Labour candidate says ‘don’t vote for me’ because of anti-Semitism

A Labour candidate told voters in the constituency she is running in that her party didn’t ‘deserve’ their vote because it had ‘totally failed’ to tackle anti-Semitism.

Carolann Davidson said the party had ‘failed from the leadership down’ and told local people: ‘I can’t stand here and ask for your vote.’

Ms Davidson is standing as Labour’s candidate in East Renfrewshire, the constituency with the highest proportion of Jewish voters in Scotland.

At a hustings debate organised by the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council on Wednesday she said she was ’embarrassed by the way Labour is handling antisemitism’.

She added: ‘I’m not here asking for your vote, so you’ll say “why are you here as a Labour candidate?”

‘I want to reassure you as a community that there are still people within the Labour party who are not willing to surrender the party, that was once the strongest ally of the Jewish Community, to racists and conspiracy theorists.

‘I can’t defend the indefensible. What I can do is tell you who I am and what I stand for.’

Ms Davidson said she was appearing at the event not to campaign for votes but to ‘reassure’ people that ‘I [am] on your side’.

According to PoliticsHome, she said: ‘The Labour Party has to just stop saying “it’s dealing with anti-Semitism”. It needs to actually do it.’

Tory-held East Renfrewshire was a Labour seat from 1997 until 2015 and is now a Conservative-SNP marginal.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was criticised for failing to apologise over anti-Semitism during a BBC interview with Andrew Neil on Tuesday night.

The interview came after Britain’s chief rabbi accused him of being unfit to be prime minister for failing to tackle the ‘poison’.

Yesterday Mr Corbyn said his party had already apologised over anti-Semitism, telling a press conference: ‘I have made very clear antisemitism is completely wrong in our society and our party did make it clear when I was elected leader and after that, that antisemitism is unacceptable in any form in our party or our society and did indeed offer its sympathies and apologies to those who had suffered.’