Corbyn antisemitism storm grows as MP reports him to parliamentary watchdog
Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn was reportedly the subject of a complaint to the parliamentary watchdog last night relating to comments from 2013 where he accused British Zionists of not understanding "English irony".
Conservative MP Helen Grant wrote to Kathryn Stone, parliamentary commissioner for standards, asking for Corbyn to be investigated over the comments.
Read more: Labour antisemitism row escalates over Corbyn 'English irony' video
Speaking in 2013 Corbyn said: "[British Zionists] clearly have two problems. One is they don't want to study history and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don't understand English irony either."
His remarks have drawn support from the far right with endorsements from former British National Party leader Nick Griffin and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke.
Griffin tweeted: “Go Jezza! I wonder how many Labour activists the hysterical #Zionist media campaign against #Corbyn is re-pilling?[sic]”
Red pilling is a reference science fiction film the Matrix and is used in far right circles to refer to someone seeing the harsh truth of reality rather than the world as society wants them to see it.
Read more: Jeremy Corbyn's approval ratings reach lowest level in a year
Last night Corbyn issued a statement saying: “In 2013 I defended the Palestinian ambassador in the face of what I thought were deliberate misrepresentations by people for whom English was a first language, when it isn’t for the ambassador.
"I described those pro-Israel activists as Zionists, in the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people – and that is made clear in the rest of my speech that day.
"I am now more careful with how I might use the term 'Zionist' because a once-self identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by antisemites as code for Jews."