Farron is forced to axe ‘anti-Semitic’candidate
Second climbdown for Lib Dem leader after he is condemned by May
TIM Farron faced humiliation last night after he was forced to sack a Liberal Democrat election candidate over his ‘deeply offensive and antiSemitic’ remarks.
Former MP David Ward had said he would fire rockets into Israel and tweeted in the wake of the Westminster atrocity that ‘all terrorist attacks in UK stem from our foreign policy’.
In the party’s second embarrassing climbdown in two days, party leader Mr Farron sacked him just 36 hours after Mr Ward’s nomination was announced. Evangelical Christian Mr Farron had already attracted negative coverage after refusing to say if he believed gay sex was a sin.
As he came under further pressure yesterday, he dismissed Mr Ward, saying: ‘I believe in a politics that is open, tolerant and united.
‘David Ward is unfit to represent the party and I have sacked him.’
He announced his decision after Theresa May condemned him for adopting a candidate with ‘questionable views on anti-Semitism’.
Mr Ward won Bradford East for the Lib Dems in 2010 but lost the seat to Labour in 2015. The 63-year-old, who announced on Monday that he was standing in his old constituency for the party, had previously been disciplined for his comments on Israel.
In 2013, he was rebuked for a blog post about Holocaust Memorial Day in which he accused ‘the Jews’ of ‘inflicting atrocities on Palestinians’.
Later that year he was suspended by the Lib Dems for questioning the continued existence of the ‘apartheid’ state of Israel.
He also said he would be willing to fire rockets from Gaza into Israel and praised the Labour MP Naz Shah after she was suspended by her party for anti-Semitic Facebook posts. Mr Farron later told a Commons inquiry that he regarded some of Mr Ward’s comments as anti-Semitic but allowed him to return to the party as he had ‘served his time’.
Following his sacking yesterday, Mr Ward remained unrepentant, saying: ‘I’m stunned and somewhat ashamed of my own party.
‘The anti-Semitic thing is a nonsense. It’s a well-known tactic – how do you avoid conversation or any criticism about Israel?
‘Just say people are anti-Semitic. I am certainly not anti-Semitic.’
He said he only criticised Israel, not Jews and accused others of trying to ‘shut down debate’.
Joe Glasman, of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said: ‘Mr Farron deserves no credit for allowing the selection of such unsuitable candidates, then claiming to be powerless to intervene, then sacking them.
‘They should never have been selected at all. It is a great shame that Tim Farron only seems to act on anti-Semitism when enough people are watching.’
Yesterday, at the final Prime Minister’s Questions before the election, Mrs May told the Lib Dem leader voters would be ‘disappointed’ that a candidate with Mr Ward’s background had been re-adopted.
Her comments came in response to a question from former minister and ex-Bradford councillor Sir Eric Pickles, who said party leaders must do more than ‘pay lip service’ to tackling anti-Semitism.
Sir Eric asked her: ‘Do you share my disgust that a former member of this House, criticised by the Home Affairs Select Committee for his antiSemitic utterances, is now the official candidate in Bradford East for the Liberal Democrats?’
Mr Farron ignored the PM’s answer moments later and instead told the House that the Conservative Party ‘has never been nastier’.
Mrs May shot back: ‘I find it difficult to hear those words coming from his mouth when we have just heard that his party has selected a candidate with questionable views on anti-Semitism.’
Jewish groups said the Lib Dems had made the ‘right decision’ in dropping Mr Ward as a candidate.
Chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, Simon Johnson, said: ‘The selection of David Ward for was an error and rightly criticised by politicians from all parties.
‘Mr Ward’s views are offensive and he has been an unrepentant serial offender. It is important that all parties have a zero tolerance approach to anti-Semitism.’
‘He should never have been selected’