‘Get real or get out’ Labour Deputy leader orders members

Angela Rayner threatens to suspend “thousands and thousands” of members as gagged local parties declare no confidence in Leader Keir Starmer and his General Secretary David Evans

The Deputy leader of the Labour Party says she is prepared to suspend “thousands and thousands” of members if they continue to ignore the internal issue of anti-Semitism.

Addressing the Jewish Labour Movement on Sunday – International Day of Solidarity with Palestinians – Angela Rayner said: “Our members need to get real about this.

“If they don’t think anti-Semitism is within the Labour Party and that there are problems now, then there’s really no place for them in the Labour Party.”

“If they think making people feel unsafe or unwelcome in our meetings is a response to the EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) report, then they need to be out of our party immediately.

“People need to understand what our Jewish community have been through.”

The highly flawed EHRC report which was released in October found fault in the party’s procedures to investigate the organised campaign of complaints by Zionists and the Right wing.

It also refused to consider the role of the party’s bureaucracy to use the opportunity as a weapon against the Jeremy Corbyn leadership.

She continued: “If I have to suspend thousands and thousands of members, we will do that.

“Because we cannot and we will not accept an injury to one, because an injury to one is an injury to all. That’s what we say in our movement.

The deputy leader said it was also a matter of “education”, adding that while it was generally right for a party to debate issues, “there’s no debating what the EHRC said.

“There’s no debating whether anti-Semitism exists in the Labour Party. It does, and we’ve got to do everything we can to stamp it out.”

Last month Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the party after saying that the scale of anti-Semitism within the Labour ranks was “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.

His membership was reinstated by the National Executive Committee  disciplinary panel.

But leader Sir Keir Starmer subsequently blocked him from the Parliamentary Labour Party saying he would keep the decision not to restore the whip “under review”.