Jewish Labour peer resigns, “devastated” by party leadership which “flirts with antisemitism”

Lord Parry Mitchell has announced his resignation from the Labour Party in an anguished article in the Huffington Post, saying that the Party “flirts with antisemitism”.

Writing that he felt forced to “divorce” his party, Lord Mitchell said that he was “devastated”. Lord Mitchell cited the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as well as Shami Chakrabarti’s whitewash of a report into antisemitism in the party and Corbyn’s ennoblement of Chakrabarti as the triggers for his resignation.

Lord Mitchell concluded:

“For me it was the Chakrabarti Report on antisemitism in the Labour Party that finally made me snap. I met Shami whilst she was preparing her report (ironically sitting in the sun on the Terrace at the House of Lords), we had a pleasant enough conversation and when we parted I had high hopes that she would be hard hitting, but she wasn’t, it was an anaemic whitewash. Corbyn then offering her a peerage was to me the final indignity.

“I will never forget how at the launch of Shami’s report, Corbyn stood by when a Momentum thug hurled a tirade of invective against Ruth Smeeth MP, so abusive that she left in tears. It was masterful inaction: Corbyn who should have protected her, joked with a colleague and did nothing.

“After a gut-wrenching summer my choice is now clear. How can I, a Jew and a Zionist, remain in a party where the leadership is so clearly hostile to Israel (even to its very existence) and which also flirts with antisemitism? In the end it was an easy decision, but that makes it none the less painful.”

Lord Mitchell was making good on a promise to resign if Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected, which was published in The Times.

My unhappy letter published in this morning’s Times pic.twitter.com/eZCMQJdeqt

— Parry Mitchell (@lordparry) August 9, 2016