Jeremy Corbyn today faced calls to sack a close ally who wrongly denied having described Zionism as “the enemy of peace”.
Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon last night said he regrets having made the remark, after footage emerged from a speech he gave in 2014.
Ian Austin MP, who quit Labour over the party’s anti-Semitism crisis, said Mr Burgon should resign over the “disgraceful” slur.
He told LBC: “If he doesn’t resign he should be sacked. To have said this in the first place is pretty terrible and to have been caught out not telling the truth about it, denying it … I think it makes his position completely untenable.
"Zionism is simply the belief in a homeland and the self-determination of the Jewish people. To describe that and people who believe in it as ‘enemies of the peace’ is a complete disgrace. The fact he’s not been sacked shows just how far the Labour Party has sunk.”
Mr Corbyn has so far refused to sack Mr Burgon, who would become Lord Chancellor if Labour were to win power, as Jewish groups demanded he be removed from his senior position.
The footage of Mr Burgon was filmed at an event in 2014 before he was elected as MP for Leeds East in 2015.
On the BBC’s Daily Politics programme in March last year the MP said he “did not make those comments”.
In a statement, Mr Burgon said that when he was first challenged over the comments he “did not recall” having made them.
He said: “It is now clear that I did and I regret doing so. As I have subsequently said on numerous occasions … I do not agree with that phrase.”
Labour Friends of Israel director Jennifer Gerber said: “It’s time for Mr Burgon to apologise both for this slur on the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and for seemingly misleading the public about it.”
