Britain’s Labour Party Roiled by Internal Strife

LONDON (AFP) — A resignation and a defection are forcing Jeremy Corbyn to confront two scourges hounding his Labour Party as it tries to unseat UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson: anti-Semitism and Brexit.

Labour is hoping to regain power for the first time in nearly a decade when voters go to the polls on Dec. 12 to try to settle the crisis caused by Britain's delayed divorce from the EU.

It was looking like an uphill slog from the start: Corbyn has some of the worst approval ratings of any leader of the opposition on record, and his century-old party is badly behind in the polls.

Yet he almost performed a come-from-behind miracle in the last general election in 2017. The veteran socialist is a renowned campaigner who seems to stir to life during election season.

He will need to recover from another tough start.

His deputy Tom Watson — a champion of party centrists who oppose Brexit and criticize Corbyn's handling of repeated anti-Semitism scandals — announced he was stepping down on Wednesday.

Watson said in a letter to Corbyn that his decision was "personal, not political."

But the New Statesman magazine's political editor Stephen Bush said Watson's resignation underscored Labour's steady creep toward the left under Corbyn's rule.

"The news is a shock, but it confirms what we already know: that Jeremy Corbyn has won Labour's civil war," Bush wrote.

The party has been split between those who like the European Union and those who oppose its rules and want to restrict an influx of foreign workers.

A pro-Corbyn group called Momentum tried to organize a mini-coup and eliminate Watson's post during the October party conference.

Corbyn intervened at the last moment and Watson stayed on.

Things took an uglier turn on Thursday when former Labour minister Ian Austin told his local newspaper that Corbyn was "not fit to lead."

"The Labour Party has been poisoned by racism, extremism and intolerance under Corbyn's leadership," Austin told the Express and Star.

His comments were backed up in an urgent front-page appeal in the Jewish Chronicle to all British citizens.

"The vast majority of British Jews consider Jeremy Corbyn to be an anti-Semite," the Jewish Chronicle wrote.

"In the most recent poll, last month, the figure was 87 percent."

It concluded with an appeal: "We believe that the overwhelming majority of British people abhor racism. We ask only that, when you cast your vote, you act on that."

Labour has been under pressure over anti-Semitism ever since Corbyn took over the party's leadership in 2015.

Some of the accusations stem from Corbyn's past support for pro-Palestinian causes and refusal to adopt a universally accepted definition of anti-Semitism — a position Corbyn has since revised.

Several prominent Labour members have quit in the past year over the party's seeming refusal to crack down on racism in its ranks.

Yet Labour is not the only major party dealing with internal strife.

Johnson took his Conservatives further to the right by adopting a tough Brexit stance that could still see Britain leave the EU without a negotiated deal in the coming year.

"Both major parties will be significantly reshaped whatever the result of the general election, with many moderate Conservatives ... leaving the House of Commons for good," The Guardian wrote.

© Agence France-Presse

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