Steve Reed, shadow secretary of state for communities and local government, tells the JC that what went on under Corbyn was ‘nothing short of horrific’
November 25, 2020 16:27
One of Sir Keir Starmer’s closest allies on the Labour front bench has said he “would not criticise” those within the Jewish community who cannot forgive those MPs in his party who worked in former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
Steve Reed, the shadow communities and local government secretary, told the JC he recognised what had gone on in Labour under Mr Corbyn and which had now been “laid bare” in the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report. It was “nothing short of horrific and contemptible”, he said.
Asked how he would respond to the view that he could not completely absolve himself given that he served under the ex-leader, Mr Reed said: “I don’t criticise people who take that view.
“I would ask them only this… if all of us had walked out, then the Labour Party would be in the hands of the antisemites now.”
He also spoke of his anger at way in which the release of last month’s EHRC report has been dominated in recent weeks by discussion about Mr Corbyn.
It followed the former leader’s “provocative” and “extraordinary” decision to put out a statement that “contradicted the leader of the Labour Party while he was accepting the very damning findings of the report into antisemitism in the party – under Jeremy’s leadership.”
Mr Reed added: “The victims of all of this are the Jewish community, the Jewish members of the Labour Party. Let’s stop talking about that individual.”
He said the Sir Keir was “absolutely right to refuse Jeremy the whip.”
Asked about what the next course of action should be, Mr Reed said this was “not a decision for me – it has been made crystal clear to Jeremy what he needs to do now.”
He said “any” Labour MP who had “stood up and undermined the leader of the party while he was making a statement as grave and as important as the one he made accepting the EHRC report would have deserved to have been disciplined.”
Mr Reed also confronted what he admitted was his own shame over a tweet he posted in July in which he questioned whether the “billionaire” Richard Desmond was the “puppet master for the entire Tory cabinet”.
The tweet, which referred to allegations of a cash-for-favours scandal between Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick and the former Norwood charity president, led to call from some for Sir Keir to take action against his front bencher.
A Labour spokesperson later said: “Steve deleted the tweet and did not mean to cause any offence.”
He told the JC: “It was a bad mistake. I should not have done it. I was genuinely mortified when I realised what I said - I deleted it within 15 minutes of posting it.
“My heart was in my stomach when I realised how it looked.”
Mr Reed said he hoped his record of support for the community would “show the sincerity of my apology.”
“I genuinely want to reaffirm my commitment to helping stamp out antisemitism in the Labour Party,” he added.
While he said he accepted that some cannot forgive him for his decision not to walk out of the ex-leader’s shadow cabinet, he rejects the charge that he did little to challenge anti-Jewish racism in the party himself.
“I wasn’t just sitting there on the front bench hiding,” he protests. “I guess we all had to work out how we had to deal with this.
“Some people took the decision to leave the party entirely. I never felt the Labour Party was beyond saving.
“I could see this poison that had come in. I wanted to position myself at the forefront of the fight to stamp out antisemitism from this party.
“For some people they saw the abuse that was going on and they had enough and they walked away because they did not want to be associated with it anymore.
“I can 100 per cent understand that.
“Louise Ellman and I are very good friends, we went on a Labour Friends of Israel trip together, we had offices next to each other (in Westminster). She was blamed for everything her local party did not like about Netanyahu.
“I sat down with Ruth [Smeeth] once and saw the messages, so many vitriolic messages. Who can blame the people who walked out in the face of that?
“I didn’t suffer that, I am not Jewish. But I was an ally 100 per cent.”
The 57-year-old parliamentarian traces his commitment to the Jewish community back to his time in Lambeth, where he led the council from 2006 to 2012, having stood as a councillor since 1998.
Having grown up in St Albans and studied English at Sheffield University, it was not until he began his political career in south London that he made what he says are “deep” and lasting friendships with members of the South London Liberal Synagogue in Streatham.
“Being the kind of synagogue it was, you got a lot of left leaning Jewish people who were involved in the Labour Party there for quite a long time,” he recalls. “I formed some deep relationships that I still treasure and value enormously.
“These are people that supported me throughout my entire political journey, from becoming a councillor to deputy leader of the opposition, to leader of the council and onwards.”
He still speaks proudly of his time at the helm of Lambeth Council, where he worked closely with Morgan McSweeney, now Sir Keir’s chief of staff, developing a local authority that he says was focused on how to engage with the diverse communities in the borough, including the Jewish one, in a manner that “respected their faith” and delivered services that were “more respectful to people.”
