Smeeth calls for more approach to tackling

JEREMY CORBYN “can’t get his head around” allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party because they are the opposite of “everything he believes himself to be”, a leading Jewish MP has said.

Speaking on Sunday at a packed Jewish Labour Movement conference in London, Ruth Smeeth, MP for Stoke-onTrent North, said: “He is so incredibly uncomfortable with the allegations of racism and antisemitism.

“It is fundamentally different to everything he believes himself to be.

“He just can’t get his head around the fact it is happening.”

The MP added that Mr Corbyn’s discomfort over the issue gave her “a level of hope”.

Ms Smeeth, who revealed she now has weekly meetings with Mr Corbyn in her role as vice-chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said it had taken him “10 days” to contact her after she was verbally abused by a Momentum supporter at the launch of Shami Chakrabarti’s report into antisemitism in Labour last year.

She told the conference at the JW3 cultural centre, in north-west London: “Jeremy and I have since discussed it but only in meeting format where he and I would not be alone.”

She also said that when she received death threats last summer, “Jeremy texted me — but only after the Board of Deputies asked him to text me.” She told the conference that she would be recommending that Mr Corbyn and the party’s Chief Whip take action against Chris Williamson, Labour’s shadow fire minister and Derby MP, over comments he made last week in which he described antisemitism allegations as “bulls**t.”

Ms Smeeth said: “I think every time Chris Williamson opens his mouth he helps our cause. His ramblings did nothing more than ensure the leadership had to distance themselves from him.

“The idea that we are weaponising antisemitism — the only people doing so are the antisemites.”

In a defiant message to the JLM audience Ms Smeeth said it was time to be “more grown up” about tackling the issue of antisemitism within the party.

She said: “After the general election Jeremy’s position as leader is no longer questionable. He is the leader of the Labour Party for as long as he wants to be.

“Which means conversations like this on issues of antisemitism can now be had in a slightly more grown up way.

“And honestly we have to be more grown up about it. We need to be cleverer, we need to engage with the bat- tles we can fight, we need to hold our ground, we need to challenge people when they are wrong.”

Echoing Ms Smeeth’s insistence that Mr Corbyn himself was not an antisemite, Labour MP John Mann told the conference: “Nothing destroys Jeremy Corbyn’s soul more than the thought in his head that he could actually be tolerating antisemitism.

“This really hurts him — it disturbs him. His problem is there are so many people around him who are the problem.”

To loud applause Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow, told the audience: “It’s not up to JLM to challenge antisemitism, it’s up to all of us, as the Labour Party.”

Louise Ellman, MP for Liverpool Riverside, praised the role of non-Jewish supporters in helping her own fight against antisemitism in her constituency.

She said elements of the leadership were “slowly” coming around to understanding the issue and that there was scope within the party machinery to deal with the problem.

In a surprise intervention, Catherine West, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, and Labour’s former shadow foreign office minister, called on Mr Corbyn to “do a trip to Israel” in order to improve

We have to be more grown up about antisemitism’