Labour NEC’s youth representative blasts Dame Louise Ellman MP for quitting Labour over antisemitism

Lara McNeill, a member of Labour’s powerful National Executive Committee (NEC), has criticised Dame Louise Ellman MP for quitting the Labour Party over antisemitism after 55 years of membership.

Ms McNeill criticised Dame Louise for “choos[ing] to sit on the fence” and claimed that it was “demonstratively false” that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had not “spent decades…confronting antisemitism and Holocaust deniers”.

She went on to suggest that concerns over the implications of a Corbyn government for Britain’s Jews “simply whip[s] up panic amongst many”. While conceding that one should not “ignore antisemitism”, Ms. McNeill insisted that one should also not “ignore this Conservative government actively inciting racism and don’t ignore Labour’s – and Corbyn’s – record showing what a Labour government would actually mean for equality and anti-discrimination.”

A Momentum activist, Ms McNeill represents Young Labour on the NEC, and her original candidacy was backed by Momentum, several unions and Labour frontbencher Angela Rayner, the Shadow Secretary of State for Education. Other factions, including the Jewish Labour Movement, Labour Students and LGBT Labour reportedly supported her opponent.

Ms Neill’s tweets were in response to Dame Louise’s resignation letter, which said that “Jeremy Corbyn is not fit to be Prime Minister” because he “spent three decades on the backbenches consorting with, and never confronting antisemites, Holocaust deniers and terrorists”, and that he has “attracted the support of too many antisemites”. She said that she made her “agonising” decision because “The Labour Party is no longer a safe place for Jews and Jeremy Corbyn must bear responsibility for this.” She warned: “We cannot allow him to do to the country what he has done to the Labour Party.”

Dame Louise has faced years of abuse from Mr Corbyn’s faction of the Labour Party, and from Mr Corbyn himself. Campaign Against Antisemitism noted in our initial correspondence with the Equality and Human Rights Commission that Mr Corbyn had publicly backed his brother’s assertion that Dame Louise was engaging in a politically motivated attack by complaining of antisemitism. Last week Dame Louise, who is Jewish, had been due to face a deselection debate by her local Labour Party during Yom Kippur, one of the most solemn days of the Jewish calendar.

On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In recent months, thirteen MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.

Over 55,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”