Labour leadership candidate Lisa Nandy pledges to implement all EHRC recommendations and calls for suspension of activist Rachael Cousins

Lisa Nandy, a candidate for the Labour leadership, has pledged to implement any and all recommendations made in due course by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in its full statutory investigation into the antisemitism in the Labour Party. The EHRC launched the investigation on 28th May 2019, following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

Ms Nandy made the pledge to the BBC’s Andrew Neil in a television appearance.

She was also asked about tweets by Rachael Cousins, a prominent Labour activist who goes by “Rachael Swindon” on Twitter. Ms Cousins has reportedly accused the Board of Deputies of British Jews of being “Conservative backers” and called on it to “condemn all atrocities by the israeli military in the West Bank”. Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel is an example of antisemitism under the International Definition of Antisemitism.

Ms Nandy labelled the comments “antisemitic” and called for Ms Cousins to be suspended by the Party and investigated.

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.