Tom Tugendhat MP says Shami Chakrabarti “only got her peerage because she cosied up and covered up antisemitism in the Labour Party”
Tom Tugendhat MP has asserted that Shami Chakrabarti “only got her peerage because she cosied up and covered up antisemitism in the Labour Party”.
The Conservative MP and Chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee made the claim on BBC’s PoliticsLive yesterday, where he featured on a panel with Baroness Chakrabarti.
He said: “It’s a bit rich for Shami to talk about cosying up when she only got her peerage because she cosied up and covered up antisemitism in the Labour Party.”
Baroness Chakrabarti denied that this was the case.
But Mr Tugendhat insisted: “The entire Jewish community sees you as having covered up the antisemitism [in] the Corbyn Labour Party.”
Baroness Chakrabarti then referred Mr Tugendhat to her report on Labour antisemitism, the publication of which directly preceded her nomination for a peerage, which was the first such nomination Jeremy Corbyn had made, having promised never to nominate anyone to the House of Lords. Lady Chakrabarti’s report was a whitewash.
Campaign Against Antisemitism has lodged a complaint against Jeremy Corbyn, holding him responsible for conduct that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the Labour Party, as the Leader during the period of the EHRC’s shameful findings. Given the serious detriment that this conduct has caused, we are seeking Mr Corbyn’s immediate resuspension and, if the complaint is upheld, we will be requesting his expulsion. On the day of the publication of the EHRC’s report, we also submitted a major complaint against Mr Corbyn and other sitting MPs. These complaints are yet to be acknowledged by the Party, and they must be investigated by an independent disciplinary process that the EHRC has demanded and Sir Keir has promised but has yet to introduce.
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.
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.
