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Tony Blair to speak at Board of Deputies dinner in November
Former PM who has been a critic of current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, will address the community representative body's annual get-together later this year
Tony Blair is to be the keynote speaker at this year’s Board of Deputies’ dinner in November, the Jewish representative body has announced.
The former Labour prime minister has shared his increasing bewilderment and disbelief at the antisemitism crisis that has rocked his party, and last week refused to confirm that he would vote for Labour in the next election.
Last month, he told an audience at Bar-Ilan University that the crisis “could imperil the Labour Party, and it should, it it’s not rooted out and defeated”.
Blair, who has now visited Israel more than 200 times, stepped back from calling the Labour Party “institutionally antisemitic” and told the audience that the key battle for this generation was to reclaim the word ‘Zionism’.
Last year Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was the keynote speaker at the Board’s annual dinner, and in 2017 the Board hosted Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who this week said she would seek to block a no-deal exit from the European Union.
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