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Leaders

Burying Royall

July 7, 2016 07:00
1 min read

Most of the coverage of the Chakrabarti report has focused, understandably, on the disgraceful scenes at its launch, with Jeremy Corbyn standing and watching in silence while a Jewish Labour MP was attacked.

The report itself is barely worth bothering with, pointing out that antisemitism is bad and some words are offensive.

But the most important lesson comes from something that didn't happen. In May, Baroness Royall presented Labour's National Executive Committee with her inquiry into allegations of antisemitism at Oxford University Labour Club. The NEC blocked publication of all bar the conclusions, which gave no indication as to the substance of the allegations.

Responding to the uproar, Labour said that the inquiry had been subsumed into Ms Chakrabarti's work and so would be published with her report. We now know that was, quite simply, not true. Labour now says that it has no plans to publish it.

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