Speaking to the BBC’s John Pienaar, McCluskey said: “This is nothing more than a cynical attempt to manipulate anti-Semitism for political aims because this is all about constantly challenging Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership”.
Advertisement
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn leaving his home in London, April 29, 2016.
A new projection, conducted for the Guardian newspaper, shows that while Labour is set to suffer catastrophic losses, the ruling Conservative Party could gain 30 seats.
Mr Corbyn’s denial that there is a “huge problem” came after shadow cabinet minister Lucy Powell said: “There clearly is an issue with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party otherwise we wouldn’t have spent the best part of the last six or seven days talking about it”.
“They need to understand what anti-Semitism is”.
Sadiq Khan indicated that his prospects of being elected London mayor on Thursday had been damaged by ex-City Hall chief Ken Livingstone’s highly-controversial comments linking Hitler and Zionism.
Actress Maxine Peake has insisted being “very pro-Palestine” does not make her anti-Semitic as she defended Jeremy Corbyn’s response to the row engulfing Labour.
Asked if he would “live or die” by the results on Thursday, he said: “I think we will do well in London, in my constituency in Hartlepool we have got elections both in terms of the local council and police and crime commissioners – I hope we do well, the expectations are that we will”.
A Labour spokeswoman said: “Ilyas Aziz has been suspended from the Labour Party pending an investigation”.
“I joined the Labour Party because some of the bravest and strongest fighters against racism and anti-semitism were in the party”.
“It is not fair on ordinary Labour Party members, some of whom have spent a lifetime fighting racism and anti-semitism, who must be shocked to get up this morning and hear you insinuate the Labour Party is riddled with anti-semitism”.
Corbyn, a harsh critic of Israel who has referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends”, has been criticized for not doing enough to stop the rising anti-Semitic rhetoric within his party.
Meanwhile, Israel’s new ambassador to Britain, Mark Regev, said language used in the past couple of weeks had been “very concerning”.
Comments in the last few weeks had crossed from criticism of Israeli government policies to “demonising and vilifying” the Jewish state and perpetuating racist stereotypes, he said.
“If you are progressive and you are embracing an organisation which is homophobic, which is misogynistic, which is openly anti-Semitic, what is progressive about that?”
He said that the matter had not been helped by those Labour MPs who still oppose Corbyn’s leadership.
Advertisement
But in a letter to Mr Corbyn, Israeli Labour Party leader Isaac Herzog said he was “appalled and outraged by the recent examples of anti-Semitism by senior Labour Party officials in the United Kingdom”.
