Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi finally expelled from Labour Party
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi has reportedly been expelled from the Labour Party.
Writing on Twitter, the controversial Labour activist said: “Confidential email to me says my ‘membership of the Party stands terminated’. An NEC panel concluded I had ‘in its opinion, demonstrated the type of support for REIST (sic), LIEN and LAW prohibited by Chapter 2, Clause I.5.B.v of the Rules.’
“I dispute this interpretation and will appeal my expulsion. It disenfranchises 1000s of members who voted to put me on the NEC.”
Ms Wimborne-Idrissi appears to have been referring in her tweet to the far-left “Resist Movement”, “Labour in Exile Network” and antisemitism denial group “Labour Against the Witchhunt”, all of which are factions that have been proscribed by the Labour Party, meaning that membership of them is sufficient grounds for expulsion from the Party.
This follows Ms Wimborne-Idrissi’s suspension in September, which was decided after she attended a meeting last year of the disgraced former Labour MP Chris Williamson’s Resist Movement, knowing that it is proscribed by the Party.
Ms Wimborne-Idrissi is the Media Officer of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), an antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation. She was reportedly suspended from the Labour Party two years ago but her suspension was inexplicably lifted. She was also previously the Vice-Chair of Chingford and Woodford Green Constituency Labour Party before reportedly being removed last year.
She was recently elected to serve on Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC), which was one of several results in that election that called into doubt Labour’s progress in dealing with its antisemitism scandal and the culture that created it.
It was also announced that JVL had settled a libel case brought against it by the respected Panorama journalist John Ware in relation to comments made about him by Ms Wimborne-Idrissi. The settlement has reportedly raised the possibility that JVL may be in financial trouble.
Ms Wimborne-Idrissi has been embroiled in controversy recently, particularly after it was reported that, in a Palestine Deep Dive podcast, she allegedly said: “There are cases where people have said, ‘we’ve got a Holocaust denier in our branch, what are you going to do about it?’ [to which the response was] ‘Oh, let’s have a look at his credentials. Oh, he’s a right-winger, no, no, he’s fine, he can carry on.’” Following calls on social media for her to provide evidence for her claim, it is not believed that any has been presented.
Joe Glasman, Head of Political and Government Investigations at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “We welcome the expulsion of Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, but question why it has taken the Party so long to act. As well as being a senior figure in the antisemitism-denial organisation styling itself Jewish Voice for Labour, she has also laughed at allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party, and alleged that ‘pro-Israel advocates’ were working with ‘elites’ in the ‘interests of the capitalist financial system’. Rather than seeing Ms Wimborne-Idrissi expelled on a technicality after so long, we would much prefer that her conduct itself had been examined under Labour’s disciplinary process.”
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 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.
