Jonathan Ashworth Apologises After Leaving Party Colleague ‘Distressed and Alarmed’

Former Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth, who was beaten by a pro-Palestine independent in a shock general election result, is one of several candidates who complained of being subjected to bullying and intimidation on the campaign trail.

Home secretary Yvette Cooper has promised a review of the election after several Labour MPs and candidates said they were subject to abuse. Jon Woodcock – the government’s independent advisor on political violence, who is also an arms trade lobbyist – said there was a “concerted campaign by extremists to create a hostile atmosphere for MPs within their constituencies to compel them to cave into political demands”.

13 independent candidates have hit back at claims that their campaigns were “hateful” or “intimidating”. In a letter to the media they said: “Highlighting voting records or choosing not to re-elect certain MPs is a democratic right, not intimidation.”

Some of the claims of abuse may turn out to be more credible than others. However, Novara Media can reveal that in recent days, Ashworth has been forced to apologise after leaving a party colleague who praised his rival’s campaign “distressed and alarmed”. We can also reveal that Ashworth made an “unusual” intervention to defend his wife after she was revealed to make disparaging remarks about party colleagues.

A shock result.

Perhaps the biggest shock of an election night full of surprises was the victory of Shockat Adam in Leicester South.

Adam had overturned a Labour majority of more than 22,000, dethroning Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general who had been central to Labour’s national campaign. In his acceptance speech, Adam said: “I am here to represent those … that live in a city within a city without a voice, those that really genuinely cannot heat or eat, those that see that they have no future”, before holding a keffiyeh aloft and saying, “this is for the people of Gaza”.

We won! SHOCKAT ADAM IS THE NEW MP FOR LEICESTER SOUTH! Statement coming soon… #GE24 #GeneralElection2024 pic.twitter.com/OZrI3ydkut

— Shockat Adam (@ShockatAdam) July 5, 2024

Few saw Adam’s win coming, but maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. Labour was expected to lose votes over its soft line on Gaza, especially anywhere with a large Muslim population. In 2021, super-diverse, youthful Leicester became the UK’s first “plural city”, where no ethnic group is the majority. Around a third of Leicester residents who profess a faith are Muslim.

There have long been complaints that the local Labour party has treated the city’s young people, people of colour and women with contempt. Last year, it formed a “campaign improvement board” which barred 19 city councillors from re-standing for election, including all of Labour’s Hindu councillors, over half its Muslim councillors, the only Jewish councillor and almost all of the left, who had spoken out about failures of political leadership following the riots between Muslim and Hindu communities in the city in 2022.

Sharmen Rahman, then a Labour councillor in the city, wrote in Tribune: “The message was clear: ethnic minority candidates are dispensable and interchangeable, and political integrity is punishable.” She left Labour and became the Green candidate at the 2024 general election.

Ashworth did little to fix things during the election campaign. As a Starmerite grandee expecting to join the new cabinet, he was often doing national media rounds, parroting the party’s lines aimed at projecting an image of a government in waiting and convincing voters in swing constituencies that the party was not too leftwing.

In an interview with LBC, he refused to condemn Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, only condemning “extreme” elements in his government. In another, with BBC Newsnight, he gave a loud dog whistle on migration: “Those people who shouldn’t be here – if they’re from Bangladesh or wherever – we’re going to send them back.” After this was picked up by his constituents, he released a social media video saying there had been “some misunderstanding” and that he is “immensely proud of the contribution of the Bangladeshi community to Leicester”.

Keir Starmer later made similar comments to the Sun. Rather than reflecting on how ruthless targeting of one set of voters’ concerns might come at the expense of another, Ashworth told the i paper that the comments had been “distorted and can be shared around WhatsApp and TikTok in seconds in a way that could never have happened before”.

‘Sour grapes.’

Ashworth has taken defeat badly.

Just a week after the election, he told Sky News’s Kay Burley that Adam is “already letting down Leicester South”, calling him an “impotent independent opposition MP”.

“I’ve never seen a member of parliament – Shockat Adam Patel – get elected on the basis of a foul, obnoxious lie, that I was responsible for genocide, that I had the blood of Gaza children on my hands,” he said.

More importantly, he has complained about harassment and intimidation on the campaign trail. He told Andrew Marr on LBC that he was chased down a street until he had to “seek refuge literally in a vicarage”.

Video footage documents two incidents. One shows a constituent asking, “How would you look the Palestinians in the face and tell them that you abstained [from voting for a ceasefire] in December?”, in an angry exchange that lasts about four minutes. Another shows a man filming Ashworth walking down the street asking, “Do you condemn Netanyahu, yes or no?” as Ashworth speaks into his phone camera saying, “I am not going to have these guys bullying me off the streets”.

