Leader’s apology over anti-Semitic mural does not go far enough, say Labour MPs

JEREMY CORBYN’S regret over his endorsement of an anti-Semitic mural has been labelled “wholly inadequate” by a Labour MP.

The Labour leader is under fire for his questioning of a London council’s decision in 2012 to destroy an anti-Semitic mural which depicted a group of Jewish bankers counting money on the backs of ethnic minorities.

His spokesman later described the artwork as “offensive and anti-Semitic” and agreed it was “right” to have been removed.

However, Luciana Berger, chairman of the Jewish Labour movement, said: “The response from the spokesperson is wholly inadequate. It fails to under- stand on any level the hurt and anguish felt about anti-Semitism. I will be raising this further.”

Harriet Harman, Labour’s former deputy leader, said “this sort of thing is insidious and dangerous”, while Stella Creasy said freedom of speech “should never be muddled into a conversation about racism”.

Yvette Cooper said she was “really troubled” by Mr Corbyn’s office’s handling of the row, and Lisa Nandy tweeted: “Labour has long been a proud anti-racist party and we have got to do better than this.”

Yesterday, after being sacked from the shadow cabinet, Owen Smith told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “Any charge of anti-Semitism is incredibly important. The piece of street art … I have seen and it’s an appalling, monstrous work.” The graphic was painted on a property in East London, but was removed by Tower Hamlets council following a deluge of complaints.

It showed a group of Jewish financiers and white businessmen sitting in front of the symbol of the Illuminati, a semi-fictitious society commonly associated with myriad conspiracy theories.

It was revealed on Friday that Mr Corbyn had written a post on Facebook at the time in support of Kalen Ockerman, who had claimed his mural was “freedom of expression”, saying: “You are in good company, Rockerfeller [sic] destroyed Diego Viera’s [sic] mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.”

What will it take for so-called Labour moderates to stand up and be counted? Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to condemn Russia for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury was disgusting enough: now it is known that, in 2012, he questioned the removal of an anti-Semitic mural. Mr Corbyn now says he regrets not looking at the image closely enough, but he has presided over so many anti-Semitic incidents as Labour leader that such a response is, in the words of Luciana Berger, a Labour MP, “wholly inadequate”. In which case, what are mainstream Labour parliamentarians who claim to abhor racism in all its forms actually going to do?

The hard Left plays by its own rules. If an idiotic Tory parish councillor mutters something utterly repellent, the Left will seize upon it as proof that the entire Conservative movement is racist. Labour, by contrast, has been hit by one anti-Semitism scandal after another, and yet still has the nerve to claim the moral high ground. Mr Corbyn’s own removal from the normal rules of politics – he can say whatever he wants about Hamas, Hizbollah and the IRA and his followers don’t care – confirms that Labour has become a hypocritical personality cult akin to that in North Korea. It is only a matter of time before the party’s propagandists declare that his birth was foretold by a star in the sky.

Labour’s moderates have to act. Not only is their personal credibility on the line – the security of the country itself is, too. Given how close the polls are, Britain needs a serious, non-extreme opposition. The prospect of Mr Corbyn riding Labour’s machine into government is not only worrying, as the prospect of any Labour victory generally is. This time, it is frightening.