Senior MPs have urged Jeremy Corbyn not to dismiss a scathing parliamentary report on antisemitism in politics that questioned whether the Labour leader fully appreciated the nature of anti-Jewish abuse.
Corbyn said the report by the cross-party home affairs select committee was biased and had “a disproportionate emphasis on Labour”.
The report, published on Sunday, found Labour was “demonstrably incompetent” in dealing with incidents of anti-Jewish abuse, and derided the party’s internal inquiry into antisemitism carried out by Shami Chakrabarti this year as “ultimately compromised” by Chakrabarti’s subsequent peerage and elevation to the shadow cabinet.
The committee’s acting chairman, Tim Loughton, said Corbyn’s response showed he was “still in denial and that sort of response is deeply disappointing for all members of the committee”.
Loughton said the report examined antisemitism in all the major parties. “This is not about trying to score points off Jeremy Corbyn and I’m disappointed that it seems to have been accepted by him in that manner because that doesn’t do any of us any good,” he said.
Pat McFadden, a former shadow minister under Corbyn, said the committee’s report should be taken “very seriously”.
He told the BBC’s Sunday Politics: “I hope we don’t fall into the trap that sometimes I see when these accusations are wielded, that we point to anti-racism records and say, look at our virtue in our record here, that must mean we can’t be antisemitic.
“Let me be clear about this: pointing to your own sense of righteousness is no excuse for nastiness or cruelty to someone else.”
Two Labour MPs on the committee, Chuka Umunna and David Winnick, put their names to the report. Both backed a motion of no confidence in Corbyn over the summer.
The third Labour member of the committee, Naz Shah, took no part in the inquiry after she was suspended from the party over antisemitic social media posts. She was later reinstated after apologising.
Corbyn said the report contained some positive recommendations but the emphasis on Labour showed there were some political motivations at play.
“Although the committee heard evidence that 75% of antisemitic incidents come from far-right sources, and the report states there is no reliable evidence to suggest antisemitism is greater in Labour than other parties, much of the report focuses on the Labour party,” he said.
The report singled out the former London mayor Ken Livingstone for criticism. Livingstone, who is currently suspended from the party for comments linking Adolf Hitler with Zionism, said he believed the report had been “rigged” against Labour.
“I’ve been in the Labour party for 50 years and until six months ago no Labour MP ever raised the issue of antisemitism. I was on Labour’s national executive committee under Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, Ed Miliband, and in all that time there never came up to the committee any suggestion or complaints about antisemitic incidents,” he said.
Umunna, who is standing as a candidate to replace the Labour MP Keith Vaz as chair of the home affairs committee, denied the report had been politicised.
“People’s right to freedom from hatred and prejudice is bigger than any one individual or party in my view,” he said. “It is grossly insulting to suggest that those of us who recognise this – Labour party members or otherwise – do so because of some desire to score political points either between political parties or within them.”
Other parties came in for some limited criticism in the report. The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, was rebuked for his handling of allegations involving the former MP David Ward, who is now a Lib Dem councillor.
“We were disappointed by the manner in which their leader, Tim Farron, referred to disciplinary processes rather than explicitly condemning antisemitic remarks made by members of his party, and we were surprised to learn that Cllr David Ward remains an elected representative of the Liberal Democrats, despite his repeated antisemitic comments,” the report said.
