Gardiner apology for Labour anti-semitism

A SENIOR member of Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench team has issued an apology on behalf of the Labour Party for letting down British Jews.

Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner made an emotional intervention during a Commons debate on anti-semitism, which saw some Labour MPS accuse Mr Corbyn of not doing enough to tackle the abuse.

Dame Louise Ellman and Ruth Smeeth were among those to pledge to remain in the party to fight against antisemitism after eight colleagues quit in protest at Mr Corbyn’s leadership.

Enfield North’s Joan Ryan was the latest to depart, claiming that under Mr

Corbyn it had become an “institutionally anti-semitic party”.

Conservative former Cabinet minister Theresa Villiers also claimed a “significant number” of her Jewish constituents in north London were “making active preparations” to leave the country if Labour wins the next election, while Communities Secretary James Brokenshire tried to offer assurances to the Jewish community about the ongoing efforts to protect them.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Corbyn insisted he was tackling anti-semitism in Labour and said his party “takes the strongest action to deal with anti-semitism wherever it rears its head”.

In the debate that followed, Mr Gardiner added: “I want on behalf of my party to publicly apologise to the

Jewish community. We have let you down.

“We know it, we are trying to do better, we are trying to become the party we have always aspired to be.”

He acknowledged Labour is “struggling so badly to erase anti-semitism from our own membership”.

He added that, for “all the strength and passion that we’ve derived from our mass influx of new members”, Labour “has not had adequate procedures in place to act swiftly, to act adequately, to act decisively to that small minority of members that have expressed sometimes ignorant, but often vicious, dangerous and vile anti-semitic views”.

Mr Gardiner went on: “Anyone who denies the reality of anti-semitism on the left, anyone who thinks that antisemitism is a legitimate part of criticising the political actions of the Israeli government, anyone who says complaints about anti-semitism are smears on our party, they are wrong.”