HOW CAN CORBYN’S BRUISER BE A LADY IN WAITING?
She masterminded Labour’s trouncing, and is accused of bullying and failing to clamp down on anti-Semitism — yet is up for a peerage. So...
Four men and two women, including Prince Charles’s favourite clergyman, will today sit in judgment in an anonymous office in the Whitehall edifice that houses the Treasury on the most contentious set of peerage nominations for a generation.
Over the years, dozens of people have seen their dreams of being draped in ermine evaporate after the confidential deliberations of the powerful House of Lords Appointments Commission.
Since 2000, when the commission was set up by the Blair government, no prime minister has ever opposed any of its recommendations on whether someone is fit to be a peer or not.
Apart from the former Speaker John Bercow, no one will be awaiting their verdict more keenly than Karie Murphy. As one of Jeremy Corbyn’s most trusted confidantes, the fiery redhead became perhaps the most powerful woman in the Labour Party.
Yet despite helping to engineer Labour’s worst result since 1935 as Corbyn’s chief of staff, Murphy has been rewarded by her boss with a nomination for a peerage. To say her elevation to the upper House would be controversial is a colossal understatement.
Within days of the news breaking that Murphy, 56, would be on the dissolution honours list to mark the end of the last parliament, an email was sent to the commission — composed of Lord (Richard) Chartres, the former Bishop of London and close friend of Prince Charles, and five others including a Labour, Lib Dem, and Tory peer, as well as a Lord Lieutenant in Northern Ireland.
The message — from an unnamed former Labour Party staffer who worked with Murphy — was clear, concise and to the point.
‘Karie Murphy’, said the author, is ‘completely unfit’ to be a member of the House of Lords. The former Labour employee added that evidence could be provided of her ‘aggressive behaviour’ which should disqualify her from being made a peer.
The appointments commission does not have the power to veto a peerage on its own account. But it sends advice to the Prime Minister of the day after examining whether the ‘past conduct of the nominee would not reasonably be regarded as bringing the House of Lords into disrepute’.
The past conduct of Karie Murphy, who for three years was Corbyn’s all-powerful chief of staff in the Commons, is facing criticism on a second front.
A three-page letter, sent anonymously by more than 20 Labour staffers, has described a ‘divisive and toxic’ culture of ‘bullying and intimidation’ by senior management in Corbyn’s office. The letter was sent in December 2018 to Jennie Formby, the general secretary of the Labour Party and a close ally of Corbyn, and signed ‘20+ staff members from the Leader’s office’.
A copy was passed to the Huffington Post website. And while it never actually named Murphy, several of those who endorsed it told the political website that it related specifically to her. A spokesman for Murphy denied she was aggressive or a bully. Pointing out that Murphy was part of a management team, he said that she was not identified by name or position in the letter and that there were six members of the senior management team, none of whom is mentioned in the anonymous letter, against whom the allegations could be directed.
Separately, a dozen former and current staff members, again speaking on condition of anonymity, talked to the Huffington Post about their alleged experiences of bullying at the hands of Murphy. They all insisted that they were supporters of Corbyn’s leadership and policies.
The litany of allegations included: pushing a member of staff by the neck and pinning them against a wall; reducing a junior member of staff to tears at a Christmas party after a 15-minute tirade of screaming and shouting; swearing and shouting at staff who were perceived to have made errors; disclosing to staff that female colleagues had suffered miscarriages; telling colleagues, inaccurately, that other staff had mental health problems or were drunks; and managing Corbyn’s office through ‘a culture of fear’.
Murphy strongly denies all of these allegations and has pointed out that in all her time working in Corbyn’s office she never had any formal or informal complaints brought to her about her behaviour.
But it’s not just the complaints of bullying, all of which Murphy vehemently denies, which could sink her ambition to become a peer. The Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), which this year celebrates 100 years of affiliation to the Labour Party, has also complained about her.
‘Ms Murphy’s nomination is deeply inappropriate and must be rescinded immediately,’ it says. ‘Jeremy Corbyn is using his final weeks in office to reward failure.’
The JLM is critical of Murphy over the party’s failure to deal with hundreds of allegations of anti-Semitism that are now the subject of a major investigation by the equality And Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The only other political party which has been investigated by the EHRC is the far-Right British National Party.
As the allegations of anti-Semitism flooded in, Murphy demanded Corbyn’s office had oversight of the most sensitive complaints. This led to the charge that his staff interfered with decisions on suspensions and expulsions of party members.
The JLM is not alone in its concerns on this issue. The anti-racist group Hope Not Hate has also called for Murphy’s peerage to be halted until the EHRC completes its investigation. The organisation’s chief executive Nick Lowles wrote to the commission to flag up his worries.
‘A submission by the Jewish Labour Movement to the EHRC included allegations that complaint processes lacked independence from the Leader’s
Office, that staff in the Leader’s Office denied anti-Semitism was an issue and that individuals, including Karie Murphy, appointed staff members with a known history of anti-Semitism,’ he wrote.
‘An informed decision as to the ennoblement of Ms Murphy is not possible until such time that the EHRC has fully considered all allegations against her and come to a determination as to her culpability with regard to the issue of antiSemitism within the Labour Party.’
Once again, a spokesman for Murphy said that any statement that she had interfered with decisions on suspensions and expulsions of party members was untrue.
There is no doubt that Murphy has her supporters. Indeed, there are some who would go so far as to say she is a model colleague. But what is undeniable is that she is a deeply divisive figure.
Fresh evidence of the dysfunctional nature of the Leader’s Office — where Karie Murphy was a key player — came in September last year, with the resignation of Andrew Fisher, Corbyn’s influential head of policy.
