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Sir Keir Starmer was on Tuesday hit by a new row over alleged antisemitism in the Labour party, after a second election candidate was suspended over comments about Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Labour leader was already facing the fallout from his chaotic handling of the suspension of Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali when news broke that a second candidate had also been dropped from the party.
Labour said Graham Jones, former MP for Hyndburn, had been called in for an interview over leaked comments in which he called for Britons fighting for the defence forces of “fucking Israel” to be “locked up”.
A Labour spokesperson said Jones, who had hoped to retake Hyndburn for Labour as a candidate at the next general election, had been “administratively suspended”.
“There is a process that has to be gone through to formally remove candidacy, and Graham Jones had already been called in this evening for an interview,” the spokesperson said.
Jones made the comments at the same meeting in Lancashire last year at which Ali claimed that Israel had allowed Hamas to attack on October 7 to give it a pretext for launching an assault on Gaza. An audio recording of his comments were leaked to the Guido Fawkes website.
Jones claimed it was illegal for a British person to fight for another country, but the government has recognised “the right of British nationals with additional nationalities to serve in the legitimately recognised armed forces of the country of their other nationalities”.
The Labour leader insisted he had taken “decisive action” in withdrawing support from Ali on Monday night, but he was accused of presiding over a “shambles” because he had originally agreed to stand by him.
Starmer pledged to root out antisemitism from Labour’s ranks on becoming leader in 2020 after his far-left predecessor Jeremy Corbyn was heavily criticised for his handling of allegations of abuse.
Bookmakers have now installed George Galloway, the firebrand former Labour MP, as the new favourite to win the Rochdale contest on February 29, which was triggered by the death of Sir Tony Lloyd last month.
Galloway’s Workers party has sought to exploit Labour tensions over Starmer’s stance on the war in Gaza. It has portrayed the contest in a leaflet as a “straight choice between George who will fight for Palestine” and Starmer who will “fight for Israel”.
Starmer originally agreed to let Ali continue as Labour’s candidate after a report at the weekend that the Lancashire county councillor had made the allegedly antisemitic comments.
Shadow ministers publicly defended Ali, pointing out that he had apologised. But late on Monday, the party said it was withdrawing its support after “new information” about his comments had come to light.
The Daily Mail reported it had obtained an audio tape in which Ali blamed “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” for fuelling criticism of a pro-Palestinian Labour MP. Ali has apologised.
Because nominations for the contest have closed, Ali will appear on ballot papers as a Labour candidate, even though the party has formally withdrawn its support. He would not sit as a Labour MP if elected.
Martin Forde, a KC who carried out an independent review into allegations of racism and bullying in the Labour party, told the BBC it would have been “sensible” to withdraw support for Ali when his comments first emerged.
He said some left-wing MPs perceived “that if you’re in the right faction of the party, as it were, then things are dealt with either more leniently or more swiftly”.
Voters in the Rochdale by-election will now face the extraordinary situation where three former Labour candidates are on the ballot paper but no candidate officially endorsed by the party.
As well as Ali and Galloway, Simon Danczuk, a former Labour MP for Rochdale, is standing for the populist Reform UK party.
Danczuk was suspended by Labour in 2015 over allegations he had sent explicit messages to a teenage girl. He subsequently accepted that his behaviour was “inappropriate” and apologised. He said his campaign would now concentrate on stopping Galloway.