UK opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer doesn’t miss an opportunity to say that under his watch, the Labour Party has changed since the days of Jeremy Corbyn, when the party was plagued by allegations of antisemitism. But any real credibility he had on this issue has been “thoroughly blotted” in Labour’s latest row, the Campaign Against Antisemitism campaign group has claimed.
This started when recordings emerged of Azhar Ali, then Labour’s parliamentary candidate in this month’s Rochdale by-election, claiming that Israel deliberately allowed the October 7th terror attacks. Ali said Israeli officials “deliberately took the security off, they allowed … that massacre” in order to give them “the green light to do whatever they bloody want” in Gaza.
Rather than dismiss him straight away, Labour HQ spent the next 48 hours maintaining its support for the candidate. Starmer, who once vowed to “tear out the poison” of antisemitism from the Labour party “by its roots”, stuck by Ali after the candidate apologised for his comments, describing them as “deeply offensive, ignorant, and false.”
The party even sent leading front bencher Lisa Nandy to campaign alongside Ali, despite the row having broken out just hours before. It was, however, unwilling to have any of its top figures appear on Tuesday morning’s media rounds.
Labour officials claimed they eventually backed down on Monday evening due to the release of “new information” relating to Ali, though party MPs say action only occurred after they forced Starmer to consider the issue properly, prompting him to hold a five-hour-long meeting. Barrister Martin Forde, who was commissioned to investigate allegations of antisemitism in the party following the departure of Corbyn, described Starmer’s delay in dropping his support as “shambolic.”
The party’s caution around this case was undoubtedly a result of an ongoing row with mainly Muslim representatives and supporters over Labour’s Gaza stance. Starmer’s support for Israel has become less pronounced as memory of the October 7th attacks has diminished, but many have neither forgotten nor forgiven his October claim that Israel “has the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza. Writer Rod Liddle even suggested that Labour was unwilling to withdraw its support because “what Azhar Ali is saying will appeal to a large number of voters in Rochdale.”
Because nominations for the Rochdale by-election have already closed, voters on February 29th will still see Ali presented on ballot papers as Labour’s candidate. But Ali will no longer receive any official support from the party from which he has now been suspended, pending investigation, and if elected, he will sit as an independent MP.
The squabble has been described as Starmer’s “biggest crisis as Labour leader” yet, though pundits believe “there may be worse to come.”
