(Bloomberg) — Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis attacked Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, suggesting voters should avoid casting a ballot for the main opposition in the U.K.’s Dec. 12 general election because of antisemitism “sanctioned from the top.”Mirvis wrote in the Times newspaper that British Jews are increasingly concerned about the prospect of a Labour government. He criticized the party for hounding out lawmakers and other party staffers for challenging antisemitism, and said it’s a “mendacious fiction” that the party has investigated every single case of anti-Jewish racism.“A new poison — sanctioned from the top — has taken root in the Labour Party,” Mirvis wrote. “It can no longer claim to be the party of equality and anti-racism.”Labour issued a statement saying Corbyn is a “lifelong campaigner against antisemitism and has made absolutely clear it has no place in our party and society.”Under Corbyn, the party has been hit by a series of antisemitism scandals, and the leader himself has come under scrutiny for his history of sharing speaking platforms with supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. The problem has sparked a formal probe by the U.K.’s Equality and Human Rights Commission to determine if Labour has unlawfully discriminated against Jews, which is yet to report.While Mirvis didn’t explicitly tell British citizens not to vote for Labour, he said: “I simply pose the question: What will the result of this election say about the moral compass of our country? When December 12 arrives, I ask every person to vote with their conscience. Be in no doubt, the very soul of our nation is at stake.”To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at [email protected], Tony JordanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
