Labour’s ruling committee is expected to adopt the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance guidelines on anti-Semitism when it meets tomorrow, as the party looks to move beyond a scandal that has dominated news coverage and prompted talk of a permanent split.
The BBC's political correspondent Iain Watson said Labour's ruling body will likely opt to accept the definition, but with caveats amid concerns about the stifling of “legitimate criticism” of Israel.
With party MPs set to make their own decision on adopting the IHRA’s definition in full later in the week, “it could be a pivotal week” says Politico.
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Claims that the leadership is failing to tackle anti-Semitism and, in some cases, condoning it came to a head last month when footage from 2013 emerged of Jeremy Corbyn saying a group of British Zionists had “no sense of English irony” despite a lifetime in the country.
Doubling down a statement made to The New Statesman in which he compared the Labour leader’s comment to Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 ‘rivers of blood speech’, ex-Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks told the BBC Corbyn must also “repent and recant” for his remarks. Sacks even suggested British Jews were considering leaving the country because of the prospect of him becoming prime minister.
Responding to Lord Sacks, the party’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, yesterday became the most senior member of the shadow cabinet to call for the full definition to be adopted, as long as free speech was protected.
Speaking at the Jewish Labour Movement’s annual conference in London, former prime minister Gordon Brown said Labour must act now or undermine its values, and called for the party to support the IHRA definition “unanimously, unequivocally and immediately”.
Amid the internal turmoil, Corbyn received a message of support from afar, as an alliance of four Arab-dominated parties in Israel’s parliament broke ranks with fellow legislators to applaud the Labour leader.
In a letter to the Guardian, the Knesset members said they commended Corbyn as “a principled leftist leader who aspires for peace and justice and is opposed to all forms of racism, whether directed at Jews, Palestinians, or any other group”.
The Guardian’s Oliver Holmes writes that the letter from the Joint List coalition “contrasts with the anti-Corbyn foreign policy consensus in the Israeli government and is likely to ripple through domestic politics”.
