[ad_1]
Former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended from the party and his whip has been removed.
A party spokesman said: “In light of his comments made today and his inability to retract later, the Labor Party has suspended Jeremy Corbyn pending investigation. They have also removed the whip from the Parliamentary Labor Party.”
Mr. Corbyn had reacted to a damning report on anti-Semitism saying that the number of complaints filed during his tenure was “dramatically exaggerated for political reasons.”
Use the Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Then he gave a press conference in which he repeated this and insisted: “I am not part of the problem.”
Corbyn also said that he would not resign from the Labor Party, adding that he is “proud to be a member of the Labor Party” that he joined when he was 16 and “I have fought racism all my life, and I will fight racism for the rest. of my life”.
Investigation into anti-Semitism by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (ECHR) found that the Labor Party had broken the law in the way it handled complaints of anti-Semitism in the period when Corbyn was the leader.
He said there were “serious flaws” by his leadership, political interference by Mr. Corbyn’s office in the complaints and he found the party responsible for “unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination.”
Current leader Sir Keir Starmer said in his reaction to the report: “And yes, after all the pain, all the pain and all the evidence in this report, there are still those who think there is no problem with anti-Semitism in the Labor Party. That everything is exaggerated or an attack between factions.
“So, frankly, you’re part of the problem too. And you shouldn’t be close to the Labor Party either.”
When asked by Sky’s Kate McCann if that meant Corbyn should no longer be a party member, Sir Keir repeated his words and said he would see what his predecessor had said.
An hour later, the party said it had suspended Corbyn.
They have also removed the whip, which means that he is no longer part of the Labor Party within Parliament, so he can remain a MP, but is now independent.
Labor MP Harriet Harman, chair of the human rights committee, tweeted: “This is the right thing to do.
“If you say that AS [antisemitism] exaggerated for factional reasons, you minimize it and are, as Keir Starmer puts it, part of the problem. “
