Former London mayor sparks “fresh anti-Semitism row” with comments about Jewish vote.
Edited by: TJVNews.com
“The Jewish vote wasn’t very helpful,” said former London Mayor Ken Livingstone shortly after the British election results came in late Thursday. “Jeremy should have tackled that issue far earlier than he did,” he said.
The Daily Mail reported that Livingstone’s comments have sparked “a fresh anti-Semitism row.”
‘It looks like the end for Jeremy, which is disappointing for me since I’m a close ally. I’m sure he’ll have to resign tomorrow,” Livingstone said. Corbyn has since announced he won’t run again as opposition leader.
Livingston attempted to defend Corbyn during the campaign, calling the accusations of anti-Semitism “lies and smears” and blaming it on the old Labour guard led by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who he said wanted to get rid of Corbyn because they feared he would lead the party to a “wipeout.”
Corbyn did, in fact, lead Labour to a wipeout. The Boris Johnson-led Conservative party won 364 seats to Labour’s 203. It is the worst result for Labour since 1935.
Livingston had little moral authority to draw on in his efforts to defend Corbyn as he himself was forced to quit Labour in 2016 after he said that Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
He also said “it’s not anti-Semitic to hate the Jews of Israel.”
The Daily Mail reports that more moderate factions within the party immediately began to attack Corbyn for the disastrous showing.
Ruth Smeeth, the parliamentary chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, told Sky News that Corbyn should have resigned “many, many, many months ago.”
“We are the racist party because of the actions of our leader and the lack of actions of our leader… we need to detoxify and move on,” she said.
“Jeremy Corbyn should announce he is resigning has leader of the Labour Party from his count today,” she said.
Jews have responded with relief to the defeat of Corbyn, under whose leadership the Labour party had seen an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitic behavior among its rank and file.
The AP reported that the pound surged when an exit poll forecast a Tory win in United Kingdom elections on Thursday, jumping over two cents against the dollar, to $1.3445, the highest in more than a year and a half.
Many investors hope the Conservative win will speed up the Brexit process and ease, at least in the short term, some of the uncertainty that has corroded business confidence since the 2016 vote.
Voters casting ballots on Thursday hoped the election might finally find a way out of the Brexit stalemate in this deeply divided nation. Three and a half years after the U.K. voted by 52%-48% to leave the EU, Britons remain split over whether to leave the 28-nation bloc, and lawmakers have proved incapable of agreeing on departure terms.
Opinion polls had given the Conservatives a steady lead, but the result was considered hard to predict, because the issue of Brexit cuts across traditional party loyalties. The Labour party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, contended with rampant anti-Semitism in the party, which most members of the Jewish community believe hasn’t been confronted in a meaningful or effective manner.
