Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why won't Labour order an investigation into Sharma's bullying claims?

Why won’t Labour order an investigation into the bullying Dr Gaurav Sharma claims has happened? 

Clearly, on the balance of probability, he is not an innocent here. He has three staff members complaining to the media about him 

But just because he might have behavioural issues, it doesn’t absolve the Labour Party of the allegations he’s laying. 

He claims to have been bullied by former senior whip Kieran McAnulty and by current senior whip Duncan Webb and that the Prime Minister's office did nothing to stop it.

He claims that he asked them to investigate his complaints and they wouldn’t’ 

Why? 

Any good operator would’ve ordered an investigation by now for two reasons:

First; you shut the story down.

Look at what happened to the Nats with the Sam Uffindell stuff. Those allegations were in the news for two days, the Nats ordered an investigation, and the stories stopped because we all knew we’d find out the truth in 2-3 weeks.  

Now compare that to Labour's handling of this mess. This is the sixth news day about Sharma. They could’ve shut this down days ago. 

But also, the second reason, due process. 

Here is a guy claiming bullying and being accused of bullying and it’s got very complicated and murky to all of us watching. 

The right thing to do for his sake and for the sake of Kieran McAnulty and Duncan Webb – all of whom risk having their reputations blemished by this – is to order an investigation and clear the names of the innocent parties.

So why won’t the Labour Party do that?  

A generous reading is that they don’t’ want to tie up the time of people they know are innocent. A less generous reading is they don’t’ really want to know what an investigation would unearth. 

They run the risk that while this ends as a news story, but none of us are ever really sure what happened and are left forever suspecting that while Gaurav Sharma might’ve been a bully himself, he was right and Labour were bullies too.

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