Let prisoners keep their mobiles
...that’s the astonishing suggestion of key Corbyn ally as party reels from election shock – prompting MPs to fume: It’s no wonder we can’t connect with voters
JEREMY Corbyn faced a new revolt last night over claims that his ally, Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti, opposes plans to stop prisoners using mobile phones.
The Shadow Attorney General caused uproar at a private meeting of Labour leaders when, it is claimed, she questioned the need to crack down on prisoners’ use of smartphones in jails, which is aimed at cutting links to drugs and organised crime.
According to one source, Baroness Chakrabarti said: ‘This might sound naive, but I am not sure we should be doing this. We need to consider the rights of prisoners.’
A senior Labour insider said: ‘People couldn’t believe it. It sums up how out of touch the leadership is under Corbyn and his cronies.’
Last week, the Government unveiled new plans to curb the use of phones by inmates.
John Attard, national officer of the Prison Governors’ Association, last night stressed the importance of stopping prisoners using them. He said: ‘We need to crack down on mobile phones in prisons – not encourage them. They allow prisoners to potentially continue criminal activity by intimidating witnesses or arranging drugs deliveries.’
Asked if she had questioned taking mobile phones from prisoners, a spokeswoman for Baroness Chakrabarti said: ‘We do not comment on leaks from confidential team meetings.’
The peer’s alleged comments were disclosed as Mr Corbyn faced another leadership crisis yesterday after being beaten by the Tories in the Copeland by-election in Cumbria. Amid mounting concern over the Labour leader’s position:
Deputy leader Tom Watson launched a thinly veiled attack on Mr Corbyn, saying ‘things have to change’ and making clear Labour should never have lost Copeland;
Ayesha Hazarika, a former aide to Mr Corbyn’s predecessor Ed Miliband, called on Mr Corbyn to quit to save Labour;
Moderate Labour MPs privately welcomed a statement by former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, hinting at a possible comeback;
Mr Corbyn issued a Donald Trump-style demand to John Cryer, the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, to ban his MPs from criticising him.
The row over the alleged comments by Baroness Chakrabarti, former head of civil rights group Liberty, comes weeks after she was accused of launching a ‘shameful’ defence of disgraced human rights lawyer Phil Shiner. He was struck off for orchestrating a witch-hunt against British troops.
And in January, she was accused of hypocrisy after launching a women-only degree fund, despite girls doing better than boys at university. The peer, who sends her son to an £18,000-a-year private school, claimed the initiative would close the ‘education gender gap’.
Yesterday’s comments by Mr Watson, who will be stand-in leader if Mr Corbyn steps down, herald a damaging new Labour rift. In a speech to the Scottish Labour conference he said: ‘Seven years into a Tory government, we shouldn’t be facing questions about whether we can retain the seats we already h hold.’ And Bermondsey Labour MP Neil Coyle, who canvassed in Copeland, railed: ‘Corbyn’s cronies rant and rave that he was not to blame for our latest defeat, but the opposite is true.’
Mr Coyle said former supporters told him they would prefer a Labour
‘It sums up how out of touch the leadership is’
government ‘but can’t vote for you with Corbyn in charge’.
It is also understood that Mr Corbyn has privately begged Mr Cryer, who chairs the weekly meeting of Labour MPs, to stop them raising his dire opinion poll ratings with him in person. Mr Cryer refused.
And there was more infighting yesterday among union leaders. Unite official Gerald Coyne, who hopes to oust general secretary Len McCluskey, criticised him for keeping quiet after Copeland.
Mr Coyne said: ‘He has spent six years funding Corbyn and bullied those who disagreed with him but today when Labour faces its biggest crisis in 50 years… he is nowhere to be seen or heard.’
A Unite spokesman said: ‘Len McCluskey has been focused on defending members’ pensions and fighting to save jobs. He will leave the political posturing to others.’
JEREMY CORBYN’S Labour Party, like a lost space capsule full of laughing gas, drifts further and further away from reality, unconscious of the doom that awaits it.
The Prime Minister can barely believe her luck, as her party wins territory it never previously held, recovers ground it thought was lost for ever, and looks with increasing confidence towards the next General Election.
Now we learn that Mr Corbyn’s friend Lady Chakrabarti has been urging colleagues to consider permitting prisoners to use mobile phones.
This proposal, coming from somewhere far beyond cloud cuckoo land, illustrates Labour’s inability even to imagine what its supporters are worrying about.
Rather than giving mobile phones to prisoners, Mr Corbyn should find some way of connecting his Shadow Cabinet with Britain, and with the year 2017. But he won’t.