Sir Keir Starmer was tonight forced to suspend another Labour parliamentary candidate after they were revealed to have ranted about ‘f****** Israel’.
Ex-MP Graham Jones, who is standing for re-election to his old Hyndburn seat at the general election, has been administratively suspended from Labour pending an investigation.
He is also understood to have been hauled in to see party bosses for an interview this evening, amid calls for him to be junked as Labour’s candidate in the Lancashire constituency.
A recording published by the Guido Fawkes website revealed how Mr Jones referred to ‘f****** Israel’ during a local Labour meeting.
He was also heard claiming that Britons who travelled to the Middle East to fight with the Israel Defence Forces ‘should be locked up’.
It was reported the recording came from the same meeting in Lancashire where Azhar Ali, who was previously Labour’s candidate for this month’s Rochdale by-election, suggested Israel ‘deliberately allowed’ Hamas’s terror attacks on October 7 as a pretext to invade Gaza.
Ex-MP Graham Jones, who is standing for re-election to his old Hyndburn seat at the general election, has been administratively suspended from Labour pending an investigation
Sir Keir Starmer has already been forced to withdraw Labour’s support for Azhar Ali at this month’s by-election
Mr Ali has seen Labour’s backing for his candidacy in the Rochdale contest withdrawn by Sir Keir and he has also been suspended by the party pending an investigation.
The Labour leader’s team only acted after being informed of further allegations by the Daily Mail, with Sir Keir having previously tried to weather the storm by insisting an apology by Mr Ali on Sunday night was enough.
Top Labour figures had initially rallied behind the local councillor – claiming Mr Ali had simply fallen for an ‘online conspiracy theory’ and that it was ‘out of character’ for him to be anti-Semitic.
But it was confirmed on Monday evening that Mr Ali would have Labour’s backing withdrawn.
Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to Wellingborough today, Sir Keir pointed to how ‘further information came to light’ on Monday before action was taken against Mr Ali.
The Labour leader said: ‘Certain information came to light over the weekend in relation to the candidate. There was a fulsome apology.
‘Further information came to light yesterday calling for decisive action, so I took decisive action.
‘It is a huge thing to withdraw support for a Labour candidate during the course of a by-election.
‘It’s a tough decision, a necessary decision, but when I say the Labour Party has changed under my leadership I mean it.’
Sir Keir denied that factionalism played a role in Labour’s initial attempt to stand by Mr Ali as their by-election candidate in Rochdale, saying it makes ‘no difference to me where somebody stands in the Labour Party’.
The deadline to remove Mr Ali from the ballot paper in Rochdale has passed, leading to the highly unusual situation where Labour cannot replace him as the party’s by-election candidate.
He will remain on the ballot paper as a Labour candidate, but if he wins, he would sit in the House of Commons as an independent MP without the party’s whip.
Mr Jones was first elected MP for Hyndburn at the 2010 general election, but lost his seat to the Tories in 2019 as Labour saw vast swathes of its ‘Red Wall’ turn blue.
In March last year, the 57-year-old was selected to be Labour’s candidate in the Lancashire constituency again at the upcoming general election.