UK Labour MPs lash leaders on antisemitism figures

Seven British Labour MPs sent an angry letter to party leader Jeremy Corbyn over what they described as a lackluster response from the party’s leadership to lawmakers’ calls for transparency over its handling of antisemitism complaints.

Last week, Labour lawmakers unanimously passed a motion demanding that party leaders provide detailed data in writing by February 11 on the handling of complaints about antisemitism, with some MPs accusing top officials in the party of covering up the figures.

The internal party motion passed at Labour’s weekly parliamentary meeting in the lower house, escalating internal rifts over the issue. The motion called “on the party leadership to adequately tackle cases of antisemitism, as a failure to do so seriously risks antisemitism in the party appearing normalized and the party seeming to be institutionally antisemitic.”

MPs also demanded that party officials such as General Secretary Jennie Formby or leader Jeremy Corbyn attend the meeting to answer questions about the data.

But the seven MPs said in their letter late Monday that no one came to speak to them at Monday’s Parliamentary Labour Party meeting. An email containing just nine months’ worth of information was sent to lawmakers by Formby 90 minutes before the meeting, they said.
“The failure to respect the request for this simple information does nothing to dispel the accusation that Labour is an institutionally antisemitic organisation,” the seven MPs charged.

At Monday’s meeting of lawmakers, several MPs, including Berger, Ellman and Mann, related details about antisemitic abuse they have endured from party members.
Sky News, meanwhile, quoted two lawmakers, Hodge and Streeting, openly rejecting the figures presented by Formby as incomplete.

“It’s very depressing. I don’t believe the data. I don’t think the data is complete. Trust has broken down,” Hodge said after the meeting, according to Sky. Streeting, meanwhile, insisted the numbers don’t “pass the smell test.”

One frustrated MP told the Guardian on Monday that “the bigger issue in all this is a lack of solidarity for Jewish MPs and an expectation of needing to prove everything with the party, rather than support for victims of racism.”

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