Ashworth’s complaints have been rejected by Adam, who called them “sour grapes”. He said Ashworth had been subjected to “robust questioning” over the genocide in Gaza, asking journalist Owen Jones: “If we are not going to be angry at that particular point in time, when are we going to be angry?”

Ashworth told Marr that the allegedly bullying behaviour was the fault of the Muslim Vote, a national campaign encouraging Muslim voters to engage with electoral politics on the issue of Gaza. An animated Ashworth said the campaign “was clear on their website: ‘punish MPs’. That’s the words they used”.

For the avoidance of doubt over this apparently shocking statement, an obliging Marr asked: “The word was ‘punish’, was it?”

The idea of voters “punishing” politicians at the ballot box is in fact completely normal. On election night, Labour’s Angela Rayner used the term to the outrage of absolutely no one. She is now deputy prime minister. It’s surprising Marr didn’t point this out, since in 2022 he speculated on his LBC show that voters would “punish Conservatives led by Boris Johnson when they get a chance” for defending the former prime minister for breaching Covid rules.

The Muslim Vote campaign says it has been “inundated” with Islamophobic hate mail, including threats and vile messages. “Since Jonathan Ashworth and other defeated Labour candidates started briefing the media about alleged abuse they faced and laying the blame at the feet of our campaign and at the independent MPs, the level of Islamophobic hate directed at us has increased significantly,” the campaign posted on Twitter/X. “We call on political leaders to condemn this hate unequivocally. Their silence is complicity. We demand action and accountability from those in power to ensure that such hate is not tolerated.”

A personal attack.

Not everyone seemed to agree that Adam’s campaign was one of bullying and intimidation. Following the election shock result, Leicester South CLP secretary Naj Hassan took to social media to congratulate Adam on his victory and praise his campaign – a traditional display of grace in defeat. Ashworth was furious.

In an email to members of the CLP, Hassan said that he had demanded an apology after Ashworth had made a “baseless accusation and personal attack in a public forum that I have been ‘helping opponents’”.

Hassan said: “I understand that emotions were maybe running high immediately after the result, however, I have under advice, requested, quite formally, a full apology and retraction of the statement that has left me significantly distressed and alarmed over the last few days … the toll this has taken on my mental health has been significant.”

The “defamatory statement” by Ashworth was based on a social media post in which Hassan congratulated the new MP on his election. In the post, Hassan outlined that Adam’s campaign was “community driven”- something Labour must “review, heed and use to build trust back”.

Anyone who doubted Hassan’s loyalty need only look at how he remained “part of the party following immense pressure to resign from many people on the Gaza issue”, as well as at the hours he spent during the election, “even doing administrative tasks behind the scenes while I was on holiday in Turkey with my family”.

Hassan referred the matter to Labour’s Legal and Compliance Unit and CLP Executive Committee. Novara Media understands that Ashworth has since apologised.

Ashworth has not always been so strict about bad behaviour. In 2020, Novara Media published leaked WhatsApp messages from Labour’s senior management team, in which Emilie Oldknow – Ashworth’s wife – described one woman colleague as a “pube head” and another as a “smelly cow” and appeared to suggest allegations of racism made by BAME politicians were untrue – an example of what the Forde report called “deplorably factional, insensitive and at times discriminatory attitudes expressed by many of the party’s most senior staff”.

When the party suspended Oldknow, Ashworth took “the unusual step of offering a personal statement of support on behalf of my wife”. In the statement, seen by Novara Media, he dismissed her comments as “a handful of flimsy, impulsive, infantile remarks sent after days of bullying, frustration and stress.”

Novara Media asked Ashworth for a comment on this story, but received no response.

Since his defeat, Ashworth has landed on his feet, bagging a new job as chief executive of Labour Together, the think-tank turned factional vehicle which failed to declare £739,000 in donations as it helped Starmer rise to leader of the Labour party.

Despite this, he cuts a bitter figure. When Adam didn’t turn up to a statement in parliament about the government reinstating funding to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, Ashworth posted on Twitter/X: “What? But our MP in Leicester South said his victory was for Gaza. Where is he?” Adam released a statement saying: “Regrettably, I could not be in the chamber today as I was dealing with a potential death threat.”

On LBC, Ashworth told Marr that in his new role he might do “a really interesting bit of analysis” on how social media and messaging apps affected the election. For a full understanding of why he lost, he may want to look closer to home.