Labour meltdown
Party plunges into civil war as furious Starmer sacks leadership rival Long-Bailey in anti-Semitism row
LABOUR’S civil war spectacularly reignited last night after Sir Keir Starmer sacked his hard-Left former leadership rival for sharing an article containing an ‘antiSemitic conspiracy theory’.
The moderate leader told education spokesman Rebecca Long-Bailey that she would have to go after she retweeted an interview with the Corbynite actress Maxine Peake.
In the article, Miss Peake claimed American police were taught how to restrain suspects such as George Floyd – whose death sparked the Black Lives Matter protests – by the Israeli security services.
Miss Peake is known for her roles in Dinnerladies and Shameless, and she stars in one of the re-made episodes of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads.
Mrs Long-Bailey, who stood against Sir Keir as the hard-Left ‘continuity Corbyn’ candidate for the Labour leadership, in the spring shared the interview on Twitter and described the actress as an ‘absolute diamond’.
Jewish groups described the comments as anti-Israel ‘conspiracy theories’ and demanded she be sacked. Hours after the
Labour frontbencher’s offensive tweet, Sir Keir told her to resign for sharing an article which contained an ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theory’. He said his ‘first priority’ was restoring trust with the Jewish community.
But the move was immediately condemned by John McDonnell, the hardLeft former shadow chancellor, who said the article had not been anti-Semitic and that Mrs Long-Bailey should not have been sacked. In a sign of the battles facing the Labour Party, he said: ‘I stand in solidarity with her.’
Left-wing unions and the pro-Corbyn Momentum group also condemned the move. Laura Alvarez, Jeremy Corbyn’s wife, tweeted: ‘I support [Rebecca Long-Bailey] because she defends human rights.’
Sir Keir’s decisive action in dismissing Mrs Long-Bailey contrasts sharply with the attitude of his predecessor Mr Corbyn, who was accused of going soft on antiSemites and under whose tenure the equalities watchdog launched an inquiry into Labour’s alleged institutional racism.
His decision to sack her is likely to reignite the visceral hatred between the moderate and hard-Left wings of the party that exploded into the open during the Corbyn years.
In the interview with The Independent, Miss Peake said: ‘Systemic racism is a global issue. The tactics used by the police in America,
kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.’
Mr Floyd died after being arrested outside a shop in Minneapolis, and footage showed a white police officer kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes, despite him pleading: ‘I can’t breathe.’
While some US policeman have received training by Israeli law enforcement officers, the Israeli police have said there is ‘no tactic or protocol that calls to put pressure on the neck or airway’.
Mrs Long-Bailey retweeted the article, but following an outcry, she went on Twitter again to say: ‘I retweeted Maxine Peake’s article because of her significant achievements and because the thrust of her argument is to stay in the Labour Party. It wasn’t intended to be an endorsement of all aspects of the article.’ But there was no apology and this led to calls for her to be sacked.
Last night Miss Peake said: ‘I feel it’s important for me to clarify that I was inaccurate in my assumption of American police training and its sources.
‘I find racism and anti-Semitism abhorrent and I in no way wished, nor intended, to add fodder to any views of the contrary.’
‘Restoring trust is my priority’