Margaret Hodge: Ed Miliband ‘refused to get involved’ in Labour antisemitism fight

Baroness Hodge has revealed that she spoiled her general election ballot in 2019 when she was living in Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency, writing “antisemite” all over the ballot paper rather than casting a vote for the then Labour leader – and saying that Ed Miliband “refused to get involved” in the fight against antisemitism in the party.

In her memoir, Battleaxe, which was published today, the veteran Labour Parliamentarian, who served as MP for Barking from 1994-2024, and as leader of Islington Council from 1982-1992, devotes a chapter to describing what she calls “fighting for the soul of the Labour party”.

She described how she had originally rejected the idea that Corbyn was antisemitic, but that “the evidence about Jeremy Corbyn’s own attitude to Jews continued to mount up, citing Corbyn’s defence of an antisemitic mural, his presence at a wreath laying ceremony for Palestinians involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics terror attack, his reluctance to accept the full IHRA definition of antisemitism and his comments about two British Jews, in which he said: “having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.”

She eventually formed a group together with three other Jewish female MPs, all of whom were facing reams of antisemitic and misogynistic abuse – Luciana Berger, Ruth Smeeth and Louise Ellman. In her recounting, other Jewish MPs, were less keen to combat the Jew hate within the party.

“Battling against antisemitism in my party was grim”, she writes.

“Week after week, Jewish friends, colleagues and acquaintances were telling me they were abandoning the party. I felt that I was banging my head against a brick wall, because I simply could not get the leadership to engage. I remember shouting at Ed Miliband as we were both getting into a lift in Portcullis House, admonishing him for refusing to engage with the issue. ‘You’re one of the few people who could get him to change his approach,’ I told him, but this son of immigrant Jews fleeing from Nazism refused to get involved.

“I remember angrily telling another Jewish male MP, Fabian Hamilton, that he should not be giving Corbyn credibility by serving in his shadow government –  to which his lame reply was that Corbyn was the only Labour leader who had ever offered him a job.”

The memoir also describes the battle against the far right British National party, who won local council seats in Barking in the 2000s, and against Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, who stood as a candidate in Barking at the 2010 general election.

“I went from polling station to polling station, thanking constituents for coming out to vote”, she writes.

“At one polling station a BNP activist yelled at me to: ‘Go back to Germany.’ ‘I can’t do that,’ I shouted back. ‘They killed all my relatives.’

Baroness Hodge also describes a notorious incident in which she told Jeremy Corbyn to his face that she thought he was an antisemite – although she says that she did not swear at him, as has sometimes been reported.

“I remember standing outside the Chamber behind the Speaker’s chair chatting with two young men, both Labour MPs, both deeply hostile to Corbyn, and one of whom was deeply involved in the fight against antisemitism in the party”, she wrote.

“I’d spent the day caught up with other things and was eager to know what had happened at the NEC meeting. They told me that we had lost the argument and the vote. The party’s ruling body had decided to pursue Jeremy Corbyn’s definition of antisemitism. I was furious. ‘I’m going to tell him to his face what I think of him,’ I told them. ‘He’s a fucking antisemitic racist.’ ‘Go on Margaret,’ they urged. ‘You go and tell him. Go on, get in there.’”

The MP went on to write that “Corbyn was sitting on the front bench in the Chamber and a confrontation in full view of everybody in the Chamber would have been foolish. ‘I’m going to wait,’ I said. ‘I’m going to wait until he comes out of the Chamber and then I’m going to tackle him.’ So I did. I waited and told myself that I mustn’t swear when I spoke to him as that would weaken the impact of my words. By the time I confronted Corbyn the two young MPs had disappeared. When Corbyn emerged, I approached him and said I wanted to talk. We spoke just outside the Chamber, with a few people milling around. I said that I thought he was an antisemitic racist. I said that he was creating a hostile environment for Jews in the Labour Party.

“In the passive- aggressive manner I’d come to recognise, he urged me to look at one of the recommendations on one of the pages of the report on the IHRA definition that had been considered by the NEC that afternoon. I retorted that it was his actions, not his words, that had convinced me he was an antisemitic racist. After a few minutes we parted.”

She then carried on with her day, and went to see a play that evening, switching off her phone during the performance. When she turned it on again, “There were tons of messages from every media outlet and every journalist asking me to confirm that I’d confronted Corbyn and called him ‘a fucking antisemitic racist’. It seems that one of the two young male MPs with whom I’d been chatting had tipped off a journalist, despite not having witnessed what had actually unfolded outside the Chamber. In the eye of the storm, the best I could do was put out a statement telling the truth and denying that I had sworn at Jeremy Corbyn.”

The party subsequently threatened to expel her, a threat which was dropped when Hodge availed herself of one of a number of offers for pro bono legal representation made to her in the aftermath.

The memoir describes the decision whether to stay or leave Labour during that period as “hugely difficult for all of us…the burning question for us all was could we stand under the Corbyn banner at the next general election, knowing that if Labour won, Jeremy Corbyn would become prime minister. As a member of the Labour Party for over fifty years, I was not prepared to surrender my party to the extreme left, and I believed it was worth one more attempt to defeat Corbyn and Corbynism…I had my own red lines. I promised myself that should the unthinkable become a reality –  if Corbyn won the general election –  I would use my position as an MP to do everything I could to stop him becoming prime minister, whether that meant voting against him in a motion of no confidence, or voting down his first budget. There were a few other MPs who indicated that they would act alongside me.”

Baroness Hodge described election day 2019 as “gruesome”. While she was then the MP for Barking, she had moved from her family home and bought a smaller house next to her daughter in Finsbury Park; meaning she was now a voter within Corbyn’s own constituency

“As I walked into the polling station, I still could not make up my mind. Standing with pencil in my hand in the booth I realised that I just couldn’t vote for him, so I spoilt my ballot paper and scrawled ‘Antisemite’ all over it… It was only when the exit poll was revealed at ten that night, that the tension I’d felt all day lifted. The only time in my life that I welcomed bad news for Labour.”

Battleaxe, published by Harper Collins, is out today