London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

UK opposition party suspends former leader over anti-Semitism

UK opposition party suspends former leader over anti-Semitism

The shock development came after Jeremy Corbyn said he refused to accept all the findings of a government watchdog’s report that found his office broke equality law.


Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn pictured while still in post in November last year.


Britain’s main opposition Labour Party on Thursday suspended its former leader Jeremy Corbyn, after a government watchdog found his office broke equality law through its “inexcusable” handling of anti-Semitism complaints.

The shock development came after Corbyn said he refused to accept all the findings of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report, in defiance of the party’s new leadership under Keir Starmer.

“In the light of his comments made today and his failure to retract them subsequently, the Labour Party has suspended Jeremy Corbyn pending investigation,” a spokesman said.

He said that Corbyn, who has continued to sit as a member of parliament after stepping down as leader, will also no longer count in the ranks of Labour MPs.

The EHRC found damning instances where Corbyn’s leadership team underplayed, belittled or ignored complaints by Jewish members, and sometimes actively interfered to support favoured allies, after a deluge of anti-Semitic abuse online and in party meetings.

Luciana Berger, a former Labour MP who was one of many Jewish members to quit the party under Corbyn, said the report was vindication as she described being threatened by his supporters with acid attack, stabbing and rape.

“The party facilitated a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation against Jewish people from within its ranks. At every step of the way, Jeremy Corbyn enabled this to happen,” she wrote in a blog.

In one of his first acts after replacing Corbyn in April, Starmer apologised to Britain’s Jewish community, and on Thursday he vowed to accept the entirety of the findings from the EHRC’s two-year investigation.


Labour leader Keir Starmer pictured in the House of Commons earlier this month.


“I found this report hard to read and it is a day of shame for the Labour Party,” Starmer told a news conference, renewing apologies also to Berger and other Jewish members who left the party in droves.

“I can promise you this: I will act. Never again will Labour let you down. Never again will we fail to tackle anti-Semitism,” he said.

“The Labour Party accepts this report in full and without equivocation,” he added, vowing implementation immediately and “in full”.

Responding to the report, Corbyn said anti-Semitism was “absolutely abhorrent” and insisted his team had launched internal changes to tackle the problem from 2018. But he said he did “not accept all of its findings”.

“One anti-Semite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media,” he added.

Starmer refused to say whether he would now expel Corbyn and his allies from the party but said Labour had suffered a “collective failure of leadership”. “Those who deny the problem are part of the problem,” he added.

Corbyn was propelled from the backbenches to become Labour leader in 2015 after decades of socialist activism, including for Palestinian causes.

Among his supporters, criticism of Israel veered often into anti-Semitic tropes and anti-Jewish conspiracies.

“Our investigation has highlighted multiple areas where [Labour’s] approach and leadership to tackling anti-Semitism was insufficient,” the EHRC’s interim chair, Caroline Waters, said in presenting the 129-page report.

“This is inexcusable and appeared to be a result of a lack of willingness to tackle anti-Semitism rather than an inability to do so,” she said.

The commission said that under Corbyn, Labour was guilty of three breaches of Britain’s 2010 Equality Act for political interference in complaints, failure to provide adequate training to those handling anti-Semitism cases and harassment of complainants.

But it stopped short of launching legal proceedings, instead ordering Labour to draft an action plan by December 10 to remedy its failures.

Corbyn triggered a leadership election after Labour suffered a hammering in a general election last December, which returned the Conservatives to power under Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews and two other Jewish organisations said the report was a “damning verdict on what Labour did to Jews under Jeremy Corbyn and his allies”.

“We welcome the start that Keir Starmer has made, but the scale of the challenge that lies ahead should not be underestimated,” they said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
French Debt Downgrade Piles Pressure on Macron’s New Prime Minister
US and UK Near Tech, Nuclear and Whisky Deals Ahead of Trump Trip
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
Anesthesiologist Left Operation Mid-Surgery to Have Sex with Nurse
Tens of Thousands of Young Chinese Get Up Every Morning and Go to Work Where They Do Nothing
×