Boris Johnson wades into Labour anti-Semitism row with blast at 'boneheaded' Jeremy Corbyn
4 min read
Boris Johnson has accused Jeremy Corbyn of a "boneheaded" refusal to tackle anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
The ex-foreign secretary said the row over the party's new code of conduct on anti-Jewish abuse had been in part caused by the Labour leader's "infantile desire to blame the West", and accused Mr Corbyn of adopting the code to avoid having to expel his "closest associates".
Labour described Mr Corbyn as a "militant opponent of anti-Semitism" who is "absolutely committed to tackling it".
Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Johnson, who quit the Cabinet earlier this month over Brexit, said the "virus" of anti-Semitism was often "potentiated by the stupidity or opportunism of politicians".
He said: "There is outrage and bafflement and pain; and amidst it all we have a leader of the Labour Party who is so boneheaded that he refuses to close down the furore in the way that everyone is urging – which is to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that has been accepted by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the judiciary, and 130 local councils."
The current row over abuse centres around Labour's decision not to adopt the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, along with its examples.
The code - backed by Labour's ruling National Executive Committee this month - omits four of the abuse examples listed by the IHRA, including accusing Jewish people of being more loyal to Israel than their home country and claiming that Israel's existence is a "racist endeavour".
The NEC has said its concerns centre on "one half of one of the IHRA's 11 examples", which it fears could be "used to deny Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of Israel and their supporters, their rights and freedoms to describe the discrimination and injustices they face in the language they deem appropriate".
But while Mr Johnson described it as "legitimate, and in my view wholly proper, to criticise both the Israeli government and Israeli policy", he accused Mr Corbyn of going "a step further" by backing the new code.
"He believes that it should be perfectly proper to claim that Israel is a 'racist endeavour' – that Zionism equals racism – and in doing so he deliberately or unconsciously legitimates a fairly nauseating line of attack on all the millions of Jewish people who, to a greater or lesser extent, identify with Israel," the former Cabinet minister claimed.
Mr Johnson also accused the Labour leader of having ignored "the disruptive behaviour of Iran" in the Middle East by appearing on Iranian-backed Press TV, and claimed that Labour's director of communications, Seamus Milne, "would immediately have to resign from the Labour Party" under the full IHRA definition.
CORBYN 'FULLY COMMITTED' TO TACKLING ABUSE
The intervention from the senior Tory MP came as Labour MP Ian Austin accused Jeremy Corbyn of "supporting and defending" racists.
The longstanding critic of the Labour leader was handed a warning by the party after he confronted party chair Ian Lavery over the new code of conduct.
According to one account, Mr Austin called the frontbencher a “f***ing b*****d” and a "wanker" in a heated Commons row just before MPs broke up for the summer recess.
But Mr Austin told the BBC: "I’m really shocked that a party that’s got a proud tradition throughout its entire existence of fighting racism has ended up causing such huge offence and distress to the Jewish community in Britain.
"I think this could never have happened before. I’m appalled that it’s happened, I’m ashamed of the Labour party, I really am."
A Labour spokesperson pushed back, however, saying: "Jeremy Corbyn has made clear he is a militant opponent of anti-Semitism and is absolutely committed to tackling it.
"We are fully committed to the support, defence and celebration of the Jewish community and its organisations.
"Jeremy Corbyn asked Labour's new General Secretary Jennie Formby to make speeding up and strengthening our disciplinary procedures against anti-Semitism her top priority.
"And to develop a comprehensive programme of political education to increase understanding of anti-Semitism and drive it out of our movement."
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