Labour MP accuses Labour leadership of bullying

Hamilton West MP Gaurav Sharma writes an extraordinary column:

For those who need an example, Louisa Wall talked in her valedictory speech about how she was bullied by a senior Labour Party MP early in her career and despite being one of our most outspoken MPs she found out that she had no agency in the halls of Parliament when it came to her own wellbeing. If any of my more recent colleagues could speak freely, I am sure the list of similar stories with no support for MPs being bullied and no consequences for MPs bullying their colleagues would easily fill a book or two.

So a Labour MP says his colleagues are being bullied by their colleagues and get no support.

The above Member-to-Member and Party-to-Member bullying rampant in Parliament is – I believe – promoted and facilitated by this very organisation by working behind the scenes with the Whips Office, the Offices of the Leaders of various Parties, along with the Office of the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister’s Office.

So he says the bullying is facilitated by Parliamentary Services, the whips office and the PMs Office. Incredible that he write this in a column he sent to a newspaper.

With the way the current Parliamentary Service is run, you can go weeks and months before getting a reply to urgent issues and when they do have an answer it is seldom in writing and often from behind the desk of the party whips who – in my opinion, and based on what I have seen in my time in Parliament – use the Parliamentary Service to bully and harass their MPs “to keep them in line”.

This is strong language – bully and harass. And he is not referring to a 16 year old teenager, but the leadership of parties.

Where concerns have been raised with Parliamentary Service about staff or MP colleagues showing unacceptable behaviours in some cases there does not appear to have ever been any investigation or an intent to investigate. If anything, in my experience, when an MP raises serious concerns the Parliamentary Service steps back, stonewalls the conversation, ghosts the MP and throws them to the Whip’s Office to be gaslighted and victimised further so that the party can use the information to threaten you about your long-term career prospects.

Again strong language – victimised, ghosted and gaslighted – the language people use to describe abusers.

Politicians especially at top of our current system and from parties across the political spectrum often talk about “changing the system” and “kindness,” but as the saying goes “charity must start at home”.

That is a very obvious reference to Jacinda Ardern.

How bad must things be for an MP, that he feels the only way he can stop the bullying is to write a newspaper column that will inevitably end his career with Labour.