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Courtesy of the Sunday Times.
Jeremy Corbyn has defended Labour’s stance on antisemitism after one of his frontbenchers said the party was in a “very, very dark place” with the Jewish community. Mr Corbyn urged his MPs to postpone an emergency meeting in which they will attempt to override a decision by the party’s national executive committee (NEC) to remove elements of the international definition of antisemitism from Labour’s code of conduct.
Mr Corbyn told an audience at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in Dorset that the meeting would be better attended in September because parliament is due to rise on Tuesday. He was speaking after The Sunday Times revealed that his team was facing two legal challenges from Jewish campaigners over the row. Defending the omission of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s examples of antisemitism, Mr Corbyn said: “[The NEC] wasn’t trying to rewrite it; it has accepted almost all of it. “What it’s done is also put alongside it a code of conduct for members of the party because we will not tolerate antisemitism in any form whatsoever in the party.”
The parliamentary Labour Party is due to vote on its emergency motion tomorrow, the same day that the executive of the Jewish Labour Movement will meet to discuss legal action against the party using the European Convention on Human Rights. Rebecca Long-Bailey, shadow business secretary, told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC One: “We’re starting from a very, very dark place due to the actions of a minority in our party and the failure of us to deal with it quickly.”
The dispute came to a head when Margaret Hodge, the veteran Jewish MP, confronted Mr Corbyn and called him a “racist and antisemite”. Mr Corbyn said today that he was upset by her remarks.
“I felt not pleased about it, I felt upset about it but as always I am very calm and treat people with a great deal of respect,” he said. “I don’t shout at people, I just listen to what they have to say. A complaint has been registered and that will have to be dealt with by the party, but that is independent of me.” Dame Margaret was defended by Mr Corbyn’s closest ally, the shadow chancellor John McDonnell. “She’s got a good heart. Sometimes you can express anger – I’m one of those people who have in the past,” Mr McDonnell told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday. “You have to accept that, you have to accept sometimes it can be quite heated ... Let’s understand that and let’s just move on.”