Two Jewish activists withdraw support for Corbyn’s Your Party bid over ‘unlearned lessons’

Two Jewish left-wing activists, both victims of Labour’s purge under the concocted ‘Labour antisemitism’ scandal under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the party, have expressed their refusal to support Corbyn’s bid to become leader of the new Your Party. The Jewish activists contend that the former Labour leader has not learned or sufficiently confronted this chapter in Labour’s history.

Samantha Simmonds interviews Jeremy Corbyn

Last week on BBC London’s Sunday Politics programme, Jeremy Corbyn was interviewed by Samantha Simmonds, a pro-Israel activist with a record of regurgitating Israeli propaganda as fact. Simmonds, of course, brought up supposed ‘Labour antisemitism’ under Corbyn’s leadership, asking why London’s Jewish community should support him now.

Corbyn didn’t challenge the patently false and long-debunked ‘antisemitism problem’ narrative surrounding the Labour Party, nor the EHRC report, which implied it had found antisemitism. Above all, he did not raise the repeatedly exposed racism of the Labour right, who, under his tenure, were running the party’s admin and were key promoters of these narratives.

Instead, to Greenstein’s “horror”, Corbyn played into it by defending his and his team’s record of action over supposed antisemitism ‘failings within the Labour party’.

Now Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, two high-profile Jewish victims of Labour’s purge of the left, which began under Corbyn’s leadership, and escalated by his successor Keir Starmer, have said that the interview shows Corbyn hasn’t learned the clear lessons of the scandal. They cited this as the reason for withdrawing their support, stating that he

still doesn’t understand that there was NO ‘Anti-Semitism’ problem in the Labour party and that the EHRC report was a put up job.

Letter from activists addresses Corbyn’s leadership contest

In a public letter to Corbyn, the pair writes:

Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn – We Can’t Afford to Repeat the Mistakes of the Past

Your Interview with the London Politics Programme raise alarms bells for the future of ‘Your Party’

Dear Jeremy,

Given the success of the campaign in the Labour Party (2015-19) to undermine the Left by weaponising anti-Semitism, it came as no surprise when, on 2 November 2025, while you were being interviewed by Samantha Simmonds of BBC London Politics, you were challenged on this issue.

Instead of countering her framing, questioning the application of the IHRA or challenging the good faith of the media, yet again you gave the impression of accepting the premise that there had been an ‘anti-Semitism problem’ on the Labour Left.

We, and many other activists and members, were expelled under your leadership as part of the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt, despite having fought fascism and racism all our lives. In fact we were expelled because we were, and remain, anti-Zionists.

We received no support from you as leader. Quite the contrary. In Labour’s leaked report it stated, on page 306 that:

“Jeremy Corbyn himself and members of his staff team requested… that particular antisemitism cases be dealt with. In 2017 LOTO staff chased for action on high-profile antisemitism cases Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth, stressing that these cases were of great concern to Jewish stakeholders and that resolving them was essential to “rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community”.

We find it astounding that you still don’t seem to understand, a decade after you were elected Leader of the Labour Party, how and for what purpose, with the support of the majority of Labour MPs, factions like Labour Together and the Israeli Embassy funded Jewish Labour Movement, ‘anti-Semitism’ was weaponised.

As activists and Labour Party members, we were collateral damage. You and the pro- Palestinian Left, were always their principal target, yet you never seemed to quite grasp this.

At no point in the recent interview did you challenge the assumptions of the journalist. Your response was to claim innocence on your own part. Nor did you question the findings of the EHRC, or raise the fact that the EHRC Commissioner who conducted the ‘investigation’, Alistair Henderson, was someone on the far-right who ‘liked’ tweets of fascist philosopher Roger Scruton and Islamophobe Douglas Murray of the Henry Jackson Society.

The whole EHRC investigation was shoddy. Chris Williamson secured the removal, after threatening legal action, of all references to him. The alleged harassment consisted of two members, Pam Bromley and Ken Livingstone, exercising their right to freedom of speech to deny that there was an ‘anti-Semitism problem’ in the Labour Party. You didn’t even repeat your previous criticism of the EHRC as being ‘part of the government machine.’

Nor did you challenge the interviewer’s premise that Labour had been swamped by anti-Semitism. Today Zionists, including the JLM, accuse all opponents of the Gaza Holocaust of anti-Semitism. It is now clear to most people that Israel’s standard response to accusations of war crimes is to cry ‘anti-Semitism’. This is not the time to be defensive. This is THE time to press our message home; that allegations of anti-Semitism were, and are, being weaponised for political purposes.

We are disturbed that you repeated the mantra of the Labour Right that ‘one anti-Semite is one too many.’ Leaving aside the fact that what they meant by ‘anti-Semite’ was ‘anti-Zionist’, this is the wrong way to fight racism. It is noticeable that Labour’s Right never said the same about one Islamophobe being one too many, as most of them would have been expelled!

If Your Party should succeed in challenging the Establishment, accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ will again be one of the primary weapons that will be used to attack us. Rather than face down such accusations, as we have seen people like Zarah Sultana, Zack Polanski and Andrew Feinstein do so effectively, it is clear Jeremy that you will be unable to defend the movement.

We need a leadership team that can effectively challenge our opponents, that is able to takes pride in anti-racism with the understanding that Zionism is a form of racism. This is why we oppose you becoming sole leader of Your Party.

In solidarity,

Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein

The way forward: facing up to the past

In an article accompanying the letter, Greenstein points to an interview by former MP Clare Short, with another pro-Zionist BBC presenter, as an example of how to treat the scam with the contempt it deserves. Green Party leader Zack Polanski has taken similar smears head on and, very effectively, too, as has New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Greenstein describes his reaction to Corbyn’s interview:

It was therefore with something approaching horror that I listened to Jeremy Corbyn’s interview with the London Politics Programme on Sunday November 2 when he was challenged by Samantha Simmonds about the anti-Semitism smear campaign in the Labour Party.

Instead of responding robustly and saying that there wasn’t an anti-Semitism problem, that anti-Semitism was weaponised then and now by those who defend or deny the Genocide in Gaza, Corbyn demonstrated that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks… although Corbyn has many talents and his honesty is beyond question he isn’t a political fighter. He is also proof that without having some theoretical background to your socialist politics you become in the end a political weathervane.

The oppressed and impoverished millions in the UK need a successful Your Party to work in cooperation with a socialist Green party. The twin objective is to defeat both the fascism being pushed by Starmer and Reform’s Farage.

Your Party needs Corbyn. He must show that he is prepared to attack the antisemitism smears head on, which nobody believes in good faith after two years of Israeli genocide. The lessons of the past should serve as a stark reminder of the need to reject the narrative around the ‘antisemitism’ purge for the politically-motivated dross that it is.

Image via Five Pillars.