A senior Labour official accused of being one of a Corbyn-sceptic group who sabotaged the 2017 election has defended his colleagues’ actions, saying the party would not have lost so badly two years later if a similar strategy had been followed. Patrick Heneghan, the then executive director for elections, said “electoral oblivion” had been the direct result of the departure of experienced staff because they were not loyal to Jeremy Corbyn. “The stab-in-the-back myth is their deflection from reality,” he said. “The endless debate of this fantasy needs to be put to bed. Grand conspiracy theories offer nothing for a party that has been out of office for a decade so far.” He said Corbyn staff had demanded the party defund the campaigns of some prominent critics of the leadership and give extra resources to some key supporters who had bigger majorities. Heneghan said some staff, many of whom were named in a leaked internal report describing a “hyper-factional” environment among party workers hostile to Corbyn, had set up a defensive campaign to save Labour seats rather than to deliberately defy the leadership.
The anonymously leaked report, which reignited painful divisions in the party, included hundreds of private WhatsApp messages from named staff, many of whom expressed hostility towards Corbyn or his close allies and bemoaned Labour’s better-than-expected performance at the 2017 general election. Some workers are alleged to have used racist and sexist language to denigrate senior allies of Corbyn, including Diane Abbott. Heneghan said: “Recent weeks have seen the growth in conspiracy theories suggesting there was some grand plan to ‘throw’ or ‘sabotage’ the 2017 election. This is not the reality but simply a deflection tactic to absolve the architects of the 2019 campaign of their culpability for a disastrous result.” He said party staff had expanded the target list to include 93 offensive seats at Corbyn’s team’s request, giving them extra digital advertising and key seat visits. But Heneghan said he refused to comply with a request in mid-May that some held seats should be defunded, some of which he considered “very marginal”. “The seats to defund were largely MPs considered by Corbyn’s team to be political opponents (many of them would fall to the Tories in 2019),” he said. “I was also given a list of seats that needed extra funding. Most of these had majorities of over 10,000 but were strong allies of the leadership.” Heneghan said he would provide evidence of his claim to the independent inquiry into the leaked report and Labour’s culture under Corbyn, chaired by Martin Forde QC. In their submission to the party inquiry, Corbyn and his leadership team have accused hostile officials of setting up a “shadow operation” in a Westminster office as part of efforts to plot their own election course and defend anti-Corbyn MPs. Heneghan defended that action, saying 2017 polling had consistently showed that Corbyn was unpopular in “red wall” seats, many of which fell to the Tories in 2019. “Corbyn’s team were simply not prepared to take polling information seriously,” he said. “But we knew we couldn’t acquiesce in allowing these seats to fall.” He said campaigners at the party’s headquarters then changed tactic to focus on local issues in those seats rather than the leadership. Heneghan said the loss of seats such as Mansfield, North East Derbyshire and Stoke South was proof the strategy was correct, adding that the campaign retained seats such as Dudley North, which was held by the Corbyn critic Ian Austin but fell to the Conservatives in 2019. “I have heard it said that Labour could have been in power for just over 2,000 more votes in the right seats. It’s also true that the Tories could have won a majority by moving a lot fewer votes the other way,” he said. “To suggest these questions of judgment are akin to sabotage is laughable. Yes, there were differences of opinion on how to get the best result possible. In the end I think the balance between offensive, and defensive was probably just about right given the facts and data we had. It’s hard to claim the balance was right in the 2019 Labour campaign.” He said WhatsApp messages in the leaked report, which appeared to show Labour officials sounding horrified at the party’s advance, “omits our WhatsApp messages such as ‘amazing, amazing, amazing’… or the excitement when its confirmed it’s a hung parliament”. Officials named in the report plan to take legal action against the party over data protection issues and libel as well invasion of privacy and, for some staff, breach of contract and employment. In the formal submission to the inquiry by the officials accused of sabotage, which was leaked to the Guardian this month, the officials allege their WhatsApp messages were used to falsely make them seem racist and sexist.