Tracy-Ann Oberman vows to rejoin Labour, praises Starmer for Long Bailey sacking

Actress Tracy-Ann Oberman suggested a return to the Labour Party as she praised Keir Starmer’s decision to remove the MP Rebecca Long Bailey from the shadow cabinet.

The stage and TV actress, perhaps best known for playing Chrissie Watts in the BBC soap East Enders, has been a vocal critic of the Labour Party’s handling of alleged antisemitism.

Oberman, who quit the party in 2017, revealed on Thursday her intention to return to her former political home, now led by Keir Starmer.

“And now I will rejoin @UKLabour finally a leader who is doing something about this oldest of hatreds thank you @Keir_Starmer. It’s a safe place,” she wrote on Twitter.

Her tweet was an apparent reaction to the leader’s earlier decision to sack Long Bailey as shadow education secretary after the MP faced criticism for sharing an article in which the actress Maxine Peake appeared to link George Floyd’s killing to claims U.S. police had learned tactics from Israeli forces.

The interview, published in the Independent, contained an “antisemitic conspiracy theory”, according to a spokesperson for the Labour leader.

In it, Peake alleged “tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”

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But a correction was added to the interview, informing the reader the piece was amended to “further clarify that the allegation that US police were taught tactics of ‘neck kneeling’ by Israeli secret services is unfounded.”

Peake later said she had been “inaccurate in my assumption of American Police training & its sources.” She said: “I find racism & antisemitism abhorrent & I in no way wished, nor intended, to add fodder to any views of the contrary.”