Corbyn crisis: Second Labour veteran on brink
MP could follow Frank Field . . . as Blunkett issues anti-Semitism warning
A SENIOR Labour MP last night threatened to follow Frank Field out of the party unless Jeremy Corbyn tackles the antiSemitism crisis.
Mike Gapes said he could quit as early as next week unless Labour’s ruling body finally adopts the international definition of anti-Semitism – a move Mr Corbyn has resisted.
The veteran MP for Ilford South since 1992 added he was ‘agonising’ about his future in the party after a summer in which Labour has been engulfed by a wave of toxic allegations about antiSemitism, including several relating directly to Mr Corbyn.
Mr Gapes suggested his future rested on a decision by Labour’s national executive committee next week on whether to adopt the internationally recognised definition of anti-Semitism in full. He warned he would not accept any ‘weaselworded caveat’ in the definition.
‘I am agonising every day about the situation and the state of the Labour Party,’ he said. ‘I will make my decision about how I deal with this in my own time.’
The controversy deepened last night when David Blunkett, a former home secretary in the Blair government, attacked Mr Corbyn’s leadership as a ‘shambles’ on anti-Semitism.
He warned that Mr Field’s resignation should be a ‘catalyst for seismic change’ in the party and that without it Labour risked falling into ‘decline and irrele- vance’. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Lord Blunkett said that under Mr Corbyn the ‘bullying and thuggery’ of the militant Left during the Eighties had returned.
Mr Field, an MP for almost 40 years, announced on Thursday that he was resigning the Labour whip at Westminster to sit as an independent.
He accused Mr Corbyn of turning Labour into a ‘force for anti-Semitism in British politics’ and failing to stamp out a culture of bullying by the hard Left.
Labour’s chief whip Nick Brown told Mr Field last night he would be expelled from the party in a fortnight unless he backed down, but the MP vowed to fight this. A Labour source said last night he had been expelled with immediate effect, adding: ‘If you resign the whip you cannot be a member of the party – it’s automatic.’
Several Labour moderates are considering whether to quit. ‘There are quite a few of us in the same position as Mike – agonising about what to do,’ one MP said. ‘It’s a big decision – people have given their lives to the Labour Party – but at the same time we can’t just stand by and let things carry on as they are. The stench is unbearable.’
Labour’s John Mann warned that others would follow Birkenhead MP Mr Field’s lead unless Mr Corbyn finally agreed to get tough on anti-Semitism. ‘It’s a distinct possibility that others will go unless the racism, the bullying, the intimidation of the extremists is stopped,’ he said. Mr Mann called on Mr Corbyn to guarantee all Jewish MPs would be automatically reselected for their seats to prevent deselection attempts against figures such as Luciana Berger and Margaret Hodge.
He claimed Labour would lose votes in the North unless it could persuade Mr Field to stay. He added: ‘There’s Labour people who support leaving the EU. Frank going is a big danger to us losing those votes and if the top of the Labour Party doesn’t wake up to it, one thing’s for certain – they’ll never be in power.’
LABOUR FACING ‘CATASTROPHIC SPLIT’ From yesterday’s Mail
APPEARING on breakfast TV yesterday, Frank Field was everything his Birkenhead constituents and politicians from all sides have come to admire over his nearly four decades in Parliament: thoughtful, passionate and principled.
Resigning over anti- Semitism, he nevertheless insisted he wanted to stand as a Labour MP at the next election, but only if the leadership ‘puts its house in order’.
Fat chance! Instead of acting to assuage Mr Field’s concerns – and those of countless other Labour MPs – Jeremy Corbyn yesterday threatened to expel him from the party. Meanwhile, his hard- Left outriders went on the attack.
So out came Corbynite lickspittle Owen Jones to claim Mr Field was only quitting because he feared deselection. And out came Derby North MP Chris Williamson to claim – risibly – that Labour had taken the issue of anti- Semitism very seriously and to suggest otherwise was a ‘grotesque slur’.
In truth, Mr Corbyn has allowed this virus to infect the party, while every day the drip, drip of damaging revelations about his personal links to anti-Semites continues. Yesterday it emerged that, only a year before he became leader, Mr Corbyn met figures from Deir Yassin Remembered, a group run by Holocaust denier and notorious anti-Semite Paul Eisen.
Who, now, could argue with former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who this week accused Mr Corbyn of supporting ‘racists, terrorists and dealers of hate’?
For the Mail, Mr Field’s decision is principled and courageous. Amid rumours of further resignations, the only question appears to be how many other Labour MPs will take the same honourable step.