The left-wing activist lawyers at Bindmans released an extraordinary statement yesterday, urging the Labour Party to “provide further details about its recruitment” of Assaf Kaplan, a Jewish Labour Party member who previously worked for the Labour Party of Israel and before then the IDF as a spy. Bindmans say they are pursuing this on behalf of a Palestinian member of the Labour Party:
“A British Palestinian member of the Labour Party has called upon the Party to provide further details about its recruitment of former officer of the Israeli Defence Force, Assaf Kaplan, to manage the Party’s digital campaigning. Bindmans LLP has written to the Party on behalf of Mr. Hmidan regarding its recruitment of Mr. Kaplan to the position of Social Listening and Organising Manager in January 2021.”
Last month, Guido asked the Labour Party about a rumour going around that Kaplan had left the Leader’s office but was steered away. By the sounds of things, Sir Keir is sticking with Kaplan. Looking at the latest Labour polling, Starmer will need all the help he can get…
FBPErs were wetting themselves with excitement recently over a fresh no-hope anti-Brexit lawsuit brought by Remainiac MPs Tom Brake, Ben Bradshaw and Caroline Lucas. The Met Police’s lawyers have now responded to the legal threat, it doesn’t make pretty reading at all for the Remainers. Not that it’s stopping lawsuit-happy lawyers having a field day creaming cash from gullible Remainers on cases that have no chance of success…
First off they point out that the MPs themselves have no relevance to the case themselves – as required by law to actually bring the case. They then note that the Remainers’ expensive lawyers, Bindmans, have “not cited a single authority” where the courts have intervened in a police investigation in the way they want – by forcing them to bring a prosecutorial decision or hand over their entire investigation to the CPS within fourteen days. Politicians attempting to use the courts to compel the police in this way is truly extraordinary, this is real kangaroo court stuff…
However the people who’ll be squirming most reading it are the hapless Electoral Commission. The police lawyers list a truly remarkable catalogue of fundamental errors made by the UK’s electoral regulator:
“The proposed claim appears to be premised on the assumption that… when the EC referred those matters to the MPS it supplied all potential relevant documents… That assumption is incorrect…
“When the EC referred the matters to the MPS, the EC did not provide the documentation from its own investigation as your Letter of Claim asserts. Instead the EC required the MPS to make a request for disclosure pursuant to the Data Protection Act 2018 (a process that the MPS does not consider was necessary)…
“That documentation was not indexed or organised in what the MPS considered to be a systematic or logical fashion. The EC did not provide (and has not provided) the MPS with a comprehensive schedule of all used and unused material held by the EC from its investigation of the kind that the police would compile in a criminal investigation.
“The EC’s approach to the gathering and disclosure of evidence does not appear to the MPS to have complied with the letter or the spirit of the Criminal Procedure and Investigation Act 1996 and associated guidance…
“The MPS formed the view that EC has not disclosed all the documents in its possession or control that are potentially relevant to its investigation. The MPS has sought further disclosure from the EC on a number of occasions… The MPS remains of the view that the EC has not disclosed all of the documents in its possession or control that are potentially relevant to MPS’ investigation.
“Your letter of claim has only served to reinforce this view.”
This is a staggering indictment of the levels of pure unbridled incompetence at the heart of the quango that is trusted to be judge, jury and executioner of the UK’s electoral system. No-one in their right mind would hand such a bunch of rank amateurs yet more discretionary power over the UK’s democracy, the Tories are sensibly pushing back against it. Yet more evidence that the Electoral Commission is simply unfit for purpose…
UPDATE: The Electoral Commission have hit back strongly against the Police, accusing them of “unfounded, misleading and incorrect” assertions. Read their response in full here…
Read the original letter in full below:
