Luciana Berger and Mike Gapes rejoin Labour Party

It has been reported Mike Gapes has rejoined Labour, shortly after Luciana Berger announced her decision to rejoin the Party.

Ms Berger, a Jewish former Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, left the Party in 2019 over institutional antisemitism and feeling “unwelcome in [her] own party” during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Following an apology from Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, Ms Berger said last week that she was “pleased to be returning to [her] political home”.

This week, Ms Berger is joined by Mr Gapes, a former Labour MP for Ilford South, who also left the Party in 2019 alongside Ms Berger, Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Gavin Shuker and Ann Coffey.

Dame Louise Ellman, who rejoined the Party in 2021, commented at the time, “there remains a great deal more to do to tackle antisemitism in the Party.” 

Earlier this year, Mr Corbyn doubled down on his insistence that the scale of antisemitism in the Party was “grossly exaggerated”.

The Labour Party was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (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 called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.

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.