Legal services have cost Labour ‘almost £400,000’

LEGAL SERVICES supplied by Gordon Nardell, the QC hired by Labour last summer to deal with the backlog of antisemitism cases and to oversee the party’s disciplinary processes, have reportedly cost the party close to £400,000.

The figure, revealed to the Mail on Sunday by a “well-placed party source”, prompted anger from Labour MPs who demanded “full disclosure” on how much their party was spending to deal with its antisemitism crisis.

One source told the MoS: “Top lawyers may not come cheap but you really have to ask if we had to spend this money. So much of this antisemitism crisis is self-inflicted because Corbyn and his cronies didn’t nip it in the bud.”

Mr Nardell will quit his role for the party next month to return

Gordon Nardell: hired by Labour to full-time practice at his chambers, Twenty Essex Street.

Labour insisted that his decision to leave was nothing to do with revelations in a recent BBC programme in which former party staffers said their bosses had intervened in antisemitism cases, leaving them feeling undermined, anxious and depressed.

Mr Nardell’s appointment last year was itself controversial. He was revealed to have been active on the party’s left and had said he “absolutely” shared Mr Corbyn’s views on Israel.

He was previously a member of the Labour Representation Committee, which has attacked allegations of antisemitism within the party as anti-Corbyn “propaganda” from the “ruling class”.

In the year since Mr Nardell was appointed, the row over Jew-hate has worsened amid claims that Mr Corbyn’s staff have intervened in disciplinary cases to protect allies.

It has also emerged that at least two members of Jeremy Corbyn’s office have volunteered to give statements to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the statutory body investigating anti-Jewish racism in the party.