Daily Mail

Don’t come back, Labour tells top Jewish official

- By Daniel Martin Policy Editor d.martin@dailymail.co.uk

LABOUR’S hard-Left new general secretary has come under fire after it emerged she had placed the party’s most senior Jewish official on gardening leave.

As the party struggled to get to grips with its anti-Semitism problem, Dan Simpson was told this week not to bother returning to the office. The secretary of the Parliament­ary Labour Party had already handed in his resignatio­n and was working out his notice.

Mr Simpson was told of the decision on the same day that Jennie Formby, a former Unite union activist, officially took up her post as general secretary.

Last night a Jewish MP criticised the move, saying it did not look right as Labour stood accused of failing to tackle anti-Semitism.

Yesterday the Daily Mail revealed that Jeremy Corbyn wants to install an activist who defended Ken Livingston­e over anti-Semitism claims as Labour’s new disciplina­ry chief. Claudia Webbe is the leader’s pick to take over from Christine Shawcroft, who resigned after emailing colleagues to oppose the suspension of an apparent Holocaust denier.

Miss Formby was one of those who received the offensive email – but she took no action against Miss Shawcroft, who went only after she was forced out by Mr Corbyn.

Now the general secretary faces further criticism over the treatment of Mr Simpson. He was one of six senior figures who handed in their notice last month after it emerged Miss Formby was due to take over as general secretary.

Only two of them – Mr Simpson and John Stolliday, head of Labour’s compliance unit – were placed on gardening leave.

Labour sources insisted that Mr Simpson’s religion had played no part in the decision.

But Ruth Smeeth, the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, said it did not look good for the party.

‘Dan has been an excellent member of our team, and I’m incredibly concerned by the optics of the first act by the new general secretary being to put on gardening leave the most senior Jewish member of staff employed by the party,’ she said.

The party denied reports that Thomas Gardiner, an adviser to Labour chairman Ian Lavery and a key Corbyn ally, will temporaril­y act as head of the compliance unit, which oversees complaints against members.

Such a move would have been controvers­ial because two years ago he put forward a motion in his local party to argue: ‘The factional use which a few within the party have tried to make of anti-Semitism has been wrong and has been counter-productive in dealing with the problem.’

A group of peers has called on Scotland Yard to investigat­e online anti-Semitic abuse by supporters of Mr Corbyn. The cross-party letter to Metropolit­an Police Commission­er Cressida Dick highlights ‘unambiguou­s’ examples of hate speech on Facebook groups set up to back the Labour leader.

Lord Sugar, who quit Labour three years ago, said Mr Corbyn was ‘dan- gerous’ and insisted it was the Opposition leader’s job ‘to stop inciting this type of rubbish’.

‘I am happy to put my name to this letter. If I didn’t know better, I would say Corbyn has deliberate­ly aggravated the situation by associatin­g himself with known haters,’ he told the Daily Express. ‘If you didn’t condone it, you would keep away from it. If this was about Muslims there would be merry hell to pay, there would be riots in the streets.’

The letter to the Met was drafted by Lord Polak, honorary president of the Conservati­ve Friends of Israel, and was backed by ten other peers.

A Met spokesman said: ‘The Metropolit­an Police received correspond­ence addressed to the Commission­er’s office on Wednesday 4 April and it will be reviewed.’

‘Incredibly concerned’

 ??  ?? Hard-Left chief: Jennie Formby
Hard-Left chief: Jennie Formby

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