Really disappointed by this in @LabourList this morning. Bound to be an infinite amount of op-eds on the legacy of Jeremy Corbyn from across the Labour movement. Lots of JC supporters will of course minimise or ignore election defeats & antisemitism to defend his legacy 1/12 https://twitter.com/LabourList/status/1246013892439900160

But I would hope that an overview piece on a Labour news site that tries to maintain broad spectrum of support would do better. Labour lost 2 General Elections (inc biggest defeat since 1935), lost cllrs in 3 out of 4 years, lost Euro elections. You can't just blame Brexit. 2/12

The paragraph that angered me the most was on antisemitism. Nothing on the hurt caused to Jewish Labour members or the community as a whole. Nothing on Jeremy's personal failures to tackle antisemitism. Nothing on Jewish Labour MPs forced to resign because of it. 3/12

And that's not the worst of it. The piece claims that the leadership's 'highly defensiveness attitude' was due to the leadership election of 2016. How offensive and historically inaccurate is that? Firstly, to suggest that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership can't tackle 4/12

antisemitism is because Labour MPs no longer had confidence in him is 1) frankly laughable 2) a huge damning on the leadership's moral compass. This is to say that Corbyn's factionalism was more important than his anti-racism. 5/12

But this is also completely historically inaccurate. The sacking of Hilary Benn and the resignations in the Shadow Cabinet took place on the 25th June 2016. This article suggests that the Labour leadership responded well to antisemitism before this. Well let's have a look: 6/12

Jeremy Corbyn became leader having: defended an antisemitic mural, said zionists don't understand English irony, wrote a foreward to an openly antisemitic book, promoted conspiracy theories about Israel, invited a blood libel supporter for tea, met with Holocaust deniers 7/12

Invoked Holocaust revisionism, questioned Israel's right to exist, wanted to change the name of Holocaust Memorial Day, called antisemitic terrorist groups 'friends', laid a wreath for terrorists and shared platforms with a number of antisemites. 8/12

And then as leader BEFORE JUNE 2016, the Labour leadership took two days to suspend Naz Shah but not without Corbyn failing to call her posts antisemitic and his team watering down her apology. 9/12

56 Labour members suspended by May 2016 for antisemitism but no-one in the leadership seemed to want to take the issue seriously.

Ken Livingstone's latest Jew-baiting incident saying that Hitler supported Zionism and his continual defence of the comments 10/12

Multiple incidents at Oxford University Labour Club of antisemitic and Jew-baiting behaviour by senior OULC members including the guy who wrote Corbyn's youth manifesto . This led to the Royall and Chakrabarti Reports that were hampered by a leadership that did not care. 11/12

The leadership's 'defensive attitude' on antisemitism was nothing to do with the 2016 Leadership election. It was core to their politics, especially Jeremy Corbyn's & it's offensive, upsetting and disappointing to read it any other way, especially on a site like @LabourList 12/12