Jeremy Corbyn came under fire in 2018 after video emerged of a speech he’d made five years earlier in which he said some British Zionists “don’t understand English irony,” despite having “lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives”. But the grumpy Your Party leader has now had a sense of humour failure of his own.
Corbyn is said to be considering legal action against the makers of Have I Got News For You after it posted a joke on social media relating to Kanye West being refused entry to the UK to perform at a music festival.
The show’s account posted that “Kanye West has been banned from entering the UK to play Wireless Festival, as it would have been terrible to have a prominent public figure going round Finsbury Park condoning antisemitism” alongside a picture of Corbyn, thrown out of Labour after claiming the scale of antisemitism within the party under his leadership had been overstated for political reasons.
Corbyn immediately responded: “This is disgraceful, baseless and irresponsible. You should delete this immediately.” The MP – under whose leadership Labour was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to “not do enough to prevent antisemitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it” – is now said to be considering action for defamation against the show’s makers, Hat Trick.
It comes amid increasingly rumblings within Corbyn’s new outfit, Your Party, about its failure to notice quite important elections are coming next month. The party is not standing candidates to the Scottish Parliament, is highly unlikely to do so for the Welsh Senedd and appears to have none in place for the 4,850 local council seats up for grabs in England.
In Scotland, where the deadline for nominations has already passed, the party is not standing candidates, blaming problems at the UK level. Following a meeting of the party’s central executive committee, Niall Christie, the sole Scottish representative, confirmed it would not be able to stand candidates, saying: “As a result of inaction and decisions taken by Your Party at a UK level, members in Scotland will be unable – regardless of whether they want to – to stand Your Party candidates in May’s election.”
In Wales the party says that a motion would need to pass three committees to stand candidates for the Senedd – something it’s very unlikely to manage before the deadline of 4pm today (April 9). In the event they’re limited to backing the independent candidate Beth Winter in the Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr constituency, although given the new proportional system being used she doesn’t have a chance of getting in.
And in England – where the deadline is also 4pm today – it also seems that the party has failed to get candidates in place for local council elections right across the country. In fact, so dire is its organisation that even the hard left Canary website – normally a cheerleader for Corbyn’s every utterance – has written: “Despite announcing its formation nearly a year ago, Your Party is dragging its feet, risking leaving communities without a candidate to support.
“With far-right parties rising rapidly, fielding candidates is clearly achievable in this time frame – but the new party continues to dither. This begs the question: is this really the best Corbyn and his team can do?”
Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!
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