Former chairman of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended by the party following his response to a report detailing the party's response to anti-Semitism within its ranks under his leadership.
“In light of his comments made today and his failure to retract them subsequently, the Labour Party has suspended Jeremy Corbyn pending investigation. He has also had the whip removed from the Parliamentary Labour Party,” the party said in a statement.
Following the publication of the report, Corbyn claimed that the number of complaints of anti-Semitism within the party during his tenure was "dramatically overstated" and that he was "not part of the problem."
The report was compiled by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. and found found numerous cases where the party leadership under Corbyn underplayed, belittled or ignored complaints by Jewish members, and sometimes actively interfered to support political allies.
"Our investigation has highlighted multiple areas where (Labour's) approach and leadership to tackling anti-Semitism was insufficient," the commission's interim chair, Caroline Waters, said in presenting the 129-page report.
"This is inexcusable and appeared to be a result of a lack of willingness to tackle anti-Semitism rather than an inability to do so," she said.
The commission said that under Corbyn, Labour was guilty of three breaches of Britain's 2010 Equality Act for political interference in complaints, failure to provide adequate training to those handling anti-Semitism cases and harassment of complainants.
Current party leader Sir Keir Starmer said in his reaction to the report: "And if - after all the pain, all the grief, and all the evidence in this report, there are still those who think there's no problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party. That it's all exaggerated, or a factional attack."
"Then, frankly, you are part of the problem too. And you should be nowhere near the Labour Party either."