Azhar Ali, the former Labour candidate for the upcoming Rochdale by election, has been secretly recorded repeating one of the nastiest antisemitic attacks.
That the Jewish people contrived their own victimhood as a means of manipulation.
He apologised later saying his remarks were deeply offensive, ignorant and false.
The Labour Party initially stood by and defended the candidate, but yesterday evening the Mail produced an expanded recording which revealed him to be regurgitating yet another antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Jacob Rees-Mogg discussed Azhar Ali's comments
GB NEWS
He blamed ‘people in the media from certain Jewish quarters’ for the suspension of Labour MP Andy McDonald.
This fuller recording is the ostensible excuse for the party to withdraw its support for him.
Labour candidate for Rochdale, Azhar Ali, has apologisedGETTYBut because the deadline has passed, it is too late to nominate another candidate, so Ali's name will remain on the ballot paper, with the Labour Party's symbol accompanying it.
Earlier this evening, the Labour Party also suspended parliamentary candidate for Hyndburn for allegedly making comments at the same meeting which included vulgar expletives about Israel and suggesting that Britons who fight for the Israeli Defence Force ought to be locked up.
These developments seem to me to reveal something far broader than the character of Azhar Ali or Graham Jones. As Charles Moore has pointed out in today's Telegraph, Ali actually has a long standing record of opposition to Islamist extremism.
This explains why the Jewish former MP Louise Ellman initially stood by him when his comments were first revealed, considering the fact that he was in the past known for opposing Islamic extremism and defending Jewish people against antisemitism.
The fact that he was willing to make these remarks, these ones have been recorded and revealed to us, tell us something about the politics of Rochdale, surely, and perhaps more broadly about Labour's base in certain parts of the country.
Charles Moore puts it as always, elegantly.
“The fact he said what he did is not proof that Ali has joined the lunatic fringe. It is unfortunately evidence that in Rochdale Labour politics it is not a fringe at all.
“By speaking as he did, he must have seen those antisemitic elements as powerful and wanted to advance his candidacy by placating them.”
What does this say about the state of multicultural Britain? And antisemitism is considered an asset in a political candidate.
