Corbyn finished: Trounced at polls after anti-Semitism scandal, Labour leader quits

The U.K. vote was a disaster for Labour, culminating in Jeremy Corbyn’s declaration that he must step down as party leader.

By World Israel News Staff

Britain’s election was a flat-out disaster for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who faced calls for his resignation almost immediately and confirmed he will not lead the left-wing party in another election.

Results pouring in early Friday showed a substantial shift in support to the Conservatives from Labour. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives easily won more than 326 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, ensuring it will form a majority government.

While Corbyn accused the media of attacking Labour and contributing to its poor results, the party and Corbyn himself could not shake persistent accusations of anti-Semitism. New details related to the scandal emerged on a near-daily basis during the campaign, with Corbyn refusing to specifically apologize for the rampant Jew-hatred among party members.

Days before the election, the Simon Wiesenthal Center released its annual list of the top 10 global anti-Semitic incidents, along with anti-Semitic people, and the number one spot was given to the Jeremy Corbyn-led British Labour Party.

“No one has done more to mainstream anti-Semitism into the political and social life of a democracy than the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party,” said the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “Members and staff who have dared to speak out against the hate were purged, but not those who declared ‘Heil Hitler’ and ‘F–k the Jews.’”

In the past, Corbyn referred to members of the Hamas and Hezbollah terror groups as “friends,” participated in a wreath-laying ceremony for terrorists involved in the 1972 Munich massacre of Israelis, and permitted a Hamas operative to control Labour-linked social media pages, according to a bombshell report by TPS.

In the run-up to the election, Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned in an op-ed of the threat to the Jewish community posed by Corbyn and the Labour party. Corbyn dismissed Rabbi Mirvis’ concerns in a widely viewed television interview that followed, refusing to apologize and claiming that the chief rabbi was wrong.

In the days that followed, Labour released a campaign ad courting voters from the Muslim, Sikh, and other minority groups, that glaringly omitted any mention of Jews.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and found of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Daily Mail a Corbyn-led government would make Britain “a pariah on the world stage.”

In 2016, anti-Semitism in the Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership was listed as No. 2, behind the U.S. abstention on a U.N. vote on on Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. And in 2017, Labour anti-Semitism placed No. 10. In 2018, Corbyn came in as No. 4 on the list.

Following the elections public policy expert Tony Travers commented that the Labour party will face “a civil war about what kind of candidate should go forward.”

AP and JNS contributed to this report.