Oli Dugmore spoke to Owen Jones about the latest Labour party civil war
Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended from the Labour party, reinstated and then suspended from the parliamentary Labour party (the MPs) in the space of a week. All this, over a statement he made about a report into anti-Semitism in the Labour party, in which Corbyn said the problem had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media.”
Whether some deal was brokered between Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn or not depends on which faction of the party you ask, and lawyers are now becoming involved. The Labour party is descending into civil war, meanwhile the government mishandles its response to the global pandemic.
Party leader Starmer has confirmed that Corbyn will be barred from sitting as a Labour MP, after the former leader was controversially readmitted to the party this week after accepting that concerns about anti-Semitism were not “overstated.”
When Jeremy Corbyn gives speeches at demonstrations and protests, the rhetoric used toward racism is one of zero tolerance. If he wasn’t a pacifist you could say his approach to anti-racism was pretty scorched earth. Why then, when it comes to anti-Semitism, does he feel comfortable saying the problem has been overstated and what can we infer about him from that fact?
Oli Dugmore spoke to Owen Jones, a journalist and one of Jeremy Corbyn’s most high-profile supporters, about the battles raging within the Labour party and around it, in the UK broadcast media.
