Allegations of antisemitism within the Labour party are not being dealt with quickly enough, the shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, has said.
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was forced to suspend his close ally Ken Livingstone for making inflammatory remarks about Hitler and Zionism after facing a flurry of criticism from Labour MPs.
“These allegations, when they are surfacing, are not being dealt with properly and quickly enough. They need to be dealt with much more speedily in the future,” Burnham said on BBC1’s Question Time.
“If I thought for one second that I was a member of an antisemitic party I would cut up my membership card, right here, right now. I don’t believe that is the case.”
Livingstone’s suspension came after the Bradford West MP Naz Shah was suspended over Facebook posts from 2014, including one suggesting Israelis be deported to the US.
In defending Shah to the BBC, Livingstone claimed Hitler had supported Zionism “before he went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews”. The former mayor of London also claimed there was a “well-orchestrated campaign by the Israel lobby to smear anybody who criticises Israeli policy as antisemitic”.
Burnham’s criticism of the party leadership echoed that made by the former shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper on Channel 4 news on Thursday night. “The Labour party needs to do more than simply to have suspensions of people who have been saying antisemitic things,” she said.
“We’ve actually got to have an action plan to deal with this in order to have strong processes so that there is swift action because you can never tolerate that kind of discrimination in the party.”
Following Livingstone’s suspension, Corbyn denied there was any crisis in the party over antisemitism. “It’s not a crisis. There’s no crisis,” he said. “Where there is any racism in the party it will be dealt with and rooted out. I have been an anti-racist campaigner all my life.”
The Labour leader suggested that those inflaming the situation were out to undermine his leadership because they were nervous of the strength of the Labour party at local level ahead of next week’s local elections.
Asked whether the party had a problem with antisemitism, Corbyn said: “No, there is not a problem. We are totally opposed to antisemitism in any form within the party. The very small number of cases that have been brought to our attention have been dealt with swiftly and immediately, and they will be.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday morning, Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, defended Corbyn’s actions. “I just ask people to take a look at what [Corbyn] actually did yesterday, within hours of Ken Livingstone making those comments,” he said.
“It wasn’t easy for Jeremy Corbyn yesterday. Ken Livingstone is a 40-year ally of Jeremy and what he did was act swiftly. In fact, I don’t think he could have moved any quicker to deal with Ken Livingstone.”
Watson described Livingstone’s comments as “vile, insensitive and crass” and said they were “straying into” antisemitic territory.
The comments provoked John Mann, a Labour MP and campaigner against antisemitism, to accost Livingstone in a stairwell at the BBC and describe him as a Nazi apologist in front of a number of television cameras. Mann told the former London mayor that he had “lost it” and that he needed help over the “factually wrong, racist remarks”. Within the hour, Livingstone had been suspended.
On reports that members of the leader’s team had wanted Mann to be reprimanded, Watson said he had been campaigning in Wales, so wasn’t privy to the discussions. “What I do know is that when issues like this come up in a party, everyone gives leaders advice, very often contradictory advice and ultimately it’s leaders that make the call,” he said.
Asked about Corbyn’s meetings with members of Hamas when he was a backbench MP, Watson said: “When you lead a political party, sometimes you need to take political risks and that might be you talk to people who hold contradictory or offensive views in the pursuit of peace and Jeremy is always going to do that, but if we are in a situation where that creates a perceived culture, or a culture that people are not welcome in the party, then we need to deal with it.
“Jews have always played an important role in the Labour party, leading in important positions because of the shared values that we have.”
