Labour candidate shares 'anti-Semitic' message

10/12/2019

New anti-Semitism row for Labour after election candidate shares message suggesting BBC presenter Nick Robinson is biased due to his Jewish heritage

Labour candidate shares ‘clearly anti-Semitic’ message about BBC presenter
Jean Anne Mitchell shared message suggesting BBC’s Nick Robinson was biased
The message suggested he was biased against Labour due to his Jewish heritage

The party is under pressure to dump West Dunbartonshire candidate Jean Anne Mitchell for passing on the ‘clearly anti-Semitic’ message about the journalist

A Labour candidate shared a message suggesting BBC presenter Nick Robinson was biased against the party due to his Jewish heritage.

The party is under pressure to dump West Dunbartonshire candidate Jean Anne Mitchell for passing on the ‘clearly anti-Semitic’ message about the journalist.

Ms Mitchell sent the message to a WhatsApp group with other Labour candidates, which claimed Mr Robinson had ‘gone easy’ on Boris Johnson while chairing the BBC’s head-to-head debate with Jeremy Corbyn on Friday night.

The comment, which had been made by an unnamed individual, said: ‘We watched the BBC leadership debate chaired by Nick Robinson.

‘Throughout the debate we felt that Robinson gave Johnson an easy time, allowing him to avoid answering the audience’s questions and instead giving him free reign [sic] to attack Corbyn. We thought he was biased. And then we Googled him.

‘His mother was born in Shanghai, where her German-Jewish parents fled during the 1930s. That makes him Jewish.’

The message, which Ms Mitchell shared with the group, also highlighted the senior journalist’s involvement with the Young Conservatives before he began working in the media.

The Labour candidate added: ‘Above message from my friends in London!’

Mr Robinson, whose grandparents fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s, has previously described himself as a ‘Jew by birth’ but is ‘now an agnostic’.

A spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives said: ‘This message is utterly inappropriate and clearly anti-Semitic. Labour should remove its support for her candidacy.’

Ms Mitchell denied she was anti-Semitic and claimed she had not read the message properly.

‘I’ve got so many Jewish friends and I would never, ever, ever to do anything that was in any way anti-Semitic,’ she told the Daily Record.

‘I did not read that message properly. I was tired, I had been out campaigning all day. I came in, I sat down, I watched the debate, I came in and I shared that with the group because it was to do with the programme.

‘I am really, really troubled that someone in a candidate group has actually let that be shared outwith the group. That is really pretty alarming.’

A Labour candidate shared a message suggesting BBC presenter Nick Robinson (pictured above) was biased against the party due to his Jewish heritage. Ms Mitchell denied she was anti-Semitic and claimed she had not read the message properly

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