspicious, it emerges that of her brothers one is unfortunately active in online extremist circles and it's probably got the Vetting people twitchy.

(Absolutely no indication that Chamberlain herself had any such other links and understandably she is aggrieved at the guilt by association/establishment Islamaphobia at play, but also the book suggests she wasn't quite square about what the problem might be.)

We are broadly in the spook chapter here.

Stuff about MI5 inviting Corbyn to a meeting to be briefed about some stuff, him doing an NEC meeting instead. But how did it get out that this had happened? How indeed. (pg 148)

Interesting bit about Chakrabarti writing to the MI5 head essentially asking for a constructive relationship but needing MI5 to remain open to that too. (pg 149)

Business with Chamberlain/vetting continues. Security people ask her directly if there are any issues. She says no. Obviously they already know about her brothers and they aren't a fan of her reticence.

Really this is quite contested: one account of it says that the officials weren't Islamaphobic, "they understood why she would conceal it and it didn't necessarily make her a bad person or a threat herself", but understandably she is rather upset!

(That have at this stage indicated that it might need escalating to the Clerk of the House and the Speaker.)

LOTO want to stand by Chamberlain, understandably, other Muslim men's of Corbyn's staff have not had a straightforward relationship with parlimentary security either, some other cases get raised.

Honestly I had not read much about this stuff before and it's really not great. JC concerned about pattern of those with "Islamic-sounding names" getting called up on and it's hard not to see it as the right stance.

Meeting with MI5 goes well, meeting with MI6 slightly less so - Chamberlain comes to both and Murphy doesn't like it. Rather nasty incident where Murphy snaps at Chamberlain in the lift up to C (as in, MI6 head) to take a Palestinian badge off her label.

Corbyn is in "no mood for a confrontation", Murphy snaps the badge off Chamberlain. (pg 153) My commentary would be that is notable I think that Murphy has had bullying allegations levelled against her before.

Chamberlain raises far-right extremism and whether more could be done to combat Islamaphobia abroad to the MI6 head himself (Finsbury Park attack was year previously.) Have to say I am strongly rooting for Chamberlain in this moment: speaking truth to power!

However it doesn't go down well and nobody else thinks Chamberlain should have been there, it gets escalated to Formby eventually who concludes it was gross misconduct (pg 154) - essentially because Chamberlain is admin staff, not even political, definitely shouldn't be...

"taking the head of MI6 to task" as Chakrabarti's view is described.

From Chakrabarti's point of view is described as simple - Chamberlain shouldn't have been there especially after the issues with her family stuff. From Chamberlain's point of view she thinks the nat security issues are a red herring and that it's all about Murphy.

Corbyn is notable by his absence really - there's that averse to conflict nature again.

Murphy gives Chamberlain a bollocking, she stands her ground, Murphy shouts at her very loudly. This is horrible stuff really - classic workplace bullying as described (pg 158).

Karie Murphy was of course later recommended for the House of Lords by Jeremy.

Sorry, pg 156.

Chamberlain essentially then gets fired in awful services - she's fired (well, suspended and shortly quits) on an away day just before she's about to do a presentation. She's then stuck hundreds of miles from home without a job or transport. She calls Corbyn.

He claims ignorance and plays peacemaker, a sentence which literally describes everything about the man.

This "creates class consiousness" in LOTO staffers - basically there is a general feeling that Murphy is ruling by "fear and loathing", and that Milne and Fisher are often late to work or mercurial and absent respectively.

So what is happening here is a breakdown within LOTO itself.

A succession of allegations made against Murphy and Fisher that I shan't go into here. None of it great. Real issues with leadership but other stuff too. (pg 158)

Murphy shouts at a staffer so loud they cry because they invited a few lib dem staffers to the LOTO christmas party. (pg 159)

I don't really have much to say to all this. It's not even party political stuff: this is not how you should treat your staff or anyone.

The letter alleging all the bad stuff is anonymous. Then afterwards lots of staff disavow it - because they are scared of Murphy! - and Formby uses this as a way to essentially dismiss the letter.

The bosses close rank and they squeeze the workers and divide and rule. Same as it ever was - but in the Labour party?

Corbyn appears a little bit - an unproductive conversation between him, Milne, Murphy, Fisher etc. in office.

But really the allegations are mostly dismissed as fabrications and it's not treated as an issue for HR - but the relationship between JC and Murphy is damaged and his confidence is slipping. (pg 161)

A sorry chapter, all told. I'll return to this with a new thread tomorrow. We are... not even halfway done here. Oh well: in for a penny...