Lord Mann praises British electorate for rejecting “the extremism of antisemitism” in debut speech in House of Lords

Lord Mann, the Government’s independent advisor on antisemitism, has praised the innate decency of the British people after they rejected “the extremism of antisemitism” in the general election.

He observed that the “true face of this country and the true story of the election is this: in Derby North, Christopher Williamson [the disgraced former Labour MP] got 635 votes and lost his deposit,” while “in West Bromwich East, George Galloway got 489 votes and lost his deposit. This is the innate decency of the British people yet again. Across the entirety of the country, people are saying, very vocally and unequivocally, ‘We reject the extremism of antisemitism.’”

The former Labour MP for Bassetlaw who resigned last year in protest at the Party’s institutional antisemitism and the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, made the remarks in his debut speech in the House of Lords.

On his new advisory role, Lord Mann said: “I am rightly independent and, as ever, I shall work cross-party, but I will be no bystander in driving out the stench of intolerance from the party that in 1906 my family helped to create in the city of Leeds, in the streets around Holbeck Moor.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

On 28th May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.