Jeremy Corbyn’s personal anti-Semitism storm is thickening with Corbyn now being sued by Richard Millett over comments he made on the Andrew Marr Show. The programme contained the following allegedly defamatory words spoken by Corbyn in his 2013 speech to the Palestinian Return Centre:

The other evening we had a meeting in Parliament in which Manuel made an incredibly powerful and passionate and effective speech about the history of Palestine, the rights of the Palestinian people. This was dutifully recorded by the – thankfully silent – Zionists who were in the audience on that occasion and then came up and berated him afterwards for what he’d said. They clearly have two problems: one is they don’t want to study history; and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.

Corbyn’s response to a question by Andrew Marr also forms part of the claim:

Well, I was at a meeting in the House of Commons and the two people I referred to had been incredibly disruptive, indeed the police wanted to throw them out of the meeting, I didn’t, I said they should remain in the meeting, they’d been disruptive of a number of meetings. At the later meeting when Manuel spoke they were quiet but they came up and were really, really strong on him afterwards and he was quite upset by it. I know Manuel Hassassian quite well and I was speaking in his defence. Manuel of course is the Palestinian Ambassador to this country.

Jeremy Corbyn’s 2013 tone deaf comment that ‘Zionists’ have ‘no sense of English irony despite having lived here all their lives’ caused a lot of offence. The re-broadcasting of the words last year meant that it became actionable. Guido is wary of people suing politicians over things they have said, it is however a measure of Corbyn’s fall-out with the Jewish community that this is happening…