Joan Ryan becomes eighth MP to leave Labour

Joan Ryan became the eighth Labour MP to quit the Party on Tuesday night - claiming Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party has "become infected with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism."

In a letter written to the Labour leader, Ms Ryan, who is chair of the Labour Friends of Israel group, said she was "forced" to resign from the Party she joined 25 years ago because the "values that led me to join" are now the "same values that have led me to leave it today."

In a lengthy letter she said the "huge shame" of antisemitism simply did not exist in the party before his election as leader. "No previous Labour leader would have allowed this huge shame to befall the party."

She added that Mr Corbyn was“presiding over a culture of antisemitism and hatred of Israel”.

In damning indictment of Mr Corbyn's failure to deal with Jew-hate, Ms Ryan added that Mr Corbyn's "mindset, ideology and worldview that tolerates antisemitism poses a threat to the British public, Jew and non-Jew alike."

She said Labour would "ostracise" Israel, the "Middle-East's only democracy in favour of the Ayatollahs in Tehran.

The MP, who is not herself Jewish, said over the past year she had visited synagogues and spoken to the community on doorsteps to hear only "bewilderment, fear and anger."

Referencing the struggle last summer to get the party to adopt the IHRA definition in full, Ms Ryan said Mr Corbyn had "one priority - to preserve the right of antisemities to call Israel 'a racist endeavour'."