Chief Rabbi says Jeremy Corbyn is not fit for high office in wake of Labour anti-Semitism

Jeremy Corbyn is “unfit for high office”, the Chief Rabbi has said, as he accused him of allowing the “poison” of anti-Semitism to “take root in the Labour Party”.

In an unprecedented intervention in the general election, Ephraim Mirvis attacked Mr Corbyn’s “utterly inadequate” response to Jewish MPs being “hounded out” of the party, saying he was “complicit in prejudice”.

No previous Chief Rabbi has ever publicly taken sides in an election campaign, but Rabbi Mirvis said Mr Corbyn’s behaviour had left him no choice as he fears for “the moral compass of our country” if he were to become prime minister.

It came as a senior adviser to Labour suggested Mr Corbyn’s future could be up for discussion as the price of a power-sharing deal with the SNP or Liberal Democrats.

Lord Kerslake, a long-standing ally of John McDonnell, said replacing Mr Corbyn as Labour leader would “form part of the conversation” of any confidence and supply talks in the event of a hung parliament.

Labour have failed to close the gap on the Tories in opinion polls, and Mr Corbyn’s disastrous personal ratings suggest he is one of the biggest reasons for that. Sources close to Mr Corbyn were last night forced to issue a stern rebuke of cross bencher Lord Kerslake, insisting a change of party leadership was “not on the table”.

In an excoriating article for The Times newspaper which he said was written with “the heaviest of hearts”, Rabbi Mirvis asks what it would take for a leader of the Opposition to be considered unfit for high office, before listing a string of controversies involving Mr Corbyn.

He writes: “Would associations with those who have openly incited hatred against Jews be enough?

“Would support for a racist mural, depicting powerful hook-nosed Jews supposedly getting rich at the expense of the weak and downtrodden be enough?

“Would describing as ‘friends’ those who endorse and even perpetrate the murder of Jews be enough? It seems not.”

Mr Corbyn has repeatedly defended his record on tackling anti-Semitism and said during last week’s leadership debates that every allegation had been investigated and he was doing everything he could to stamp it out.

But Rabbi Mirvis dismissed this as “mendacious fiction.”

The Chief Rabbi - who chooses not to refer to Mr Corbyn by name in the article - said his decision to speak out had been “amongst the most painful moments” he has had since taking office, but he felt he had to speak out on behalf of the Jewish community.

Referring to Labour, he writes: “The party leadership have never understood that their failure is not just one of procedure, which can be remedied with additional staff or new processes.

“It is a failure to see this as a human problem rather than a political one. It is a failure of culture.

“It is a failure of leadership. A new poison – sanctioned from the very top – has taken root in the Labour Party.”

He ends his article by saying: “It is not my place to tell any person how they should vote…I regret being in this situation at all. I simply pose the following question: What will the result of this election say about the moral compass of our country?

“When Dec 12 arrives, I ask every person to vote with their conscience.”

In response to the Chief Rabbi's comments, a Labour spokesman 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."

Last month Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain last month wrote to his Maidenhead Synagogue congregation urging them to vote tactically to defeat Labour.

Rabbi Roman last night supported the Chief Rabbi’s decision to break the “golden rule” of mixing politics and religion, saying: “The antisemitism that has come to the fore within the Labour Party during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn means that normal considerations are superseded.”

In an interview with Sky News, Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, pointed out that Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson has refused to entertain the idea of a pact with Labour under Mr Corbyn, leaving a question mark over his ability to carry on.

His comments provoked a furious response from allies of the Labour leader last night, with one shadow cabinet minister describing them as “deeply disappointing”.

Another party insider also claimed reservations about Lord Kerslake had been raised in recent months, with a number of Mr Corbyn’s inner circle concerned about his growing influence in the party.

Their fears are believed to have heightened in October, when Lord Kerslake was alleged to have personally informed Karie Murphy, Mr Corbyn’s chief of staff, that she was being reassigned to the party’s headquarters. 

Lord Kerslake said Labour would not form a coalition in the event of a hung Parliament and would instead need to strike a confidence and supply agreement with smaller parties, in the same way that Theresa May did with the DUP.

But he indicated that the party would need to entertain removing Mr Corbyn and granting a second Scottish independence referendum in order to secure the votes required to govern.

He said: “We don’t yet know in truth how that would play out, although the Liberal Democrats have said they could not support a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government and the SNP have said they would want a second referendum.

“All that world form part of the conversation that Labour would be having informally with those two parties.”

Asked whether he believed talks were already taking place, he continued: “My sense is that all the parties at the moment are completely focused on getting the best result for their parties in the election.

“I would be surprised if there’s a huge amount of discussion happening. I bet they are all thinking through those scenarios and how they would handle them.”

With recent polls indicating that Labour is still trailing at least 10 points behind the Conservatives, Lord Kerslake also admitted that Boris Johnson appeared to be heading for a “working majority comfortably”.

However, due to Labour being closely aligned with the SNP and the Lib Dems over Brexit, he claimed that Labour only needed to deny Mr Johnson a majority to “be regarded as having won”.

In October Mr McDonnell suggested that both he and Mr Corbyn would have to stand down if Labour lost the election.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon suggested the only obstacle standing in the way of a second Scottish independence referendum was Labour's internal "quibbling" over the timing. Mr Corbyn has said he would not allow a second independence referendum in the first two years of a Labour government.

Ms Sturgeon told the BBC: "For the sake of a year he’s going to turn his back on his chance to govern with a Labour government, and do all of these other things he says he wants to do, I don’t find that credible.”