London’s Newham council has been plunged into chaos after accusations of an “endemic culture” of anti-Jewish racism in the council’s Labour grouping. Yesterday the group’s chairman, Mushtaq Mughal, was placed under investigation by the Labour Party for a series of social media posts, including sharing a video promoting a group calling for the dismantling of Israel. Despite the investigation, Mughal has not been suspended by Labour, despite calls from Labour Against Antisemitism to do so:

“Councillor Mughal appears to have promoted a series of antisemitic posts via his Facebook account. It is therefore astonishing that presented with this evidence the Labour Party have failed to suspend Cllr Mughal while their investigations take place.”

Newham’s deputy chairman hasn’t seen such lenience from the party, as he was suspended last week for also posting anti-Israel posts on Facebook, including the infamous “Relocate Israel into United States” meme once shared by Naz Shah that saw her quit her post.

The saga doesn’t end there; Newham’s Labour mayor has been slammed by Newham’s only Jewish councillor Joshua Garfield since she came to office in 2018 for her handling of allegations of antisemitism. A report commissioned by the mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, is said to have “absolutely horrified” those who heard about its contents, as it accused “senior members” of the Labour group of an “attempt to hide the ugly stain of antisemitism”. According to the report, antisemitic material had been published routinely on the Newham Labour Facebook Group page “since at least the beginning of 2018″. The administrator of the group? The mayor’s then-deputy John Gray who stepped down at the end of last year…