Labour suspends parliamentary candidate Graham Jones over 'unacceptable' Israel comments
Feb 13, 2024
The Labour Party has suspended one of its election candidates who allegedly referred to "f***ing Israel" at a meeting of activists, Sky News understands.
Graham Jones has been administratively suspended from the party pending investigation and was called in for an interview this evening after his comments were revealed by the website Guido Fawkes.
Let's get more now on the second Labour candidate in trouble over
anti-Semitism. John Craig joins me from Westminster. It seems, John,
that Labour is acting a lot more quickly this time. Exactly. After
the criticism of Sir Keir and the Labour High Command taking 48 hours
to act on Aza Ali, within minutes of our reporting the allegations
against Graham Jones, former MP for Heidburn, the Heidenburn in
Lancashire, Sky News understands that he has been what they call
administratively suspended from the Labour Party pending an
investigation. Now, he's a parliamentary candidate. He's been
readopted for his old seat, which he hopes to fight at the general
election. The Tories won it with a majority of under 3,000, so they
would hope to get it back. Apparently there's a process that
has to be gone through formally to remove a candidacy. But he has
been called in for an interview this evening. Obviously, normally
when it's an MP, it would be the chief whip, but he's not an MP at
the moment. Ironically, he is a former whip, one of the enforcers
in the parliamentary Labour Party. But this time, Labour are acting
very swiftly. He is being administratively suspended. There's
going to be an investigation. We have, of course, contacted Mr
Jones. I know him quite well, so if you're watching Graham, please
get in touch with Sky News. Let's hear your side of the story. But
we understand that he's been administratively suspended for
pending an investigation, and he's been called in for a meeting
with party chiefs this evening.