Millionaire donor in UK court bid to fix Labour leadership election
Asa Winstanley
A millionaire Labour donor is taking the party to court
on Tuesday in a bid to remove incumbent leader Jeremy Corbyn from the ballot
for this summer’s leadership election.
Michael Foster is a former
showbusiness agent whose clients have included actors Sacha Baron Cohen
and Hugh Grant and radio host Chris Evans.
Foster is also the man who heckled
Corbyn at a Labour Friends
of Israel reception last year.
Foster screamed: “Oi! Oi! Say
the word ‘Israel!’” in response to Corbyn’s speech at the event, which took
place in September soon after Corbyn swept to victory.
A veteran campaigner for
Palestinian rights, Corbyn had called for the siege of Gaza to be lifted. This
so incensed Foster that he stood up on his chair and tried to shout him down.
Soon after, he explained to
the BBC’s Daily Politics
show that what had outraged him was Corbyn’s “talk of Palestine” and “talk of
the siege of Gaza.”
Foster ran for parliament in
2015 as a Labour candidate in Cornwall, but failed to win the seat from the
ruling Conservative Party.
Labour Friends of Israel did
not reply to an email asking what Foster’s involvement with the group is, if
any. Foster could not be reached for comment.
“I will destroy you”
During his campaign in 2015,
Foster reportedly harassed a rival candidate at an election debate.
In a discussion of a proposed
tax on mansions, Loveday Jenkin of Cornish party Mebyon Kernow had pointed out
that Foster lives in a $2 million house in Cornwall.
Foster reportedly
responded by calling her – as The Daily Mail rendered it – “You c***.”
“If you pick on me again I
will destroy you,” Foster added.
Jenkin told the newspaper that
Foster “clearly has an anger management problem and no understanding of the
problems affecting Cornish people.”
Foster denied
the reports, but admitted to being an “aggressive agent” with a “legendary
temper” so intense that he once broke his own finger “while tapping on a table
to make a point, so forcefully that the bone snapped.”
Famous friends
During his failed 2015
election bid, Foster enlisted celebrity friends, some of whom made videos
supporting him.
British TV actor Ross Kemp
also recently made a video
for “Saving Labour,” a hastily formed group which has been involved in a failed
effort to oust Corbyn as leader.
The coup was initially launched
in June by right-wing Labour MP Margaret Hodge who tabled a motion of
no-confidence in Corbyn.
It peaked with a string of
resignations from Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. These lawmakers then piled massive
amounts of pressure on Corbyn to step down. Corbyn refused, citing his overwhelming
mandate from Labour Party members and supporters.
A leadership challenge was
launched, and Corbyn now faces Labour MP Owen Smith as his sole opponent in an
election contest which will be decided in September.
Were Corbyn to be removed from
the ballot by Foster’s legal action, it would leave Smith – a former
lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry – as the only candidate in the
leadership election, making any democratic vote redundant.
Earlier this month Labour’s
national executive decided that party rules stipulate the standing leader
automatically goes onto the ballot in the event of a challenge. This means
Corbyn does not need the support of 51 Labour MPs or members of the European Parliament,
unlike challengers.
Foster’s attempt to reverse
this decision seems like the last gasp of the failed coup. According
to one expert, it is unlikely to succeed.
Millionaire donor
The register
of members interests shows
that Foster made a $13,000 donation and a further $13,000 interest-free loan to
Labour MP Liz Kendall last summer, to support her failed bid in last year’s
leadership election.
Widely perceived as the
Blairite continuity candidate, Kendall came last, with a humiliating 4.5
percent of the vote.
Foster also donated another
$9,000 to Kendall in December.
Foster has reportedly donated
more than $500,000 to the Labour Party over the years, including about $156,000
to his local Labour Party in Cornwall, which he reportedly
rules with a “firm smack of command.”
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