Southport Lib Dems repeat concerns over Corbyn’s response on antisemitism

Local Lib Dems repeat concerns over Corbyn’s response on antisemitism

Last week Southport’s former MP John Pugh declared his full backing for Luciana Berger, Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, in her condemnation of Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn who previously expressed support for a grossly offensive anti-Semitic mural in London.

Now senior Southport Lib Dem councillor Simon Shaw has voiced his concern at Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to properly understand the problem within his party.

“Only Corbyn would consider that the best way to build bridges with the Jewish community that has so clearly lost confidence in him is to meet with a controversial fringe Jewish group called Jewdas,” says Cllr Shaw.

“The Jewdas group has described Israel as ‘a streaming pile of sewage which needs to be disposed of’, so it takes a particular form of insensitivity on the part of Corbyn to think that’s how to deal with Labour’s antisemitism problem.”

The highly regarded Labour MP Wes Streeting has also expressed doubts about his Leader’s meeting with Jewdas, saying: “What on earth was he thinking? This demonstrates either extraordinarily bad judgment or a deliberate affront to the majority of British Jews. Probably both.”

Councillor Shaw continues: “The problem with Corbyn is that he has always held a world view, like many on the far left, that thinks that the West and America in particular, is always wrong. Conversely, anyone ‘opposed’ to the West is right. So he ends up supporting Russia, Iran and his friends in Hamas and Hezbollah, while opposing Israel, NATO and even the EU.”

“In fact, in relation to the EU the only recent time that Corbyn has shown any decisiveness is in sacking Owen Smith MP from Labour’s front bench in late March. This was because Smith had the temerity to suggest that a second referendum might be needed once the details of the Brexit deal are known.”

“Corbyn’s difficulty is that Smith was expressing a view that, according to opinion polls, most Labour Party members and voters support. But, of course, if you actually check his record, Corbyn has been consistently opposed to the EU over the last thirty years.”