May says Corbyn ‘needs to respond to concerns’ over antisemitism

Prime Minister Theresa May has waded into the row over antisemitism in the Labour Party by calling on Jeremy Corbyn to directly respond to stinging criticism from a former chief rabbi.

The intervention comes after Lord Jonathan Sacks branded the Labour leader an “antisemite” and compared Mr Corbyn’s comments on Zionists to Enoch Powell’s inflammatory “rivers of blood” speech.

Mrs May said: “Lord Sacks was a long-standing chief rabbi, he raised significant concerns but it’s not just him – members of the Labour Party have raised concerns as well.

“I think the leader of the Labour Party needs to respond to those concerns.”

The remarks, in which Lord Sacks claimed Mr Corbyn had supported “racists, terrorists, and dealers of hate”, drew an angry response from Labour.

Condemnation of the Leader of the Opposition by the crossbench peer, who served as chief rabbi from 1991 to 2013, comes just a week before Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee will again consider its code of conduct on antisemitism.

Labour hit back at the comments by branding them “absurd and offensive”.

Lord Sacks’s remarks came after footage from 2013 emerged of Mr Corbyn attacking a group of British Zionists who had criticised the Palestinian ambassador.

Mr Corbyn said: “They clearly have two problems.

“One is they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all of their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.”

Lord Sacks said in a magazine interview: “The recently disclosed remarks by Jeremy Corbyn are the most offensive statement made by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech.”