Tag: Labour Party (UK) Conference

Michael Martin, the former Commons Speaker, became the latest senior figure to speak out against antisemitism in Labour on Sunday when he called for a special one-day conference to address the problem. In a rare intervention in party politics for someone who had to quit the party whip when he became Speaker, Lord Martin said he was “appalled” by what was happening in Labour and that failure to tackle antisemitism could cost it the next election. Stressing that he was not criticising Jeremy Corbyn personally for the problem, the former Labour MP, who now sits on the crossbenches in the Lords as Lord Martin of Springburn, said a special conference would allow party members to show how strongly they were opposed to antisemitism. Martin’s intervention came as Labour confirmed that Corbyn has suspended his personal Facebook account. Party sources said it was administratively simpler for Corbyn to have just one Facebook account – he has retained his official one –although the move came as the party faced fresh criticism over senior officials belonging to Facebook groups where antisemitic messages were posted. I have not been attending parliament because I’m on sick leave, but if I had been there on Monday last week, I would have joined the protest,” he said. “If you ran a restaurant, and it was dirty and there were cockroaches, you wouldn’t get away with saying ‘the restaurant down the road is dirty and has cockroaches too’. “The only way that the Labour party can improve the quality of life for men and women, and children, is if they are elected to public office and they have a parliamentary majority,” he said. Labour insiders dismissed a report in the Times claiming that the party is facing a worrying fall in membership. Membership was more than 570,000 after the election.