Labour acts against Margaret Hodge for calling Corbyn racist

The Labour party is taking disciplinary action against senior MP Dame Margaret Hodge after an angry public confrontation in which she branded Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite.

The Labour leader’s spokesman pledged that “action will be taken” against the MP for her tirade, which came after the party’s ruling national executive committee refused to ditch a controversial new code of conduct on antisemitism.

But Hodge hit back with a claim that under Corbyn’s leadership Labour was now seen by many as antisemitic by Jews and the British public. “As our leader, he is now perceived as an antisemite,” she concluded.

Writing for the Guardian, she said: ““I chose to confront Jeremy directly and personally to express my anger and outrage. I stand by my action as well as my words.

“My grandmother and my uncle were murdered by Hitler and many cousins were slaughtered in the gas chambers ... I joined the Labour party to fight racism. To find myself 50 years later, in 2018 confronting antisemitism in my own party is completely and utterly awful.”

The senior official said that Hodge’s comments were “unacceptable” and that Labour rules forbade MPs from behaviour that was disrespectful or could bring the party into disrepute.

He confirmed that Corbyn himself would not make a complaint. He did not expand on what action would be taken against the MP for Barking but sanctions have in the past ranged from verbal warnings to suspension.

“Under the terms of PLP [parliamentary Labour party] rules, behaviour has to be respectful between colleagues and not bring the party into disrepute,” he said. “The behaviour was clearly unacceptable between colleagues. Jeremy’s door is always open to discussions with members of the PLP. Action will be taken.”

Hodge, a secular Jew who lost relatives in the Holocaust, had approached Corbyn behind the Speaker’s chair in the Commons on Tuesday night as MPs took part in a series of knife-edge votes on Brexit.

Friends denied reports she swore at the Labour leader, but acknowledged she had called him “an antisemitic racist”. They added that when Corbyn protested, she replied: “It is not what you say but what you do, and by your actions you have shown you are an antisemitic racist.”

In her article for the Guardian on Wednesday, Hodge said that Labour had dealt with complaints about antisemitism from members in a “desultory” manner and that a large demonstration in March had “effectively been ignored” by the leadership.

The “arrogance” displayed by Corbyn’s team by its refusal to adopt the internationally accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism “takes one’s breath away”, she said.

“The Labour party is so distrusted by the Jewish community, we are the last people on earth to think about amending a widely accepted definition of antisemitism. A definition that already recognises our right to criticise the governments of Israel.”

There was a simple alternative, she said. “The party could have adopted the international definition in full ... Instead it chose to offend Jews. It chose to make the Labour party a hostile environment for Jews. It chose to entrench antisemitism.”

Several Labour MPs reacted furiously to the threat of disciplinary action. Ian Austin, the MP for Dudley, said: “Imagine if Jeremy and his team were as quick to take action against the people responsible for racism as they are with the people complaining about it.”

Ilford North MP Wes Streeting tweeted: “Margaret Hodge is a first class parliamentarian and MP. She beat back the BNP in Barking, she’s not about to be intimidated by off-the-record briefing – and she’s not alone.”

David Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary, also attacked the move. “It is the Labour leadership which has brought the party into disrepute – not Margaret Hodge,” he said. “How dare they preach about ‘respect between colleagues’ when this very code legitimises the most appalling disrespect.”

However, one senior Labour MP who witnessed the altercation described Hodge’s behaviour as “shocking, bullying, intimidating and grossly offensive” and added: “It is beyond belief, I can’t understand that anybody would think that man [Corbyn] would have an antisemitic bone in his body.”

Corbyn briefly attended a rancorous three-hour session of the NEC on Tuesday to support its decision to leave the code of conduct in place but throw it open to fresh consultation. It has been widely criticised because it fails to incorporate all the examples listed alongside the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Labour has said its code contextualises and expands on the examples. But the decision to rewrite them has underlined perceptions that Corbyn’s party has failed to take the issue sufficiently seriously.

Angry Labour MPs, led by Luciana Berger, the chair of Jewish Labour, will table a motion on the party’s antisemitism problem at next week’s meeting of the parliamentary party.