Welsh Labour MP warned against expelling Corbyn when he was party's legal director

Martin Shipton

Cardiff West Labour MP Alex Barros-Curtis warned aides to Keir Starmer that there was insufficient evidence to justify expelling Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party, a new book has claimed.

Mr Barros-Curtis is said to have given the advice in his capacity as head of the party’s governance and legal unit following the publication of a report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into how Labour handled allegations of antisemitism during the period when Mr Corbyn was the party leader.

In advance of last year’s general election, Mr Barros-Curtis was imposed on Cardiff West’s Constituency Labour Party as its candidate by party officials because the sitting MP Kevin Brennan announced his decision to stand down too late for local members to decide on his successor. It’s understood that he did so in return for a seat in the House of Lords, which he took up this week.

Many local party members were angry at the imposition of Mr Barros-Curtis, and the constituency’s Senedd Member, former First Minister Mark Drakeford, decided that he did not wish to share an office with the new MP.

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Get In

A book titled Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer by journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund has now been published. It includes a detailed account of events that led to Mr Corbyn being excluded from the party. Last year he was re-elected as MP for the London seat of Islington North as an Independent, defeating the official Labour candidate.

Get In tells how Labour strategists led by Morgan McSweeney were keen to get Mr Corbyn out of the party as a demonstration of its rejection of the period when he was leader. Information from a wide range of sources enabled Maguire and Pogrund to write a detailed account of the behind-the-scenes negotiations that took place between Starmer’s leadership team and prominent Corbyn supporters over the publication of the EHRC report in October 2020. The report found that the Labour Party was responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination, as well as serious failings by the party leadership in failing to respond to antisemitism and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints.

At first Corbyn issued a statement claiming that the incidence of antisemitism in the party had been greatly exaggerated. This was at odds with Starmer’s statement to the effect that party members who sought to play down the seriousness of the antisemitism problem were part of the problem.

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Suspension

Some in Starmer’s team wanted to expel Corbyn there and then, but the book states that Barros-Curtis warned that suspension was as far as they could go. He advised that Corbyn could not be expelled from Labour altogether because his words did not merit that. If they tried, the courts would overrule them. However, added Barros-Curtis, it was clear from Corbyn’s statement and an interview he gave that what he had said easily passed the threshold for disciplinary action pending a formal investigation - a position with which Starmer agreed. Corbyn was accordingly suspended.

As a result of these discussions, Corbyn modified his position to the point where a disciplinary panel lifted the suspension. However, Starmer was angered by the triumphalism expressed by Corbyn’s supporters and decided to withdraw the party whip from him in the Commons. His refusal to reinstate the whip meant that Corbyn could not stand as a Labour candidate in the 2024 general election - which led to his decision to stand as an Independent.

We have previously reported how Mr Barros-Curtis was subsequently criticised for driving an aborted legal dispute that cost the party millions of pounds in legal costs. The party sued a group of five former members of its staff from the Coirbyn era, alleging that they had leaked a confidential internal report which showed how Corbyn had been undermined by other party officials. The legal case was discontinued in the run-up to last July’s general election,

* Get In by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund is published by The Bodley Head at £25.