Louise Ellman MP has quit the Labour Party after 55 years of membership because she says 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”, saying 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.
Dame Louise now joins twelve MPs and three peers who have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism in recent months, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members. She has confirmed that she will not join another political party and hopes that one day under different leadership she will feel able to rejoin Labour.
Joe Glasman, Head of Political and Government Investigations at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “Many of us have marvelled that Dame Louise has remained in the Labour Party for so long, even as it came under investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission at our behest. However, an imminent general election that raises the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister has forced her to make the only moral choice possible, one which her colleagues still refuse to face.”
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.
Over 55,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”
