LABOUR were struggling to keep control of their election campaign yesterday following yet more revelations about their candidates for the December 12 vote.
Yesterday we told how the party had been forced to ditch two of their Scottish hopefuls.
Frances Hoole in Edinburgh South West was told to stand down following a row over a threatening tweet sent to Joanna Cherry.
While in Gordon the party had to ditch Kate Ramsden after the Jewish Chronicle uncovered a blog post she had written likening Israel to “an abused child who becomes an abusive adult”.
The situation wasn’t much better in England.
Gideon Bull, the Labour party candidate for Clacton, was forced to withdraw from the race following a complaint that he used anti-Semitic language.
A Jewish Labour councillor complained about Bull (pictured below) after he referred to the Shakespeare’s Jewish moneylender Shylock at a meeting in July.
Though he denies he meant to insult or stereotype, he has apologised for making the remark.
Shylock, best known for taking a pound of flesh from his debtors, features in the Merchant of Venice, and is widely seen as an anti-Semitic caricature.
Bull said: “I’m standing down because I don’t want anything to deflect from the fact that Clacton has had years of neglect under the Tories. It was an honest mistake. The fact that there was a Jewish councillor in the room had no bearing on me saying it.”
The Jewish politician, Dame Margaret Hodge, who served as a Labour MP for 25 years, yesterday refused to say if she would prefer Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson in Number 10.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme who she would prefer, Hodge replied: “I want a Labour government.”
Pressed on the issue, she said: “I think any government is more than any individual. And I want a Labour government. And I think that was as true of the past as it is of the present.”
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