Lord Parry Mitchell has handed in his resignation from the Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn was elected again as leader on Saturday.
In his blog, Lord Mitchell wrote that “Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is not the Labour I joined.”
He started: “For me it was the Chakrabarti Report on antisemitism in the Labour Party that finally made me snap. I met Shami whilst she was preparing her report (ironically sitting in the sun on the Terrace at the House of Lords), we had a pleasant enough conversation and when we parted I had high hopes that she would be hard hitting, but she wasn’t, it was an anaemic whitewash. Corbyn then offering her a peerage was to me the final indignity.
“I will never forget how at the launch of Shami’s report, Corbyn stood by when a Momentum thug hurled a tirade of invective against Ruth Smeeth MP, so abusive that she left in tears. It was masterful inaction: Corbyn who should have protected her, joked with a colleague and did nothing.
“After a gut-wrenching summer my choice is now clear. How can I, a Jew and a Zionist, remain in a party where the leadership is so clearly hostile to Israel (even to its very existence) and which also flirts with antisemitism? In the end it was an easy decision, but that makes it none the less painful.”
You can read his full blog post here.
Jeremy Corbyn responded to the news on the Andrew Marr show. Watch the video below.
"Has Lord Mitchell ever met anyone in @PeoplesMomentum? Corbyn asks #marr https://t.co/4Qqecla2Uw
— The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) September 25, 2016
