Corbyn refuses to apologise to Jewish community for Labour antisemitism, and appears to admit Chakrabarti report was not independent

Jeremy Corbyn has refused to apologise to the Jewish community for the Labour Party’s institutional antisemitism and his role in it.

Mr Corbyn was interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Neil last night in what was widely panned as a disastrous conversation for the Labour leader, a full third of which was spent discussing Labour’s antisemitism crisis and the Chief Rabbi’s unprecedented intervention of earlier this week.

The Labour leader stood by his outlandish claim that Labour’s processes were fit for purpose and that “every single case” had been investigated, despite evidence to the contrary.

In a notable slip, Mr Corbyn appeared to admit that the report on antisemitism in the Labour Party produced by Shami Chakrabarti was not independent, saying: “I made that very clear in the Chakrabarti Report which we did very early on…”.

The full transcript of the interview is available here.

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 58,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”

On 8th December, regardless of religion, race or politics, Jews and non-Jews alike will gather in Parliament Square to declare that they stand together against antisemitism in the face of Jew-hatred in politics and mounting anti-Jewish hate crime.