UK’s Labour Party boots Jewish donor for anti-Corbyn ‘storm trooper’ jab
The British Labour Party has suspended prominent Jewish donor Michael Foster after he was accused of using the term “Nazi storm troopers” to describe supporters of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
British media reported on Sunday that the party has opened an investigation into allegations of abuse by Foster, in accordance with election rules which prohibit “abuse of any kind by members or supporters.”
The comments in question were made in an article that Foster wrote for the Mail on Sunday, titled, “Why I despise Jeremy Corbyn and his Nazi stormtroopers.”
Foster, who has reportedly donated more than £400,000 to the party over the past two-and-a-half years, denied using the word “Nazi,” and said it was added to the headline by Mail on Sunday editors. However, the German term he used for storm troopers, Sturm Abteilung, is widely recognized as referring to Nazi Brown Shirts.
According to the BBC, Foster clarified that his remarks referred specifically to Corbyn’s “leadership cadre,” and that “Praetorian Guard or Revolutionary Guard or Red Guard” would have been just as appropriate to describe “a group there to secure the leader and his political plans.”
The August 14 editorial was published after Britain’s High Court ruled against a petition filed by Foster, a former MP candidate, in which he argued that the party’s incumbent leader should not be automatically a candidate in the party’s current leadership race.
“This decision advantaged Corbyn and his Sturm Abteilung, but on Friday afternoon the Appeal Court handed down a big decision for British democracy,” Foster wrote.
Foster also accused Corbyn and his leadership team of lacking a moral compass, and having “no respect for others and worse, no respect for the rule of law.
“If you are like me, a Jewish donor to Labour, you are smeared as a Blairite conspirator, plotting to falsely use the accusation of anti-Semitism to damage the Left,” he wrote.
Foster’s suspension means that he will be excluded from Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool and barred from voting in the party’s leadership election between Corbyn and Owen Smith. The Daily Mail cited the outraged donor as predicting that his suspension marked the beginning of a “purge” of Corbyn’s opponents.
Results of the contest will be announced next week; Corbyn is expected to win handily.
“The rule of law is being ignored because of intimidation by Corbyn, backed by Momentum, his Praetorian Guard,” the Mail on Sunday quoted Foster as saying, in which he referred to the leftwing political organization. “This will presage the purge of opponents within the Labour Party and then the deselection of any MP who is not signed up to the Left’s ideology.”
The remarks were almost simultaneous with comments made by the Israeli Labor Party which expressed disappointment over Corbyn declining an invitation to visit Yad Vashem.
Labor Party chairman Isaac Herzog had asked his British counterpart to accompany him to the Holocaust Remembrance Center to “witness the last time Jews were forcibly transported – to their deaths.” Corbyn responded that prior commitments forced him to decline, but that Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson, or its General Secretary Iain McNicol, would go in his place.
Corbyn and his party experienced an anti-Semitism crisis this year, which resulted in several high-profile suspensions and culminated in the Chakrabarti Inquiry on anti-Semitism within the party. While the inquiry’s report did not find anti-Semitism or other racism to be endemic, it did say there was an “occasionally toxic atmosphere” within the party.