UK lawmaker quits parliament: ‘Enabler’ Corbyn gives ‘open license’ to anti-Semitism

British Parliamentarian John Mann resigned over “normalization” of Jew-hatred among the Labour Party’s ranks under the leadership of embattled party head Jeremy Corbyn.

By World Israel News Staff

After nearly two decades in the British Parliament as a member of the Labour Party, John Mann announced his resignation from the legislative body to protest party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged “refusal” to adequately address anti-Semitism in his faction.

Mann explained his decision to the United Kingdom’s leading Jewish publication The JC, noting, “I’m not prepared to stand as an MP with Corbyn as leader. I have told him to resign for the good of the country and for the good of the Labour Party.”

During recent years, Labour has been rocked by an ongoing crisis involving the expression of explicit anti-Semitism by party members, the promotion of a virulently anti-Israel agenda that veers into Jew-hatred, and revelations related to Corbyn’s past involvement in incidents such as a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial to the terrorists who perpetrated the 1972 Munich massacre during which 11 Israelis were brutally murdered.

In July, the BBC broadcast a program exposing widespread anti-Semitism within Labour that included former party officials “who alleged they had to deal with a huge increase in anti-Semitism complaints since Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015.”

At the time, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis tweeted, “This is no longer a question of the leadership’s inability to deal with the scourge of anti-Semitism, but of its direct complicity in it.”

Mann, for his part, joins a growing list of party members who have quit Labour or resigned their posts to protest the party’s direction under Corbyn.

Former Labour MP John Mann. (screenshot)

With elections potentially looming in the U.K., Mann stepped down to register his opposition to Corbyn serving as prime minister.

“[H]is failure to lead is the big problem – as is the problem of antisemitism on the left,” Mann told The JC. “Corbyn is an enabler. His unwillingness to undo the damage he has done has had huge consequences. He’s not just an enabler – he’s the enabler in this country,” he emphasized.

Mann also commented that Corbyn’s actions and refusal to address anti-Semitism “gives an open licence to it.”

According to Mann, he personally witnessed the extent to which Jew-hatred has become “normalized” in the U.K. last Thursday during a lunch meeting with members of a Jewish organization, the Community Security Trust (CST).

While sitting at an outside table at a London kosher restaurant, Mann recounted being “subjected to casual but explicitly anti-Semitic abuse from four people passing by. It was ‘Jew this… Jew that’ to two members of the community and myself.”

While Mann spoke primarily about the spike in anti-Semitism in his own party, which he said has “been running in tandem with Corbyn’s lack of leadership,” he also identified “serious issues” in the Muslim community and far-right camp.

Mann recently accepted an appointment to serve as the government’s anti-Semitism czar.

Jeremy CorbynJohn Mann