Lord Parry Mitchell, a Peer of the Realm, has resigned from the Labour Party as he vowed to do last month, should Jeremy Corbyn win re-election as leader of the party.
The veteran Labourite is a member of the House of Lords and a former frontbencher under Ed Miliband.
Writing in The Jewish News, Mitchell explained his resignation:
“The party that I joined with such high hopes in 1994 with the onset of New Labour is no more – it has had its day: time and politics move on. That party has now left me and its leadership espouses politics and attitudes that I am totally at odds with: we are no longer compatible and it’s time to move on…
abour under Jeremy Corbyn is not the Labour I joined. Today the political thrust is far away from what I believe in and what I stand for. I am pro-business, pro-NATO, pro-EU, pro-America and of course pro-Israel. Corbyn and his pals are 180 degrees opposed: they are hard left socialist – they hate business and they loathe America and Israel. His praetorian guard, the Momentum movement, is almost Stalinist in its desire to humiliate, vilify and harass non-believers. For middle of the road MPs, deselection is their weapon of choice…
Corbyn stood by when a Momentum thug hurled a tirade of invective against Ruth Smeeth MP, so abusive that she left in tears. It was masterful inaction, Corbyn who should have protected her, joked with a colleague and did nothing…
After a gut wrenching summer my choice is now clear. How can I, a Jew and a Zionist, remain in a party where the leadership is so clearly hostile to Israel (even to its very existence) and which also flirts with antisemitism? In the end it was an easy decision, but that makes it none the less painful.”
