Kick the eleven out

I read Ruth Smeeth’s encouraging column, setting out how antisemitism is being trained out of the Labour Party, with a degree of optimism (It has been hard, but we’re detoxifying Labour, 25 February).

In parallel, the immediate reflex of 11 Labour MPs who saw Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and invading that sovereign country was to attach their names to the Stop the War statement criticising NATO. Their world view seems to side instinctively with authoritarian and repressive regimes rather than with the modern democracies whose freedoms and human rights are the envy of those subject to oppression. That outlook, presented by Jeremy Corbyn and rejected by the British electorate in 2019, is that within which the anti-Semitism of the left is embedded.

Whilst those 11 MPs subsequently withdrew their signatures from the statement following rapid action from the party leadership, if Keir Starmer is serious about positioning his Party as patriotic, he should remove the whip and suspend them from the party pending a disciplinary investigation. That would be a good litmus test as to whether the Labour leadership is succeeding in driving out antisemitism and the philosophy behind it, or if the training to combat antisemitism ends up as little more than a tick box exercise that changes nothing, despite best intentions.

So long as those 11 MPs are harboured in the Labour Party, it remains difficult for most in mainstream British Jewry to be confident enough to reconsider voting Labour.

Howard Erdunast

Pinner, Middlesex