Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Inquiry chair Shami Chakrabarti arrive to deliver anti-Semitism inquiry findings, June 2016.Jonathan Brady/Press Association. All rights reserved.As I write Jackie Walker’s fate is once again uncertain, so the question matters.
Like all great mysteries, the defenestration of Jackie Walker from the Vice-Chair-ship of Momentum, and her renewed suspension from the Labour Party, has quite a back story. Where to begin? In 1954 when she was born? On May 14, 1948, Israel’s birth date? On 12 September 2016, when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party? In 1920 when the organisation Poale Zion affiliated to the UK Labour Party, or in 2004 when it was re-launched as the Jewish Labour Movement? Or (as with most public accounts of the events causing Jackie Walker’s latest ‘offence’) at 11.30am on Monday September 26, ending one hour later when the training session on antisemitism at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Liverpool limped to a halt.
I think that we can do better than that.
