ONE cannot read the Forde Report into the internal life of the Labour Party during the Jeremy Corbyn years without a deepening sense of rage.

That is not because Martin Forde QC has done a bad job — far from it. His report is judicious, largely fair, and in many respects, deeply insightful.

He and his team were charged with reviewing the contents of the “leaked report” — an internal Labour document prepared under then general secretary Jennie Formby and originally intended as part of the party’s submission to the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigation into Labour’s handling of complaints of anti-semitism.

The report lifts the lid on not just the party’s often-inadequate handling of such complaints, it also exposed an intensity of factional malice towards Corbyn and his supporters on the part of party HQ officials, senior and middle-ranking, as well as the horrifically racist and misogynistic views held by the same people.

Further, it revealed for the first time, that during the 2017 general election campaign some of those same officials had covertly and deceitfully diverted money to support their favoured Labour candidates in defiance of resourcing decisions taken by the campaign leadership.

Having reviewed all the material, Forde’s conclusions are a vindication of those who prepared the “leaked report” and, indeed, of Corbyn and his team at the time. They are also a damning indictment of the culture and conduct of the right wing in Labour’s apparatus.

His report goes some way to discrediting the notorious Panorama programme, shooting down its central narrative of sustained intervention by officials in Corbyn’s office into the processing of anti-semitism complaints.

In fact, in the great majority of the small number of cases where there was any exchange of views at all, such intervention was actively and insistently solicited by head office functionaries hostile to Corbyn. At the time they welcomed the assistance — effusively, indeed — only to maliciously misrepresent it to a media which was incurious at best and hostile at worst. I was among the victims of such dishonourable conduct.

Given the demolition of the central premise of the Panorama programme, perhaps the BBC should review its defence of the show, and Keir Starmer his decision to settle, with members’ money, the libel claims brought against the party as a result.

On the abuse of funds in the 2017 election, Forde is clear. It was entirely unjustified and wrong and should never have happened.

He argues that it was not illegal, which may perhaps be the case, and that it most likely did not affect the outcome of the election. The latter is certainly disputable — had the money been spent in line with the leadership’s strategy, as it should have been, the handful of additional seats required to stop Theresa May governing with a majority cobbled together with the Democratic Unionist Party could have been won by Labour.

In my view, even that would not likely have led to a Corbyn premiership, rather than a minority Tory government. But, thanks to the actions of the Labour staff hierarchy, we will never know.

Forde does, it is true, dismiss the idea that the HQ wanted Labour to lose and conspired to that effect. Again, it is my impression from working with them throughout the campaign that Forde is probably right. The truth is that they all believed with one mind that Labour was heading for catastrophe under Corbyn and conventional wisdom blinded them to any other possibility.  

But I saw no evidence of a sabotage operation. I cannot claim to see into the souls of junior anti-Corbyn staff, but any disruption in those quarters would have made little difference in any case.  

The real story was, and remains, the astonishing increase in the Labour vote in 2017, disproving for once and for all that a left-wing policy offer must be a vote loser, a success to which HQ officials contributed little or nothing.

Forde is also unequivocal in his condemnation of the casual yet intense racism and misogyny some staff directed towards Diane Abbott and others. He dismisses any suggestion that the messages reproduced in the “leaked report” were manipulated or misrepresented. Institutionally Labour was, and remains, infested by racist and other backward attitudes which the present leadership shows no interest in expunging.

Forde can be criticised for his doctrine of factional equivalence — suggesting both sides were at it. Even were that true, there is a world of difference between what is permissible for an elected Leader trying to develop the policies and strategy the membership voted for, and what is acceptable on the part of appointed officials paid to implement his instructions.

However, I do share his view — rejected as it is on parts of the left — that some of Corbyn’s supporters simply denied that there was a problem with anti-semitism in the party, and that this inhibited the necessary handling of what was a genuine issue, with the result that it bedevilled Corbyn’s leadership to the end.  

I saw too much evidence of anti-semitic attitudes, sometimes inadvertent ones, to disagree with Forde on that point. The “leaked report” itself collated much of that evidence and Forde is right that its authors worked in good faith to challenge the “denial” narrative.

Forde’s silences are, however, significant. He does not point the finger at individuals. Yet one man was in charge of the Labour apparatus for most of the period under review, presided over the culture, was in the Whatsapp chats, authorised the expenditures and supervised the handling of complaints. He is Lord Iain McNicol of West Kilbride, Labour’s general secretary until March 2018.

The larger lessons lie outside the report’s remit. One is that the apparatus did not act alone in obstructing Corbyn’s leadership — it was the instrument of the rank and rotten majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party, which certainly did conspire against Corbyn throughout his tenure. Their fealty to capitalism, Nato, Washington, nuclear weapons and in some cases Israel, outweighed any sense of loyalty, democratic propriety or even decency.

Its finest specimens also now sit in the House of Lords, thanks to peerages offered by a grateful Boris Johnson.

Without the cover supplied by renegade MPs, the officials would not have felt empowered to act as they did. Forde’s indictment is of the consequences of privileged parliamentarism as much as anything.

And here’s the rub. The beast is not only undead, it is back in charge. The Starmer regime in the Labour Party is the direct organic descendant of the filth exposed in Forde. The cast may have changed but the script is the same.

The hounding of the left. The indifference to the racist attacks on MPs like Apsana Begum and Zarah Sultana. The persecution of Corbyn. And, of course, the Establishment-first politics on all issues. If, as Starmer’s spokesman boasted, the days of sabotage are over, it is only because the saboteurs have taken over.

And this is the challenge for the left. Its leading figures have been vociferous in denouncing the behaviour exposed by Forde, quite rightly. But they have been muted when it comes to joining the dots with the Starmer gang.

They should learn a lesson from Peter Mandelson. On Corbyn, his lordship was honest enough to admit in 2017 that: “I work every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of his tenure in office.

“Something, however small it may be — an email, a phone call or a meeting I convene — every day I try to do something to save the Labour Party from his leadership.”

Unless the left approaches the Starmer leadership in the same constructive spirit of working towards its urgent end, it is merely resigning itself to another Forde report a few years down the line. This is not history — it is the future unless serious resistance is mounted.