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Was Shami Chakrabarti offered a Labour peerage before conducting antisemitism inquiry?

In an interview with a Jewish YouTube channel, Ms Chakrabarti said: “I don’t think I want to talk about my future ambitions at this point.”

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Shami Chakrabarti has refused to deny that Jeremy Corbyn offered her a peerage after she led Labour’s inquiry into antisemitism.

Interviewed by a Jewish YouTube channel, Ms Chakrabarti was asked whether she had been offered a seat in the House of Lords.

She responded by saying: “I don’t think I want to talk about my future ambitions at this point.”

Pushed on the matter by Alan Mendoza, she added: “You can ask the question, and I’m going to evade it at this point.”

Mr Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, was conducting the interview for the JTV channel.

Mr Corbyn’s office has reportedly responded to Ms Chakrabarti’s comments by saying: "We don't comment on Labour nominations to public bodies or political appointments."

During the interview Ms Chakrabarti also confirmed that she had taken evidence from Mr Corbyn as part of her inquiry. “I asked him about why he had described certain people as his ‘friends’, and why he had shared a platform and greeted members of certain groups as his friends,” she said.

“The leader of the Labour party went to the Home Affairs Select Committee and gave evidence that was akin to the evidence that he gave to me, which is that he would not call these people his friends today, he regretted having used that language, it was an attempt to be inclusive at the time of a difficult meeting.”

Ms Chakrabarti told Mr Mendoza that she had not mentioned Mr Corbyn by name in her report, published last month, because she was “staying off individuals” and was “not adjudicating on Mr Corbyn or his leadership or any other individual within the party.

“I felt that it was for him to make those statements publicly for other people to judge.”

When asked by the JC earlier this month if she would seek to be a Labour candidate in the future, Ms Chakrabarti was unwilling to either confirm or deny the possibility.

"When I left Liberty I was going to have this quiet gap year. I don't go looking for trouble - trouble finds me. So I don't know. I want to write another book, I want to do some teaching, so we will see."

She has been repeatedly criticised for signing up to become a Labour member on the day she was appointed by Mr Corbyn to head the independent inquiry.

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