Corbyn isolated after attending event hosted by ‘extremist’ group
JEREMY CORBYN attended an event in Parliament hosted by a Muslim group accused of welcoming preachers with extremist views.
Mr Corbyn reportedly addressed the Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend) event on Wednesday evening, with a handful of Labour MPS present.
Mend was this week accused by a think tank of being “Islamists masquerading as civil libertarians”.
The revelation came after it was also reported that Mr Corbyn had refused to attend an official dinner yesterday with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Theresa May.
The Sunday Times reported that four MPS had pulled out of the Mend event. The Henry Jackson Society claimed in a report that “Mend meets the Government’s own definition of extremism”.
But Mend said the report “equates political dissent with extremism”. It said: “Our parliamentary event shows that we operate in the mainstream of British society and our work has recently been praised by senior figures in all three main UK political parties, including the Labour Party and Liberal Democrat Party leaders. The Henry Jackson Society report clearly has its own partisan agenda and is aimed at discrediting Mend with a view to trying to discourage politicians, journalists, unions, civil liberty organisations and others to work with us.”
Mend also said that many of the claims in the report are “based on innuendo and false assertions” and that the organisation “unequivocally reject any allegations of anti-semitism, homophobia, or extremism”.