Labour abandons legal action against Jeremy Corbyn-era staff

High Court documents set out Labour’s case against the five – including suggestions that they had discussed leaking the document as part of a communications strategy in 2020.

The lawyers for the five said what had been discussed had been instead a “rough plan” to brief “a narrative’ of the document to the press – with any confidential information redacted – but only in the event it was submitted to the EHRC, which never happened.

None of the five, their lawyers said, had considered the disclosure of the full unredacted report and they had condemned the leaking of the full document as “reckless and foolish” and not politically sensible.

Perhaps more significantly, three inquiries or investigations into the leak had been conducted. The party itself appointed an independent investigator, Morag Slater, whose report was unable to name the leakers.

The wide-ranging Forde report in to the party’s culture concluded in 2022: “We could not identify the source of the leak.”

And the Information Commissioners Office – the UK’s data watchdog – told the BBC 18 months ago that it had found “insufficient evidence” that “any individual had unlawfully obtained or disclosed personal data”.

A joint statement from Labour and from lawyers for the five states: “The party is discontinuing its legal claims against Karie Murphy, Seumas Milne, Georgie Robertson, Harry Hayball and Laura Murray on a ‘no order as to costs’ basis. The five welcome the resolution of the claims.”

With Jeremy Corbyn now expelled from Labour’s ranks, and standing against the party at the general election, the current leadership is likely to be relived too that this long-running reminder of party infighting has concluded – but not without a political and financial cost.