MP Wes Streeting (Labour) of Ilford North in Greater London on Wednesday called for strengthening his party’s sanctions against members who have spouted anti-Semitic, Islamophobic or racist views, saying Labour is starting to look as if it does not care about prejudice against Jewish people.
“We have now got a problem where too many of our Jewish members and people out there in the country think the Labour Party is apathetic to anti-Semitism, and it isn’t a place for Jewish members, and I think we have got to make sure that this party, with its historic commitment to tackling all types of prejudice, including anti-Semitism, is a place for Jewish people,” Streeting told BBC Radio.
Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labor Movement told BBC, “Everybody’s talking about zero tolerance of anti-Semitism, but it has become apparent, because of a spate of incidents over the past couple of months, that the rules and processes of the party don’t provide adequate provision to deal with it.”
Last month, Vicki Kirby, a former Labor parliamentary candidate, was suspended for a second time over tweets in which she said Hitler is a “Zionist God” and Jews have “big noses.” Kirby was originally suspended by the party in 2014 but was re-instated with a warning.
The Labour party is also investigating allegations of anti-Semitism at the Oxford University Labor club after the resignation of its co-chairman Alex Chalmers, who said many of the members “have some kind of problem with Jews.”