Mike Sivier is a Labour member who is on the record claiming it “may be entirely justified” to say Tony Blair was “unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers”. He has also he suggested the SWP omitted Jews from the list of Holocaust victims because they were being “politically correct”, defended Ken Livingstone and Malia Bouattia’s anti-Semitic comments and got into an almighty row discussing whether “thousands or millions” died in the Holocaust. A real charmer, we can all agree (well, except Labour’s compliance unit). 

The Sunday Times broke the story of Sivier’s re-admittance to Labour back in February. Their piece was followed up by MailOnline. Sivier then submitted a complaint against MailOnline to the press regulator IPSO, which they have – farcically – partially upheld. Here is the IPSO ruling:

The complainant had not directly said that he was “’not going to comment’ on whether thousands or millions of Jews died in the Holocaust as ‘I don’t know’”. There was no reference in the discussion surrounding the leaflet to “whether thousands or millions of Jews died in the Holocaust”, because the leaflet had explicitly not referred to Jews among the victims of the Holocaust. The publication may have inferred this meaning from the complainant’s comments, but it reported this as something he had said. The article did not make clear that it was reporting the publication’s interpretation of the complainant’s comments; they were presented as direct quotations. Because the comment thread was publicly available, this represented a failure to take care, in breach of Clause 1(i). The article gave the impression that the complainant had said something which he had not, on a subject liable to cause widespread offence, a clarification was required to avoid a breach of Clause 1(ii).

This is a patently ridiculous ruling by IPSO. This is the full quote from Sivier in question regarding the Holocaust:

“I’m not going to comment on ‘thousands’ instead of ‘millions’ because I don’t know.”

What do IPSO think he meant? It is very clear he is a total wrong ‘un. Why are IPSO going out to bat for people like this?