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The Forde report into factionalism in the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, and specifically into a leaked report exposing anti-Corbyn staffers making racist and sexist comments, is available online in full here. Here are 10 takeaways from what it says.

1) Supporters AND opponents of Corbyn using the issue of antisemitism within the party “as a factional weapon”. Both “sides” were thus “weaponising the issue and failing to recognise the seriousness of antisemitism”.

2) Factional warfare undermined the party’s ability to function. Under Corbyn, the party was “spending more time occupied by factional differences than working collaboratively to demonstrate that the party is an effective opposition”.

Both sides blamed one another for this inability to properly function. The report says:

Both genuinely believed that the other side was trying to sabotage their work in this period – sometimes with a degree of justification, and sometimes not.

On the 2017 election, Forde concludes it was “highly unlikely” that the parallel campaign run by anti-Corbyn staffers cost the party the election by, for example, funnelling support elsewhere. He says: “The two sides were trying to win in different ways.”

3) There is not clear evidence that Corbyn’s team or others overtly interfered in investigations about alleged antisemitism. The report finds most of the problems were created by a lack of clarity on procedures, aggravated by factionalism.

4) The report dismissed the complaint by Labour staffers that derogatory messages were “cherrypicked and selectively edited” in the leaked report. It says they were “deplorably factional and insensitive, and at times discriminatory, attitudes”.

5) Corbyn himself declined to be interviewed for the report, though signed a joint submission to the inquiry. Forde described the Labour leader as “notably silent”.

6) Forde also finds there is a “vociferous faction in the party sees any issues regarding antisemitism as exaggerated by the right to embarrass the left”.

7) He also finds that the leaked report itself – authored at Unite’s headquarters – was “a factional document with an agenda to advance, and that the quoted messages were selected pursuant to that agenda”.

8) There is significant work still to be done to combat racism in the party, Forde finds. Authors of the WhatsApp messages “should have considered … the fact that Diane Abbott is a black woman, and has been vilified on that basis over several decades”.

9) But Forde also finds the messages’ authors “were not given a right of reply before their messages were included in the leaked report; that was a clear breach of natural justice”. He says some were reported in a “selective way”.

10) Forde praises the changes under Keir Starmer to the disciplinary process. He says;

We must commend the party for its efforts more recently to achieve a greater degree of independence in its system of regulation, with notable reforms approved at the party conference in 2021.