Labour sources say Murphy’s move out of Corbyn’s office was a response to the row that erupted after Andrew Fisher announced that he was quitting, citing a ‘lack of professionalism, competence and human decency’ in an explosive email which was leaked to the Press.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was furious that Fisher, who was highly respected, was quitting. ‘He now had the ammunition to move against Murphy,’ said the source.
The following month, Murphy was abruptly moved out of Corbyn’s office and into the party HQ on the orders of McDonnell. The switch was designed to ensure Murphy was kept out of harm’s way but it backfired when the General election was called only weeks later.
Murphy seized control of the campaign, which was run from Labour HQ. Some MPs who lost their seats blame her for refusing to take heed of clear indications emerging from northern and Midlands seats about Labour’s disintegrating vote.
They accuse her of pumping resources instead into seats she thought the party would capture from the Tories. One Labour MP told me: ‘Karie was fighting the 2017 election campaign all over again when Corbyn fared much better than expected. This time we gained only one seat, Putney, and lost 60. It was down to her. It was her strategy.’
During the presentation of an internal report on the election to the party’s National executive Committee last month Murphy defended herself by producing a document claiming that the role of community organisers was ‘directly attributable’ to winning Putney.
Her behaviour attracted ridicule from opponents. ‘It’s often said that history is written by the victors,’ said Wes Streeting, the MP for Ilford North and a long-time Corbyn critic. ‘But in this case it is very clear that history has been rewritten by the losers, who are more interested in covering up the litany of failure that they have presided over rather than providing the Labour Party with an open, honest account of what has gone wrong.’
So who is Karie Murphy? Born in Glasgow in 1964, she was a nurse for 25 years. A passionate champion of the NHS, in 2017 she revealed that she had once donated a kidney at Guy’s Hospital in London to help a desperately ill child she had never met. She made the decision after watching a ‘profoundly moving’ TV advert appealing for organ donors and required hospital treatment after catching an infection from the procedure.
She married William Cullen in Cambuslang in 1991 but they split up around 20 years later. Their two grown-up children, Roisin and Ryan, live with their father. A staunch socialist, she rose to be chair of the
Scottish Labour Party and came to national attention for all the wrong reasons in 2013 when she attempted to secure the Labour Party candidacy in Falkirk.
The selection process hit the headlines when she was suspended from the party and reported to the police by Labour officials over allegations of trying to fix the selection in conjunction with Unite, the trade union.
Unite supported her candidacy but she withdrew from the process despite being cleared by an internal inquiry.
Tom Watson, who Murphy worked for at the time, quit as the party’s general election co-ordinator at the height of the dispute.
It was in 2016 that she was parachuted into Corbyn’s office and began steadily to consolidate her grip on the party machine.
When David Prescott, who worked in Corbyn’s office, was accused of sexual misconduct by a Labour MP in 2017, Murphy stepped in to block his suspension. Prescott, whose father John was Deputy Prime Minister under Tony Blair, denied the allegations. No formal complaint was pursued and he returned to his role in the party.
After Peter Willsman, a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee and friend of Corbyn, was accused of harassing a young woman staffer, leaked emails suggest Murphy blocked a formal inquiry. In an internal email, she wrote: ‘I am happy to discuss this matter with him directly if appropriate. This is not a matter to be managed under the sexual harassment policy. I am sure someone having a word with PW would easily correct this.’
Initially, Murphy was given credit for professionalising Corbyn’s chaotic political operation but her combative approach was soon winning her more detractors than admirers. She formed a powerful double act with Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, one of the most vocal supporters of Corbyn’s leadership.
They have been linked romantically and were photographed holding hands while celebrating New Year in 2018 at the luxury Loch Fyne Hotel in Inveraray.
In June last year they were seen at a five-star Villa Magna hotel in Madrid before the Champions League final between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool.
And Murphy has also been seen going into the block of flats where McCluskey lives near London
Bridge. Only last month, and despite the appalling election result, she was handed even more power by Jennie Formby, a Corbyn ally and general secretary of the Labour Party.
Murphy took over the role of executive director for governance, membership and party services at a time when thousands of new people were joining before the January 20 deadline for a vote in the Labour leadership contest.
The Unite executive is backing Rebecca Long-Bailey, seen as the Corbyn continuity candidate. If Long-Bailey triumphs, it’s widely expected that Murphy will keep her job. But if front-runner Sir Keir Starmer succeeds, it’s thought she will be out, which is why a new berth in the House of Lords would suit her.
First, she has to overcome the objections raised in that letter to the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
Murphy’s legal team has released supportive statements from some of her colleagues to try to see off the bullying allegations.
JOE BRADLEY, who worked closely with her and is now operations director for the Rebecca Long-Bailey leadership campaign, said: ‘These allegations are absolutely ridiculous.
‘Karie was a great manager from day one. She always made sure I had the support and guidance that I needed, in some incredibly difficult circumstances.’
Amy Jackson, Corbyn’s former political secretary and a close colleague of Murphy, added: ‘I’ve worked with Karie for years. She has consistently been incredibly supportive of me, and has always offered advice, guidance and help.’
A spokesperson for Murphy said: ‘These are vicious smears falsely generated to feed a media determined to damage the Labour Party and Ms Murphy personally.
‘It is categorically untrue to say complaints were made about Ms Murphy by existing Labour staff. It is categorically untrue to claim Ms Murphy is a bully. In four years of working with the leader of the Opposition office our client has not had any formal or indeed informal complaint brought to her under two general secretaries of the Labour Party.’
Whether Murphy becomes a peer is still open to question. The decision lies in the hands of the little known House of Lords commission, chaired by the Northern Irish peer Lord Bew. It will be up to him and his colleagues to decide whether the complaints are credible and serious enough to cost Murphy the ermine she craves.