Labour MP says Corbyn has defended anti-semites and that party is a ‘sewer’
Ian Austin faces internal inquiry after criticising Labour’s refusal to accept code on anti-semitism
JEREMY CORBYN is a defender of antisemites and is unfit to lead Labour, one of the party’s MPS who is facing disciplinary action has said.
Ian Austin said he was “ashamed of the Labour Party” as he accused Mr Corbyn of “supporting and defending all sorts of extremists”.
It came as the Board of Deputies of British Jews claimed Mr Corbyn was leading Labour into a “dark place of ugly conspiracy theories”.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson says today Mr Corbyn “legitimates” anti-semitism by “merrily dog whistling” to conspiracy theorists who believe Israel is responsible for the “ills of the world”.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the former foreign secretary said it was time for Mr Corbyn to “grow up” and address the “virus” of anti-semitism.
Mr Austin is the second Labour MP facing an internal investigation over the party’s decision not to adopt the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) code on antisemitism, sparking fears of a “purge”.
It is the same type of probe launched against Dame Margaret Hodge, the veteran Labour MP, after she confronted Mr Corbyn and called him a “racist and anti-semite”.
Mr Austin said Mr Corbyn had “spent his entire time in politics on the extreme fringes of the Labour Party, supporting and defending all sorts of extremists and in some cases, frankly, anti-semites”.
“That is why I thought three years ago he shouldn’t be the leader of the Labour Party and that is why I think now that somebody with views and a history like his isn’t really suited to the leadership of a mainstream political party,” he said.
The investigation was launched after Mr Austin clashed with Ian Lavery, the chairman of the Labour Party. Mr Austin, whose adoptive parents were Czech Jewish refugees who lost relatives in the Holocaust, said to Mr Lavery that Labour had become “a sewer”. Mr Austin told the BBC he was “ashamed of the Labour Party” as he said he had grown up “listening to my dad tell me how he had escaped from the Holocaust and how his mum and sisters were murdered in Treblinka”.
Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: “Jeremy Corbyn is leading the Labour Party into a dark place of ugly conspiracy theories and it has become a home for overt anti-semites and anti-semitism. In 2018, Labour is not only a party with extravagant levels of tolerance for anti-semitism but one which deliberately obstructs measures to counter hatred and punishes those who speak out against it.”
A Labour spokesman said Mr Corbyn “has made clear he is a militant opponent of anti-semitism and is absolutely committed to tackling it”.
The row came as it emerged that Mr Corbyn had linked a jihadi massacre of 16 Egyptian policeman to Israel, telling an Iranian television station in 2012 he suspected “the hand of Israel”.
A Labour spokesman said Mr Corbyn’s speculation was based on “welldocumented incidents of killings of Egyptian forces by the Israeli military”.
Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn could reportedly be stripped of his allotment by Barnet Council under a plan floated by Conservative leader Richard Cornelius in direct response to Mr Corbyn’s clash with Dame Margaret.
Labour failed to win the borough, which has a large Jewish population, in May, with local activists blaming the anti-semitism controversy.