On the BBC‘s Politics North West show, the Labour Party’s shadow minister for international development Lisa Nandy said:
We make absolutely no apology for expelling antisemites from the Labour Party
She was talking to Jo Bird, the Green Party candidate for Birkenhead. Bird replied:
Are you calling me an antisemite?
Nandy did not clarify.
Jo Bird: encapsulating the Labour purge of Jewish members
Bird is Jewish and Keir Starmer’s party expelled her in November 2021 for speaking at a Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW) meeting in 2018.
LAW was founded in October 2017 to oppose the weaponisation of antisemitism against supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. Its sponsors include Jewish academic and author Noam Chomsky.
In 2018, research from the Media Reform Coalition found that mainstream media coverage of Labour and antisemitism to be a “disinformation paradigm”.
Bird is one of many Jewish people to face expulsion for supporting left-wing groups that Starmer arbitrarily banned. Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) has found that the party is almost 13 times more likely to expel a Jewish person for backing a proscribed group than other members.
JVL also said that Labour is six times more likely to investigate Jewish members for antisemitism than other members. In a letter JVL sent to Labour’s general secretary, the group wrote:
We invite you to acknowledge that the Party is in breach of the Equality Act 2010 by discriminating unlawfully against its Jewish members and unlawfully harassing them
When Labour expelled Bird in November 2021, she condemned the “retrospective punishment” because Starmer didn’t ban the group until July 2021. Many people faced similar treatment. Martin Forde KC, who investigated racism in Labour, said:
It just seemed to us to be concerning that if you’d attended such a meeting or expressed support in social media prior to the organisation being proscribed, that your historical interaction could be used as a current basis for expulsion.
Lisa Nandy: defending a war crime
On the BBC, Lisa Nandy also claimed:
I have stood up for the Palestinian cause for over a decade
But in October 2023, Victoria Derbyshire questioned Nandy on Israel cutting off electricity and water supplies for Palestinian people in Gaza. Nandy said that “Israel has the right to self defence”. She then said it’s a “very complex, difficult situation”.
International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan stated Israel cutting off water and electricity is a war crime.
In Khan’s statement requesting arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, he said the intensified siege was part of the “collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza”.
So it’s clear Nandy’s apparent weaponisation of antisemitism is to divert attention from her support of war crimes. We must end UK complicity in the genocide.
Featured image via Liverpool Riverside Left – X
