Left-Wing Peer Baroness Tonge Blames Corbyn’s Defeat on ‘Pro-Israel Lobby’

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Kurt Zindulka

Nearly 90 members of Britain’s upper house have demanded colleague Lady Jenny Tonge issue an apology after she blamed Jeremy Corbyn’s crushing electoral defeat on the “pro-Israel” lobby in the UK last week.

The left-leaning member of the House of Lords, who once sat with the Liberal Democrats but is now a so-called ‘crossbencher’ with no formal party affiliation, took to Facebook to decry the influence of the Israel lobby and Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi in the UK.

Rabbi Mirvis had called Corbyn “unfit for office” over his handling of alleged anti-Semitism in the Labour Party during the election campaign.

“The Chief Rabbi must be dancing in the street. The pro-Israel lobby won our General Election by lying about Jeremy Corbyn”, she wrote.

The anti-semitic outburst by Lady Tonge [pictured, above, in the House of Lords during a debate on Palestine] led to 88 peers writing a letter to the Daily Telegraph, a British centre-right newspaper, calling for the Baroness to retract her statement and apologise.

“Her language is both shameful and in clear contravention of the United Kingdom’s adoption of IHRA’s definition of Antisemitism”, the peers said.

“Baroness Tonge has brought Parliament into disrepute and we demand that she withdraws her remarks and issues a full and unqualified apology without delay”, they added.

Lady Tonge resigned from the Liberal Democrats in 2016 after attending a meeting hosted by the “Palestinian Return Centre” in which a participant said that the Jews had “antagonised Hitler”.

Speaking at the time the peer said: “I am at last free of being told what I must and must not say on the issue of Palestine, lest it offends the Israel lobby here, who like to control us, as they do in the USA.”

The day before last week’s general election, the baroness threw her support behind Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party.

“Jeremy Corbyn is like me, anti injustice. All power to him and John McDonnell. Peers cannot vote but I wish Labour well. The LibDems are a shadow of the party led by Paddy Ashdown who unashamedly was close to Labour. RIP”, she wrote on Facebook.

Baroness Tonge’s latest comments, blaming Corbyn’s loss on the Israel lobby, were echoed by the former Labour Party Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who called accusations of anti-Semitism in the party “lies and smears”

“He’s (Corbyn) been side by side with everyone who’s campaigned against racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism…yet the media was full of lies saying the Labour Party was an institutionally antisemitic body…all my Jewish friends in the Labour Party, not a single one of them can remember a time when there was an anti-Semitic incident.”

As the results of the election were coming in, Mr Livingstone said that the “Jewish Vote” had cost Corbyn the election.

The Labour Party is currently facing an investigation over allegations that the party “unlawfully discriminated against, harassed, or victimised people because they are Jewish”.

Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtZindulka

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