Retiring MP Dame Louise Ellman says Labour Party left her as she reveals she had useless meeting with Jeremy Corbyn to discuss antisemitism

Dame Louise Ellman MP, who recently resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, has said that the Labour Party left her rather than vice versa, as she announced that she will not stand for re-election.

Dame Louise also revealed in an interview with the Jewish News that a few months ago Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn invited her to speak to him about antisemitism in the Party. Dame Louise recounted: “I didn’t hear from him when I resigned from Labour. But he did ask me to come and see him a few months ago. I went reluctantly: I didn’t particularly want to talk to him because I never thought there would be any point in it. But I went: I told him how I felt, that he wasn’t acting on antisemitism, that I was appalled at what was happening to the Labour Party, that the Jewish connection to the Labour Party had always been a very strong one, but that now very few mainstream Jewish people wanted to be connected with it.”

Mr Corbyn “listened, was very polite, but barely responded. Then he told me about a member of his party who was Jewish, who’d been there for many years, and felt very comfortable. To me, him telling me that in response only reinforced his lack of understanding – or lack of wanting to understand.”

Dame Louise said that she thought that Mr Corbyn had invited her and Dame Margaret Hodge, a fellow Jewish Labour MP who famously called Mr Corbyn “an antisemitic racist”, to see him as “an exercise, so that he could say he had spoken to MPs who expressed concerns about antisemitism. But I wasn’t interested in talking to him, I wanted something done. He kept repeating that he was against all forms of racism and antisemitism. So I said, well, what are you going to do differently? But I didn’t get any answers”.

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

In recent months, thirteen MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.

Over 57,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”