Labour blocks former MP Emma Dent Coad, Ruth George bows out, and Laura Pidcock reportedly quits

The Labour Party has blocked the former MP Emma Dent Coad from running as its candidate in Kensington.

The former Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, expressed his solidarity with Ms Dent Coad and his outrage at the Party’s decision to block her candidacy, calling it “disgraceful”.

Ms Dent Coad, who served as the Labour MP for Kensington from 2017 to 2019, previously ‘liked’ a comment on Facebook by another user that read: “I’ve always been a Bevanite — my ultimate political hero…and as a Jew, the current Israeli apartheid regime disgraces all of us Jews worldwide.” The comment was posted in response to a post by another user that criticised “Blairite” MPs and “members of the Netanyahu fan club”.Following media attention, Ms Dent Coad apologised and ‘unliked’ the comment.

Meanwhile, Paul Mason, another controversial figure, has reportedly applied to become Labour’s candidate in Sheffield Central.

Elsewhere, Ruth George, a former Labour MP with a troubling record who now sits as a local councillor, has declined to put herself forward to become Labour’s candidate once more in High Peak.

Laura Pidcock, the former Labour MP, has reportedly quit the Labour Party, having resigned from Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) earlier this year after a motion calling for the restoration of the whip to the antisemitic former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, failed to pass.

Ms Pidcock, a staunch ally of Mr Corbyn’s who sat on his front bench, previously voted against the NEC’s proscription of the antisemitism-denial group, Labour Against the Witchhunt, and later challenged the practice of expelling Party members based on apparent involvement with the group.

The Labour Party was found by the 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.

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.