Concern as former Labour MP Ruth George selected as council candidate even as CAA complaint against her is pending
Concerns have been raised following the announcement that former Labour MP Ruth George has been selected as a candidate for the Party in upcoming local council elections, despite a complaint against her having recently been submitted by Campaign Against Antisemitism.
The complaint was submitted on the day that the report into Labour antisemitism by the Equality and Human Rights Commission was published, and details of the incidents relating to Ms George can be found here.
Despite the complaint being outstanding and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to tear out antisemitism “by its roots” from the Party, Ms George has served as a County Councillor for Whaley Bridge and Blackbrook for the last nine months (she lost her seat in Parliament in the 2019 General Election) and has now been selected for as a candidate for the County Council election in May.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “The continued service of Ruth George as a Labour councillor and now her selection as a candidate for the coming elections, while our complaint against her relating to antisemitism remains outstanding, is difficult to square with Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to tear out antisemitism ‘by its roots’. That complaint, along with the other complaints we have submitted against sitting and former MPs and other officeholders, must be investigated by an independent disciplinary process and concluded within six months.”
The Labour Party was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.
In the first release of its Antisemitism in Political Parties research, Campaign Against Antisemitism showed that Labour Party candidates for Parliament in the 2019 general election accounted for 82 percent of all incidents of antisemitic discourse by parliamentary candidates.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.
