It started with a Facebook post, made by a little-known politician nine months before even she became an MP, and ended with Labour being plunged into a damaging public row about antisemitism 48 hours after the posting resurfaced on a rightwing gossip blog.
On Tuesday morning the Guido Fawkes website reported that Naz Shah, the first-term Bradford MP, had made a series of offensive social media postings. One showed a picture of Israel superimposed over the US, with the comment: “Problem solved and save you bank charges for the £3bn you transfer yearly.”
As a similar Facebook post emerged, Shah apologised and then resigned as parliamentary private secretary to the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell. But yet more comments were unearthed: in one, Shah appeared to liken the actions of Israel to those of the Nazis. The row appeared on the front pages of two newspapers on Wednesday.
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) April 26, 2016
Wednesday's Daily Mail front page:
Labour MP's anti-Semitic outbursts on Facebook#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers pic.twitter.com/VWElX7TGt6
Pressure mounted on Corbyn to suspend the Labour whip from Shah, with several MPs demanding he do so.
The row escalated as the Guido Fawkes website then reported Shah had employed a Labour councillor, Mohammed Shabbir, who is also alleged to have made antisemitic remarks, claiming Russian Orthodox Jews were involved in “the sex trafficking trade”.
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) April 26, 2016.@mikefreermp: "She is another example of the poison coursing through Labour. She should have the whip withdrawn" https://t.co/M65v40JW0o
On Wednesday morning, Corbyn called Shah’s remarks offensive and said she had apologised for “historic” posts, and it briefly appeared the matter would rest there. But soon afterwards Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy and climate change secretary, told the BBC’s Daily Politics that she believed Shah should be suspended.
Shah then said sorry directly, writing a piece for the Jewish News website in which she said she wanted to make “an unequivocal apology for statements and ideas that I have foolishly endorsed in the past”.
— Naz Shah MP (@NazShahBfd) April 27, 2016My apology to the Jewish community: https://t.co/Klx71FtmZ5 @JewishNewsUK
She added: “With the understanding of the issues I have now I would never have posted them. I have to own up to the fact that ignorance is not a defence.
“The language I used was wrong. It is hurtful. What’s important is the impact these posts have had on other people. I understand that referring to Israel and Hitler as I did is deeply offensive to Jewish people, for which I apologise.”
At prime minister’s questions, David Cameron went on the offensive, claiming that it was “quite extraordinary” Shah still had the Labour whip. The MP herself then stood in the chamber to apologise again.
— John Pienaar (@JPonpolitics) April 27, 2016Naz Shah will be suspended shortly, I understand
But less than two hours later, Labour announced that she had been suspended while the party’s national executive committee investigated the claims against her.
If Corbyn hoped this would damp the row, they were hopes short-lived when Ken Livingstone took to the airwaves on Thursday morning. Just before 9am, when Livingstone was being interviewed on BBC radio by Vanessa Feltz, he began to defend Shah.
The former mayor of London said he had been a Labour member for 47 years and had “never heard anyone say anything antisemitic”. He launched into a puzzling – and factually incorrect – explanation of how Adolf Hitler supported Zionism before he “went mad”, and arguing that Corbyn’s party was being deliberately labelled antisemitic as a “smear” by the “Israeli lobby”.
Soon, Sadiq Khan, himself a mayoral hopeful, called the comments “appalling and inexcusable”. A succession of increasingly prominent Labour MPs called for Livingstone to be suspended.
— Sadiq Khan MP (@SadiqKhan) April 28, 2016Ken Livingstone's comments are appalling and inexcusable. There must be no place for this in our Party.
A bitter public row became more toxic still as the Labour MP John Mann pursued Livingstone en route an interview, calling him, in front of waiting cameras, a “disgusting Nazi apologist”. Their row was broadcast near-live on social media as Livingstone ascended the stairs to his next BBC appearance.
The pair squared up again on camera soon afterwards on BBC2’s Daily Politics show. Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader, also appeared on the show, telling Livingstone: “I never ever thought I would see the day that mainstream, well-known politicians like you would start raking over Hitler’s views in a way that people would simply not understand.”
— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) April 28, 2016
Watch this. Extraordinary. John Mann MP: You're a disgusting Nazi apologist, Livingstone'. pic.twitter.com/1wlbA1BmND
If this was not pressure enough on the Labour leadership, soon afterwards Jon Lansman, a long-term ally of Corbyn and the founder of the Momentum movement, tweeted to say it was time for Livingstone to leave politics.
While on a visit to Hull, Corbyn announced the suspension of Livingstone, saying he was “not tolerating antisemitism in any form whatsoever in our party”. The former mayor of London had, in the meantime, taken brief refuge from the gathering press in a disabled toilet.
— Jon Lansman (@jonlansman) April 28, 2016A period of silence from Ken Livingstone is overdue, especially on antisemitism racism & Zionism. It’s time he left politics altogether
— Anushka Asthana (@GuardianAnushka) April 28, 2016Corbyn on Livingstone. "He has been suspended from the party. We are not tolerating anti-Semitism in any form whatsoever in our party."
Mann was called to the whips’ office and reprimanded for engaging in his row in public and on television. But several took to social media on Thursday evening to defend Mann’s fiery intervention in the deepening row.
Corbyn then told the BBC: “It’s not a crisis, there’s no crisis” – words immediately likened to “Crisis, what crisis?”, the phrase James Callaghan never actually said but was attributed to him and seen as contributing to the end of his Labour government in 1979.
— Tom Barton (@tombarton) April 28, 2016
"It's not a crisis, there's no crisis."
Jeremy Corbyn to @JPonpolitics on #Labour #AntiSemitism row pic.twitter.com/qOOqC7AUEV