By Tony O'Riley-
A senior Labour peer has been fired as shadow Brexit minister for saying Jeremy Corbyn was leading the party with a “bunker mentality”.
Baroness Hayter described Mr Corbyn’s team’s refusal to acknowledge criticism such as of the party’s handling of allegations of anti-Semitism – was similar to the “last days of Hitler”. On Wednesday, 67 of Baroness Hayter’s fellow Labour peers took out a newspaper advert accusing Mr Corbyn of “failing the test of leadership” over the issue of anti-semitism in the party.
Those around Corbyn had a “bunker mentality”, she said, accusing them of refusing to give key information to the party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) as well as the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Hayter remains the party’s deputy leader in the Lords on the strength of her election, and made the remarks at a meeting of Labour First – a centre-left group of MPs and activists on Tuesday.
A Labour spokesman said Baroness Hayter’s comparison of Mr Corbyn’s team with the Nazi regime was “truly contemptible, and grossly insensitive to Jewish staff in particular”. The comments were as bunkers as the bunker mentality she was protesting against. One would have expected more from her Her sacking was the latest development in Labour’s long-running dispute over anti-semitism, which has led to MPs and peers quitting the party.
Baroness Hayter was one of four peers who wrote to Mr Corbyn to call for an investigation into claims aired in a BBC Panorama programme that senior figures in the party interfered with the disciplinary process of anti semtism.