Corbyn suspended as Starmer says Anti-semitism report is "day of shame" for Labour

There are lessons for all the political parties, not just Labour, in the devastating report of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into Anti-Semitism in the Labour party, released today, which found that, quote, 

"the Labour Party has committed unlawful acts" 

in breach of the Equalities act which the party itself put onto the statute book.

The Labour Party is now legally obliged under the terms of its own legislation to draft an action plan to tackle the findings of unlawful actions made by the EHRC, which should be based on their recommendations.

Once the action plan is agreed, The EHRC will continue to monitor it and, if Labour fails to live up to its commitments in the legally binding action plan, may take enforcement action.

The Interim chair of the EHRC described the failure to tackle anti-Semitism as "inexcusable."

The EHRC says that, quote, 

"The investigation has identified serious failings in the Labour Party leadership in addressing antisemitism and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints. 

The Party is responsible for three breaches of the Equality Act (2010) relating to: 

• political interference in antisemitism complaints 
• failure to provide adequate training to those handling antisemitism complaints 
• harassment 

The equality body’s analysis points to a culture within the Party which, at best, did not do enough to prevent antisemitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it."   

The EHRC also found two individuals - one of them former Mayor of London and Labour NEC member Ken Livingston (relating to conduct prior to his resignation from the Labour party) and the other a Labour councillor in Rossendale, to have displayed anti-Semitic conduct while acting as agents for the Labour party to a degree amounting to "unlawful harassment," and added that, quote,

"These cases were only the tip of the iceberg."

You can read the full report here.

I want to stress that nothing that I have written above is "Tory Propaganda." 

While I often publish material on this blog supplied to me by Conservative HQ and I make no apology whatsoever for doing so, not one word of this post comes from that source.

Every quote, every fact above comes from the website of the official Equalities regulatory body set up under legislation passed by a Labour government. The Labour party themselves set the standards and set up the mechanisms under which they have been judged and found wanting.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Labour has also today suspended its immediate past leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and removed the whip from him, for responding to the EHRC report by saying

“One anti-Semite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media."

The present Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, called the report a "day of shame" for Labour, said that he was "Truly sorry for all the pain and grief that has been caused" and promised to implement all the recommendation of the report in full.

Asked about Jeremy Corbyn's response to the report, Keir Starmer replied

“I’ll look carefully at what Jeremy Corbyn has said in full. 

“But I’ve said a moment ago, and I’ll say it again: those who deny there is a problem are part of the problem. Those who pretend it is exaggerated or factional are part of the problem.”

I wrote at the beginning of this post that the EHRC report has lessons for all political parties, not just Labour. 

As I said in the speech which I successfully proposed that Cumbria County Council should adopt the IHRA definition of Anti-Semitism, a non partisan speech which was able to gain unanimous support, no party is completely free from Anti-Semitism and none of us can afford to be complacent about Anti-Semitism or indeed any form of racism. And there are other forms of racism including prejudice against Muslims about which we should all also be concerned, and the same applies.

I hope that ALL the UK's political parties will take a hard look at both their own current practices and the recommendations made today to the Labour party by the EHRC and seriously consider whether they too need to adopt any of them, in respect of Anti-Semitism or any other form or prejudice.