Jeremy Corbyn’s allies privately discussed how to “deal with” John Woodcock and other critics of the Labour leader, including Peter Mandelson, in the run-up to last year’s general election.
Woodcock, the MP for Barrow and Furness, resigned from the Labour party on Wednesday with a furious parting blast at the leadership, claiming an ongoing disciplinary process was rigged against him.
In an email sent after an NEC meeting in May last year, a senior Labour figure told colleagues: “We need to deal with Woodcock, and for that matter Peter Mandelson and the others, but it needs to go through a legally sound process.”
At that time no formal complaint had yet been made against Woodcock, while Lord Mandelson was viewed as a political problem for the party leadership but has faced no claims of impropriety.
Woodcock was suspended in April over accusations that he sent inappropriate texts and messages to a former staff member between 2014 and 2016. There is no suggestion the staff member’s complaint was motivated by the NEC email.
But after referring to the suspension and subsequent removal of another person associated with the party because of “a long and colourful list of charges including sexting young women”, the email continued: “If John Woodcock had similarly been suspended … then yes we could have refused to endorse him.”
Woodcock, who will now sit as an independent, claims the email is evidence that senior Labour figures were out to get him – and other outspoken critics of Corbyn – long before the disciplinary process he now faces was launched.
But Corbyn’s spokesman said the email was “a red herring and a smokescreen”.
Woodcock is a longtime and fervent critic of Corbyn’s leadership. He has vehemently denied the claims about sending inappropriate messages.
In his resignation letter to Corbyn on Wednesday morning, Woodcock said he was quitting Labour “following your refusal to appoint an independent investigator to rule on my disciplinary and in the light of clear evidence that the process has been manipulated for factional purposes”.
He said he believed senior party figures were determined to rig the disciplinary system to ensure he was not able to stand for re-election, and he complained that details of his case had been leaked to two Sunday newspapers, after which he was suspended.
At the May 2017 NEC meeting, some members argued Labour should refuse to endorse Woodcock as a candidate in the forthcoming general election.
The sender of the internal email, whose name has been redacted, said that had Woodcock not been endorsed as a candidate, “his lawyers would have had a field day”, and added that if he had been rejected it would have been a distraction during the campaign. “There was a desire to spend the next five weeks talking about Jeremy’s positive agenda, not John Woodcock,” the email said.
One senior Labour figure – who did not dispute the sincerity of the allegations against Woodcock – told the Guardian: “There was always a group of people in the leader’s office who wanted to hang a couple of our MPs on the right wing of the party out to dry, but wiser heads always prevailed.” They added: “They were really, really going for him”.
Another source described a perception that there was “an awkward squad” of MPs.
Relations between Woodcock and Corbyn’s team deteriorated sharply after the MP began the 2017 election campaign by posting a video message to constituents saying he wanted to be re-elected for Labour but “will not countenance ever voting to make Jeremy Corbyn Britain’s prime minister”.
Woodcock obtained the Labour email as part of a “subject access request”, under which the party was obliged to reveal correspondence about him from several named individuals, including aides to Corbyn. The email is copied to then party general secretary, Iain McNicol.
Woodcock claims the case against him was accelerated when McNicol was replaced by Jennie Formby, a Corbyn ally, this year.
In his resignation letter, Woodcock – a former No 10 aide to Gordon Brown and shadow minister – said Labour was “no longer the broad church it has always historically been”.
He added: “Antisemitism is being tolerated and Labour has been taken over at nearly every level by the hard left, far beyond the dominance they achieved at the height of 1980s militancy.”
In response to the claims, Corbyn’s spokesman said: “The fact is the sexual harassment procedures of the Labour party are robust and independent of political leadership and they end up going through the elected NCC which is where this case would have gone to.
“I’m afraid that actually what has happened is that accountability over this case has been lost. If it’s involving people that are unconnected with the disciplinary process then whatever he is referring to is entirely irrelevant.
“I’m not aware of anything like that. He’s not the only Labour MP who has often spoken against the party leadership. This is a bit of a red herring and a smokescreen in regard to a serious case that should have been fully investigated.”
He also suggested Woodcock should resign his seat and trigger a byelection.