Labour has suspended a parliamentary candidate over remarks about Israel one day after the party withdrew support for its Rochdale by-election candidate.
Labour suspended Hyndburn candidate Graham Jones on Tuesday after audio emerged that appeared to show him saying “[expletive] Israel” and allegedly suggesting that Britons who volunteer to fight with the Israel Defence Force should be “locked up.”
Shadow defence secretary John Healey confirmed the suspension of Mr. Jones and the withdrawal of support for Mr. Ali on Wednesday, telling Sky News: “What we’ve seen is evidence of our candidates saying unacceptable, wrong things. They’ve been investigated. And in the case of Rochdale and Azhar Ali, as soon as new information came to light, [Sir] Keir Starmer took a very swift decision that he didn’t meet the standards the public have a right to expect … and so we withdrew support for him.”
Labour Needs a ‘Zero Tolerance Approach’ to Anti-Semitism
“We are pleased that Labour has swiftly suspended Jones, pending further action,” Jewish Labour Movement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday.
Earlier, Jewish Labour Movement, which has been affiliated to the Labour Party since 1920, had said Mr. Jones’s comments about British-Israeli Jews were “appalling and unacceptable within the Labour Party.”
“We are dismayed that Jones was not only a bystander at the meeting where Azhar Ali made his antisemitic comments, but sought to inflame tensions further.
“Over the past two days, the importance of a zero tolerance approach to antisemitism in Labour has become clearer than ever,” the group said.
A spokesperson for the Campaign Against Antisemitism said in response to Mr. Jones’s suspension: “We commend Labour for doing the right thing, and doing it swiftly. However, these new revelations are putting an even greater focus on that late October Lancashire meeting where both Azhar Ali and Graham Jones reportedly made their comments.
“It is time for Labour to reveal which other MPs, candidates and councillors were there and why they said nothing about the remarks that were made, and indeed if more such remarks were made. Labour must continue to put a line in the sand and declare that it will not tolerate extremist views. It is the least that we should be able to expect from all our political parties.
“The question remains: who else was at that October meeting, what else was said, and who else knew, and why did nobody act?”
The party had selected Mr. Jones to contest his former Lancashire seat, which he lost to the Conservative Party’s Sara Britcliffe in 2019, in this year’s general election.
Suspension Comes a Day After Labour Withdrew Support for Azhar Ali
Mr. Jones and Mr. Ali made the comments at a meeting of the Lancashire Labour Party in October 2023. Mr. Ali, a councillor standing in the Rochdale by-election, had claimed in comments reported by the Mail on Sunday that Israel had advanced knowledge of the deadly terror attack in Israel on Oct. 7, and had allowed Hamas to attack its citizens as a pretext to start a war with Gaza.Mr. Ali apologised for the remarks, calling them “deeply offensive, ignorant, and false.”
Labour initially stood by their candidate, with shadow minister without portfolio Nick Thomas-Symonds saying that while he was “shocked and appalled” by Mr. Ali’s remarks, he had believed the candidate when he said he had fallen for an “online conspiracy theory.”
However, Labour withdrew support for Mr. Ali after the Daily Mail reported further remarks on Monday, in which the Rochdale candidate was alleged to have also blamed “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” for fuelling criticism of pro-Palestinian MP Andy McDonald.
Labour suspended Mr. McDonald after he used the phrase “between the river and the sea” in a speech during a rally.
In January, Labour had removed the whip from MP for Edmonton Kate Osamor after she had posted to X a message on Holocaust Memorial Day calling the Israel–Hamas conflict a “genocide” against Palestinians.
