Labour needs to curb ‘racists’ in its midst, says official

LABOUR has racists in its midsts that “are not being dealt with”, the party’s parliamentary chairman warned yesterday, as Jeremy Corbyn came under attack on all fronts over anti-semitism.

The Labour leader has confirmed that he will hold a special shadow cabinet meeting next week to address the escalating racism row, after he came under pressure from hundreds of MPS, staff members and supporters.

The announcement was made at an ill-tempered meeting in Parliament last night, which saw Labour MPS line up to condemn the leadership for failing to get a handle on the crisis. They included John Cryer, the chairman of backbench Labour MPS, who said there were now “racists in our party and they are not being dealt with”.

Mr Cryer also hit out at the party’s furious response to a BBC Panorama investigation on anti-semitism last week, describing the decision to attack the whistleblowers who took part in the show as a “gross misjudgment”.

His concerns were echoed by Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, who called for the party to become more transparent and for Mr Corbyn to “throw open the books” and “files” to greater scrutiny.

It came just three hours after Labour’s four leaders in the House of Lords wrote to Mr Corbyn to warn that anti-semitism had made it “impossible” for the party to act as an “effective Opposition”. Headed by Lords’ leader Baroness Smith, they claimed that antijewish sentiment in the party had become a “toxic and endemic problem” and that members were in “despair” over the failure to deal with it.

They are demanding the creation of an independent complaints system, free of political interference, as well as automatic expulsions for anti-semites.