Ate described as ‘step backward’
ment parliamentary chair Ruth Smeeth rounded on Mr Corbyn over his failure to ensure the party had a disciplinary process fit to tackle antisemitism complaints. She also raised the case of former Labour staffer Sam Matthews who had received a death threat from a pro-Corbyn activist after he appeared as a whistleblower on the BBC Panorama film about Labour’s racism crisis.
“Sam got a death threat and had to spend three hours with the Met Police on a Saturday night,” she told the JC.
“It went in one ear and out another,” she said of Mr Corbyn’s response. “I don’t understand where humanity is meant to exist in our party if this is where we are.
“I read out a list of everything that had happened, not in the past three years but in the past month.
“No comment, no reference, no awareness.”
She also attacked the
Criticism over Shoah dates: Ruth Smeeth party’s new literature on anti-Jewish racism, which was launched on the party’s website on Sunday, claiming they had failed to explain the roots of the Nazi Holocaust properly. “Changes to complaints and procedures are not going to mean a thing if we can’t even get the dates of the Holocaust right in the literature,” she fumed.
“Who knew that 1941-1945 was when the Holocaust begun?”
Labour sources later tried to claim that the party’s literature had used the “commonly understood academic timetable” of when the Shoah took place. They accepted that others saw the rise to power of Hitler in 1933 as the real beginning of the Holocaust.
Leaving the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party one MP said: “Same sh*t, erent day.” Another said Mr Corbyn sounded like a “broken record”.
Ms Formby, who has recently been undergoing chemotherapy, addressed the PLP meeting at the start and was warmly applauded.
She had to be helped as she left by Mr Corbyn’s Chief of Staff Karie Murphy. In a letter sent to all Labour shadow cabinet members on Sunday — written by All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism cochair John Mann and Wes Streeting, co-chair of the APPG Against Antisemitism and Jewish Labour Movement Parliamentary chair Ruth Smeeth — they were warned that the “bunker mentality around the leader is causing immense damage to the Labour Party.”
The letter also stated that since the broadcast of the BBC Panorama on Labour’s crisis earlier this month, “too many members of the Shadow Cabinet have been silent bystanders to or — worse still — actively complicit in an officially sanctioned spin campaign against victims of racism and whistleblowers.” Ex-Labour staffer Mike Creighton
On Wednesday Mr Corbyn pulled out of the last meeting of Labour’s parliamentary committee before the summer recess. One MP said: “I’ve known braver bowls of custard. And they showed stronger leadership qualities.”
Meanwhile in a new poll of Labour members, nearly half said they believed Mr Corbyn has responded either “very well” or “fairly well” to the party’s antisemitism crisis.
And despite the internal crisis within Labour — caused by rows over antiJewish racism and the party’s Brexit position — 56 per cent of members now believe the Labour leader is “doing well” overall.
Asked whether Mr Corbyn should lead the party into the next General Election, 56 per cent of those surveyed agreed, down from 74 per cent in March last year.
The latest survey of 1,100 Labour members for The Times found that 70 per cent said that antisemitism was a “genuine” problem in the party — and 48 per cent said Mr Corbyn had fared either “fairly badly” or “very badly” to the issue.
Meanwhile, 27 per cent of members agreed that Mr Corbyn should “step down now” — up from 12 per cent in March 2018.
Some 12 per cent said he should resign “before the next general election”, a slight rise on the 10 per cent recorded last time.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair also refused to confirm if he would vote Labour at the next General Election. He told BBC Newsnight that the antisemitism crisis was “a real problem for me” and that he hopes the party “deals with it”.
We can’t even get the dates of the Holocaust right’ I’ve known braver bowls of custard’