TMP Online

New Statesman political editor, Martin Bright, has got himself into hot water by attacking the signatories to the Compass statement put out in support of London Mayor Ken Livingstone earlier this week, after it emerged that one of the signatories is his employer, Geoffrey Robinson MP, the owner and publisher of the New Statesman.

Bright’s Dispatches documentary, “The Court of Ken” which aired on Channel 4 on 21 Janaury 2008, attracted much criticism from centre left political activists. Bright (right), interviewed several disgruntled former acolytes and employees of the Mayor for the documentary and said in his New Statesman blog at the time that “like me, many of the people we spoke to had previously been supporters of the mayor, but are now unhappy with the way things have turned out.” Various unsubstantiated allegations were made in the course of the programme.

Seamus Milne (left), associate editor of the Guardian, wrote of the documentary:
“Quite how Channel 4 managed to describe an hour of primetime vilification as a ‘fair and balanced investigation’ with a straight face will be a mystery to most of those who watched a programme without a single supportive interview. Instead, we were treated to a hotchpotch of allegations and denunciations from disgruntled ex-employees and political opponents, ranging from the bizarre and sub-McCarthyite to the more serious but unproven.
“Bright as a representative of Britain’s main centre-left political weekly and Nick Cohen, who has more openly lined up behind [Boris] Johnson, as an Observer columnist…share a broadly neoconservative agenda on Islamism and the ‘war on terror’ - though Bright opposed the Iraq invasion - and that is the central issue that has turned them and their allies against Livingstone.”

The Compass statement published on Monday attacked “writers and commentators who claim to be ‘on the left’ taking the fight to Livingstone in a way that will only result in a victory for Johnson and all that means for the poor and dispossessed of the Capital and the future politics of our country.”

Writing in his blog yesterday, Bright claimed that the criticism was aimed at him and said: “The signatories of [the statement] should be ashamed of themselves. I am particularly disappointed that individuals committed to democratic renewal such as Baroness Helena Kennedy and Anthony Barnett, one of the founders of Charter 88, chose to sign up to the letter.”

However, one of those who signed up to the statement was Geoffrey Robinson MP (above), the Brownite former Paymster-General and owner of the New Statesman – Bright’s employer. Nick Cohen helpfully pointed out this fact in the comments on Bright’s blog.

The statement was signed up to by 18 academics, 2 peers, 16 MPs, 2 MEPs, 5 people from the arts, 6 trade union general secretaries and others from across the centre left spectrum - from Blairites like Prof Julian Le Grand and Robert Philpot (chair of Progress), to people like Tony Benn and Diane Abbott MP (left).  Other signatories include Labour Party Vice Chair Dawn Butler MP and Claude Moraes, one of the first Asian MEPs and London’s first ethnic minority MEP.