Top journalist and comedian quit Labour Party

Comedian Hal Cruttenden and journalist Jane Merrick have quit the Labour Party over its attitude towards anti-Semitism.

Cruttenden, who has appeared on Mock the Week and Have I Got News for You, took to Twitter on Thursday, posting a picture of his membership card cut up into small strips and stating: “Sad to be leaving the Labour Party. Can’t really look Jewish friends in the eye and stay any more.”

Meanwhile, political writer Merrick penned a heartfelt piece for The Times, recalling her long allegiance to the party.

However, she notes: “I cannot support a party which does not accept the internationally recognised definition of anti-Semitism, which allows — by omission from this international definition — a member to call a Jewish person a Nazi, or to accuse a Jewish person of being more loyal to Israel than to their home country, or to claim that Israel’s very existence is a racist endeavour.

“Given what has happened to Labour this week, I cannot wait any longer. It is not enough to do nothing. So I am leaving the party and will not vote Labour until a new leader arrives and undoes the damage Corbyn has inflicted.”

She adds: “By remaining a member of Corbyn’s Labour Party, I would be tolerating antisemitism. I would be watching, impotently, a once proudly anti-racist party be tarnished by those senior officials whose hatred of Israel would, under the IHRA definition, make them anti-Semitic and, therefore, thrown out of the party if that definition were adopted.”