Former Labour Party chief Jeremy Corbyn visits mosque after Labour sweeps election, calls Conservative’s defeat a ‘victory’ for the Palestinian people and will mark an end to weapons sales to Israel.
By David Rosenberg, World Israel News
The former chairman of the Labour U.K. Party celebrated the party’s historic victory in last week’s elections, telling worshippers at a London mosque that the vote marked a “victory” for “the Palestinian people,” and would mark the end of British weapons sales to the Israeli military.
Last Thursday, the Labour Party defeated the ruling Conservatives by a ten-point margin, 33.7% to 23.7%, and securing an absolute majority in the 650-member Parliament with 411 seats, compared to just 121 for the Conservatives.
The sweeping victory enabled Labour chairman Keir Starmer to form a government on Friday, replacing Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister.
On Saturday, former Labour Party chief MP Jeremy Corbyn, who led the party to its greatest defeat in decades in the 2019 election, celebrated the results with an appearance at a controversial mosque which has hosted openly antisemitic speakers in the past.
During his visit to the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, Corbyn called Thursday’s election results a “victory” for “the Palestinian people,” adding that the defeat of the Conservatives would mark the end of weapons sales to Israel.
“This is also a victory also for those who believe in peace and the rights of the Palestinian people to live in peace, to end the bombardment, to end the sale of arms and destruction of the West Bank.”
Corbyn himself was reelected in Thursday’s election, despite being expelled from the Labour Party and running as an independent candidate facing a Labour-backed challenger.
The Finsbury Park Mosque has sparked controversy in the past, after it hosted Omar Abdelkafi, an Egyptian imam who called on Muslims to “liberate” Jerusalem from the “filth of the Jews,” and who publicly cited the antisemitic screed Protocols of the Elders of Zion.