After the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, local Labour party meetings became the source of major headaches for the party leadership.
While they were spaces for people to share their difficulties navigating rising levels of Islamophobic and antisemitic abuse, it was also where people expressed frustration at Keir Starmer’s handling of Labour’s position on the Israel-Gaza conflict.
After hundreds of councillors left en masse and eight frontbenchers resigned their positions in order to back an immediate ceasefire in November, the party has tried to restore relations with disgruntled Muslim voters.
But since Saturday, one particular meeting in north-west England has been the source of further frustration, resulting in the suspension of two parliamentary candidates: the Rochdale byelection candidate Azhar Ali and the former MP and Hyndburn candidate Graham Jones.
Senior Labour figures believe Ali made “deeply offensive” remarks at a meeting in Hyndburn organised by a councillor soon after 7 October, while speaking to others councillors on the brink of quitting the party.
The party officials have said Ali was trying to convince the Labour councillors to stay in the party, using what shadow cabinet members called “conspiracy theories” about Israel, in an effort to placate them as he “understood their perspective”.
Another senior Labour source said: “We all thought it was totally out of character for him. It’s the only way this all made sense, he wanted to bridge that gap.”
Party officials rushed to Ali’s defence, noting his good public record of being an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism, and his “swift and wholesome apology”.
The meeting in which Ali claimed Israel had allowed Hamas to inflict its October attack was also attended by Jones. Labour figures are understood to believe a Labour councillor leaked the recording to the Mail newspapers.
In a recording leaked to the Mail on Sunday, Ali was heard saying: “The Egyptians are saying that they warned Israel 10 days earlier … Americans warned them a day before [that] … there’s something happening. They deliberately took the security off, they allowed … that massacre that gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want.”
But after 36 hours, and more leaked recordings from the Daily Mail, his position as a Labour candidate became untenable. In another recording, Ali said “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” were “giving crap” about the MP Andy McDonald, who was suspended by Labour after he used the controversial phrase “between the river and the sea” in a speech during a rally.
The paper said Ali had claimed that Israel planned to “get rid of [Palestinians] from Gaza” and “grab” some of the land.
Now another leaked recording, published by the rightwing political news website Guido Fawkes, allegedly has Jones telling the group: “Fucking Israel again.”
Jones was allegedly recorded saying: “Unless there is a military alliance between us and that particular country, Nato or whatever, or an individual one, no British person should be fighting for any other country.”
It has raised questions over Labour’s culture, if no one raised concerns over the clip when they were apparently made – long before Ali was selected in January as the candidate for Rochdale. There are also concerns over whether members of all ranking have confidence in using the party’s complaints system.