In 2012, a time when he admits he was considering what he might do next in his career, Mr Reed was offered the opportunity of standing as the Labour parliamentary candidate in the safe seat of Croydon North.
It was a dramatic change from his time in local government, but “a much bigger pond, you could make a difference – but I had to work out how.”
Mr Reed points to the trip he made with a Labour delegation to Israel with the Labour Friends of Israel group in 2013. “I cannot understand why some people choose to delegitimise Israel and its right to exist,” he says, explaining his long-standing commitment to LFI.
“I can’t explain it – I have never had that dilemma. My Jewish friends in Streatham were nearly all opposed to the Netanyahu government, but that did not lead to them or me questioning the legitimacy of Israel.
“The last century, particularly with the Holocaust and rise of Nazism… it is completely understandable why the Jewish people wanted a homeland.
“There are plenty of governments around the world I don’t like, but it would never lead me to question the right of that country to exist.”
In October 2013, Mr Reed was made a shadow minister under the then Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Asked about Mr Miliband’s failure to connect with the community he came from, he says: “I don’t believe it was that he failed to convince the Jewish community – he failed to connect with the entire country.
“I’ve got to know him a lot better more recently and he’s very self-reflective about what happened.
“He failed to shape a vision that the country bought into, partly because it was too tactical. Too many little offers rather than one big offer.”
And then came Mr Corbyn.
Mr Reed said he “saw what was going on” with antisemitism in the party and blamed intruders from far-left parties who joined Labour under Mr Corbyn.
A one long-time colleague of Mr Reed confirms he had a good record in challenging the influence of far-left groups in Lambeth such as the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party.
“I saw, particularly on social media, the awful antisemitc language and imagery,” he said of the antisemitism that grew in Labour under Mr Corbyn.
“I saw some of it among members of my own local party, even though it remained relatively free of what I heard was going on elsewhere.”
But he says he never had any direct conversations with Mr Corbyn on the matter. “I was too low down to speak to the leader,” he says of his junior ministerial positions from 2016 up until the ex-leader’s departure.
Mr Reed is also determined to stress to his “ongoing” work with the Labour Together group, an organisation he founded in 2016, along with the philanthropist Trevor Chinn, Mr McSweeney and the MP John Cruddas on antisemitism in the party.
“The point of Labour Together was to bring people together to combat the extremism, including antisemitism, that we could see out there,” he says.
“I had meetings with representatives of the Community Security Trust to get a better understanding of what their perception was and see it from their point of view.
“We got involved in research to understand how antisemitism was spreading – on social media and Facebook. There is a real problem there.
“We identified that the same way an organisation like ISIS would identify susceptible people and groom them into going in that case over to Syria – how other forms of extremism on the extreme right and on the far-left operate in same way.”
Mr Reed said his work with Labour Together showed his willingness to “take action in the real world trying disable the antisemites – stop them from operating.”
He says he also spoke out as well, sharing a platform with Ruth Smeeth in his Croydon North seat last year as his local party affiliated with the Jewish Labour Movement.
Mr Reed is now viewed as one of theshadow front bench MPs closest to the ideological stance of the new party leader.
Speaking about his shadow communities role, he says he views himself as Sir Keir’s “footsoldier” in the drive to make sure the pledge to “root out the scourge of antisemitism” is enforced.
“Pretty much the first thing I did after being appointed into the role was write to all Labour councils and all Labour groups in opposition and ensured they had adopted the IHRA definition with all its examples,” says Mr Reed. “I met immediately the Board of Deputies and I offered my apology for what had gone on before.
“Subsequently when I have been informed about opposition to IHRA in some councils I have intervened directly.”
He is also reveals how, alongside deputy leader Angela Rayner, he will unveil a new Labour plan to attract more potential election candidates from the Jewish and other ethnic minority communities.
“I want to apply some of lessons I learnt during my days in Lambeth,” he says. “We will be inviting members of the Jewish community and other communities to take part in a programme designed to help them stand for election as local councillors. Hopefully we can create a talent pool for future MPs again.
“The litmus test will be when Jewish members don’t just want to vote Labour again - they want to stand to be elected as Labour candidates again.
“The job that Keir is leading on and I want to support is to stamp out antisemitism in the party and rebuild the relationship with the Jewish community so the Labour Party can become the natural home for Britain’s Jewish community.
“That’s what we need to get to and that is where we are going to get to. I want to be at the forefront of rebuilding that relationship.”
