Labour’s Jewish movement votes almost unanimously for Owen Smith to become new leader
The Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) has voted almost unanimously for Owen Smith over Jeremy Corbyn to become the new leader of the Party.
As many as 92 per cent of members balloted nominated Mr Smith, with just 4 per cent backing Mr Corbyn .
It comes after the incumbent Labour leader faced a series of attacked from Jewish groups and MPs over his failure to tackle the anti-Semitism row that has engulfed his Party.
Earlier this year Britain’s Chief Rabbi said the Labour party has a “severe” problem with anti-Semitism.
Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis criticised the “poisonous invective” and “politics of distortion” from party members such as Ken Livingstone.
JLM has more than 1,500 members and almost 59 percent took part in the ballot, with 4 per cent of members voting for ‘no nomination.’
Last month Mr Corbyn was criticised for nominating Shami Chakrabarti for a peerage after she produced a “whitewash” report into anti-Semitism in the party.
Keith Vaz, chairman of a Commons committee which is investigating anti-Semitism, wrote to Ms Chakrabarti if she was offered the peerage before she published the report which cleared Mr Corbyn’s party of anti-Semitism.
Ms Chakrabarti, the former director of civil liberties group Liberty, was asked by Mr Corbyn to look into anti-Semitism in the party after MP Naz Shah and ex-London mayor Mr Livingstone were suspended
The report, which she published on June 30, was dismissed as a “whitewash” Labour was not overrun by anti-Semitism or other forms of racism but there was an “occasionally toxic atmosphere”.
In May it emerged that Labour had secretly suspended 50 of its members over anti-Semitic and racist comments as officials struggle to cope with the crisis engulfing the party.
According to its website JML: “campaigns within the party and the wider community to support labour values within the UK, Israel and Internationally.”
Over the weekend a Jewish Labour donor compared Mr Corbyn’s inner circle to Nazi stormtroopers.
Michael Foster, who has given hundreds of thousands of pound to the party, refered to the Labour leader’s aides as Sturmabteilung, the full name for Adolf Hitler’s SA.
The criticism came in a scathing piece Mr Foster penned in the Mail on Sunday about the direction of the party under Mr Corbyn.