The 2019 General Election is now underway, with polling stations open and registered voters up and down the country heading out to cast their ballots.
The nation is getting ready to elect its new leader in what some are calling the ‘Brexit Election’, with the new Prime Minister due to be announced on Friday, 13 December.
During the course of his election campaign, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been dogged by accusations of racism, with protestors gathering outside a Labour race event in late November.
Why has the Labour leader been accused of being racist?
Corbyn has come under fire for his handling of the anti-Semitism allegations levied against him and the Labour party.
Last month, he was accused of mispronouncing Jeffrey Epstein’s name to make him ‘sound more Jewish’ during the ITV leaders debate
Corbyn said Epstein’s name with the sounding ‘Epshtine’ rather than ‘Epsteen’, to which comedian David Baddiel responded by saying: ‘every Jew noticed’ while quoting a tweet that said the Labour leader’s pronunciation made the paedophile ‘sound more Jewish’.
He said: ‘I think it was a subconscious thing and meaning is up for discussion.
‘But as one who DM’d last night said; it’s a thing that feels visceral to Jews but oblique to the outside world.’
Luciana Berger quit the Labour party earlier this year saying it was ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’.
She subsequently became a Liberal Democrat and in November spoke out against the Labour leader, saying he ‘indulged in anti-Semitic behaviour’.
The candidate for Finchley and Golders Green in north London said: ‘By his actions, and by the platforms he’s shared, and the people he has invited, and the things that he has done, and the things that he hasn’t done, he’s indulged in anti-Semitic activity.’
She accused Labour of a ‘serious racist problem’ and said: ‘Jeremy Corbyn and his team have created a party machine which protects and normalises anti-Semitic ideas and individuals.’
Corbyn meanwhile has previously called anti-Semitism ‘vile and wrong’, saying: ‘I have to say, I just want to make this very clear – anti-Semitism in any form is vile and wrong.
‘It is an evil within our society, it is an evil that grew in Europe in the 1920s and onwards and ultimately led to the Holocaust.
‘There is no place whatsoever for anti-Semitism in any shape or form or in any place whatsoever in modern Britain, and under a Labour government it will not be tolerated in any form whatsoever. I want to make that clear.’
Countdown’s Rachel Riley has also come out against Corbyn and faced a backlash online after posting a picture of herself wearing a Photoshopped photo of Jeremy Corbyn being arrested during an anti-apartheid protest in 1984.
‘Jeremy Corbyn is a racist endeavour’ had been Photoshopped onto his sign, which in the original image read: ‘Defend the right to demonstrate against apartheid; join this picket.’
In response to the backlash, Riley tweeted: ‘The ease at which large swathes of people can be mobilised into group hate, for highlighting Corbyn’s history of racism using an image of his arrest as part of an extreme group cited as damaging the mainstream anti-apartheid movement, is just one reason Jewish people are worried.
‘Trying to brand me as racist for this, whist lauding themselves as anti-racist heroes, shows just how little regard many people have for anti-Jewish racism, and why I and many others speak so loudly. It’s a hatred which unites the far right, far left and is having a resurgence.’
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Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis criticised Corbyn in The Times, writing that the MP was ‘complicit in prejudice’ and ‘unfit for office’, adding that British Jews are ‘gripped by anxiety’ at the prospect of a Corbyn-led government.
Mirvis wrote: ‘Of course, the threats of the far-right and violent jihadism never go away, but the question I am most frequently asked is, “What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?”
‘Raising concerns about anti-Jewish racism in the context of a General Election ranks among the most painful moments I have experienced since taking office.’
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, said on Mirvis’ intervention: ‘That the Chief Rabbi should be compelled to make such an unprecedented statement at this time ought to alert us to the deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews.’
In response to these comments from Mirvis, Corbyn told journalist Andrew Neil that anti-Semitism didn’t increase after he took control of the party, saying: ‘It didn’t rise after I became leader.
‘Anti-Semitism is there in society, there are a very, very small number of people in the Labour Party that have been sanctioned as a result about their anti-Semitic behaviour.’
He also said: ‘We will not allow anti-Semitism in any form in our society because it is poisonous and divisive, just as much as Islamophobia or far-right racism is’.
A Labour spokesperson said: ‘Jeremy Corbyn is a lifelong campaigner against anti-Semitism and has made absolutely clear it has no place in our party and society and that no-one who engages in it does so in his name.
‘A Labour government will guarantee the security of the Jewish community, defend and support the Jewish way of life, and combat rising anti-Semitism in our country and across Europe. Our race and faith manifesto sets out our policies to achieve this.’
Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald told Sky News on the subject of the Chief Rabbi’s comments: ‘It is a serious intervention. It is a reminder of the hurt that has been caused to the Jewish community by the instances of anti-Semitism within the party and broader than that.
‘I really do take issue with the conclusions the Chief Rabbi has raised about the character and nature of the party and indeed Jeremy Corbyn who has devoted his life to fight racism of all kinds.
‘People come into the Labour Party to fight racism in all its manifestations and it is upsetting, to say the least, to find ourselves trying to deal with these small number of incidents.’
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