We were right to run secret defensive campaign in 2017, ex-official tells Forde Inquiry

Labour’s former executive director for elections, campaigns and organisation Patrick Heneghan has defended the secret defensive campaign run by Corbynsceptic staffers during the 2017 election.

In a blog post titled “Labour’s 2017 campaign and the myth of the stab in the back”, setting out in full the revelations first reported by HuffPost UK this morning, Heneghan confirms claims made in the leaked report.

The document on Labour’s handling of antisemitism complaints, which leaked online in April, alleged that HQ staff who opposed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership had run a “parallel” campaign to defend MPs on the party’s right.

According to the leaked report, Labour HQ operated a “secret key seats team” based in Ergon House without the leader’s office knowing. This has led some members to conclude that they sabotaged the 2017 effort.

Corbynite party activists have argued that, without this secret team, Labour in 2017 could have done better than depriving Theresa May of a Tory majority – and could have won the election instead.

Heneghan has now confirmed that this secret operation took place, but he has rejected claims of sabotage, describing them as a “deflection tactic to absolve the architects of the 2019 campaign of their culpability”.

In his account of the internal battles during the 2017 campaign, which has also been sent to the independent Forde Inquiry looking into the leaking and contents of the report, the former Labour official has written:

“On 19th May at 8am I met with a senior member of Corbyn’s team who gave me a list of seats that should be defunded. I countered that our latest polling showed some of these seats as being very marginal. “I don’t care” was the response. I was told if this leaked, I would be “going in the Skwawkbox”.

“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). 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.”

Defending the secret parallel campaign, Heneghan has said that organisers should not “go along with an Emperor’s new clothes fantasy that the leader is popular in every demographic in every constituency”.

He added: “To suggest these questions of judgement 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.”

Neil Coyle, the Corbynsceptic MP for Bermondsey, has tweeted to describe Heneghan’s post as a “revealing insight into the mindset of those who took over from professional campaigners/strategists like him”.

Bermondsey and Old Southwark is one of the “hitlist” seats that received extra funding thanks to Heneghan and other staffers, who refused to take them off the defensive list as requested by Corbyn’s team.

The other “hitlist” constituencies – which would have been defunded under instructions from the leader’s office but were defended by HQ officials – are listed by HuffPost UK:

• Tom Watson’s West Bromwich East
• Yvette Cooper’s Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford
• Caroline Flint’s Don Valley
• Dan Jarvis’ Barnsley Central
• Kate Green’s Stretford and Urmston
• Bridget Phillipson’s Houghton and Sunderland South
• Rachel Reeves’s Leeds West
• Chris Bryant’s Rhondda
• Seema Malhotra’s Feltham and Heston
• Angela Eagle’s Wallasey
• Kevan Jones’ Durham North
• John Healey’s Wentworth and Dearne
• Phil Wilson’s Sedgefield

The seats then held by Watson, Flint and Wilson were lost in 2019. Many of these constituencies enjoyed Labour vote increases in 2017, but had their majorities cut down significantly in the December election last year.

Steve Howell, who worked as a Labour strategist during this period, has tweeted that the parallel campaign “wasn’t ‘legal’ as [Heneghan] claims” because “spending MUST be authorised by the leader’s campaign committee”.

Heneghan quit his senior party post in September 2017 after a 19-year career with Labour, and was replaced by Unite staffer Niall Sookoo. It was reported in June that the party suspended Heneghan as part of the leaked report investigation.

Submissions for the leaked report probe chaired by Martin Forde QC closed in early August after a two-week extension. Ex-staffers named in the report told the inquiry that their private messages were ‘misused’ to portray them as racist and sexist.

Corbyn, John McDonnell and other former shadow ministers sent in their own submission, which backed the report’s accusation that staffers sabotaged the 2017 election campaign and alleged that diversion of party funds could constitute fraud.

The Forde Inquiry was originally expected to conclude in mid-July, but the chair described this timescale as “impractical”. The website now states that it aims to deliver the final report “by the end of 2020”.