Jeremy Corbyn has been forced to deny bullying his political opponents after one of his MPs alleged that the Labour leader had threatened to telephone his father amid a row over the party’s direction.
Corbyn has denied such a conversation ever took place, but Conor McGinn, the opposition whip, has insisted the leader of the party said he would call his Sinn Fein-supporting father over complaints about Labour’s direction.
The disagreement began with a statement from McGinn, the St Helens North MP since last year and a member of the Labour whips’ office, posted yesterday morning on the Politics Home website.
McGinn said he had been told by fellow whips that after Corbyn had been angered by an interview McGinn gave, Corbyn had proposed telephoning McGinn’s father, who is a Sinn Fein councillor, to seek his intervention.
Although the call was never made, McGinn said the suggestion was “shocking and embarrassing, and almost unbelievable”.
Speaking to Sky News later, Corbyn denied he had made any threats. “I don’t do any abuse, I don’t do any bullying,” he said. A spokesman for the Labour leader’s office said Corbyn denied any conversation had taken place about phoning McGinn’s father. A later statement said: “Jeremy did not at any point threaten to call Conor’s dad, nor did he call him.”
A source later said the suggestion had seemingly been made to Labour whips by one of Corbyn’s senior staff members, at the instigation of the Labour leader, rather than by Corbyn directly. Corbyn’s office denied he suggested such a move.
However, Owen Smith, who is challenging Corbyn for the leadership of the party, said he believed McGinn’s account. Speaking to Sky News, Smith said he was worried about what he said was a wider culture of bullying within Labour.
Angela Eagle, who also challenged Corbyn, has received abuse and threats. “We can’t deny the facts that this wasn’t something we saw in the Labour party before Corbyn became leader,” Smith said. “It’s now become commonplace in the Labour party, so something has gone badly wrong under his watch.”
In his article, McGinn said he was on a parliamentary trip to Washington in May when he learned that Corbyn was annoyed about an interview he had given in which he discussed the party’s disconnect with working-class communities. McGinn said he refused to retract the comments, but texted Corbyn to stress his support and “make clear that there was no offence intended”.
McGinn said that after he returned to the UK he was told by fellow whips that Corbyn, when deliberating on how to respond to the interview, had suggested calling the MP’s father “to discuss it with him and ask him to speak to me about it”.