Labour hits back over anti-Semitism ‘smear’
LABOUR is “united” in opposing anti-Semitism, Jeremy Corbyn insisted as the row over the party’s handling of controversial comments by prominent figures continue to cause unrest.
The Opposition leader said he and the party “stand absolutely against racism in any form” as senior allies accused internal critics of whipping up a false “crisis” to undermine his position.
“We stand united as a Labour movement recognising our faith diversity, our ethnic diversity, and from that diversity comes up strength,” he declared at a May Day rally in London.
Mr Corbyn announced an independent review and pledged to tighten party codes of conduct in a bid to put a lid on the furore – which has seen MP Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone suspended.
But he faced calls from Israeli politicians and diplomats to give a more “unequivocal” condemnation and warnings – including from the party’s London mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan – that the party would be punished in the May 5 elections.
Sunday newspapers were full of speculation that MPs were coming closer to launching a challenge to his leadership – with a poor showing at the ballot box or a vote in favour of Brexit potentially sparking a coup.
Opponents have accused him of acting too slowly to deal with incidents – most notably Mr Livingstone’s incendiary assertion, while defending Ms Shah, that Hitler was a Zionist before he “went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”.
But allies launched a fightback and warned critics they had no chance of ousting the leader.
Shadow cabinet minister Diane Abbott said it was “a smear to say that the Labour Party has a problem with anti-Semitism”.
Mr Livingstone’s comments linking Hitler with Zionism – for which he has declined to apologise in a string of interviews – were “extremely offensive”, she said in a television interview, but not part of a wider pattern.
“Two hundred thousand people have joined the Labour Party. Are you saying that because there have been 12 reported incidents of hate speech online, that the Labour Party is somehow intrinsically anti-Semitic?”
She said she would be “dismayed if some people were hurling around accusations of antiSemitism as part of some intra-Labour Party dispute”.
A poll carried out as the controversy unfolded gave the Conservatives an eight-point lead.