Sir Keir Starmer to investigate Luciana Berger’s former Wavertree Labour branch after senior local members attack new MP for regretting her predecessor had to leave
Sir Keir Starmer intends to launch an investigation into Luciana Berger’s former Constituency Labour Party, according to the JC, after members were found to have attacked the new MP for telling a Jewish newspaper that she regretted that Ms Berger felt that she had to leave the Party.
Paula Barker, the new Labour MP for Wavertree, wrote in the Jewish Telegraph that “Luciana leaving the Labour Party was a shock to many and I find it deeply regrettable that she felt she could no longer stay.” Ms Berger was hounded out of the Labour Party in early 2019 after years of antisemitism and threats of deselection.
However, four members of the executive committee of Ms Barker’s Constituency Labour Party (including its chair and secretary) issued a statement in the branch’s Member’s Bulletin accusing Ms Barker of presenting an “inaccurate and factionally-motivated position on antisemitism” that only “reflected the influence of a partial view that claims to speak for all Jewish people.” They further insisted that “our political disagreement with [Ms Berger] was cynically attributed to bullying, harassment and antisemitism on our part” and that “the suggestion that the Constituency Labour Party Executive is in any way a party to bullying and antisemitism is a false and slanderous accusation.”
The Labour Party in Liverpool saw two Jewish women MPs – Ms Berger and Dame Louise Ellman – quit the Party over antisemitism.
It is understood that Sir Keir intends now to launch an investigation into the Wavertree Constituency Labour Party.
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.
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.
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.
