British Jews protesting in London against antisemitism in the UK Labour Party. Photo: antisemitism.uk.

The frontrunner in the contest to succeed UK far-left politician Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the opposition Labour party pledged in an interview on Thursday to act decisively against the antisemites in its ranks.

In an interview with The Jewish Chronicle, Sir Keir Starmer said that the hundreds of cases of antisemitism that have plagued Labour since Corbyn became leader in 2015 “have to be dealt with robustly and swiftly and there’s no reason they can’t be.”

Starmer pointed out that “if you can be swiftly removed from the Labour party for supporting another political party at a general election, then you could be swiftly removed from the Labour party for being clearly antisemitic.”

Labour will elect Corbyn’s replacement on April 4. As well as Starmer, two other candidates — Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey, who is Corbyn’s preferred successor — are competing for the leader’s role. Corbyn announced that he would stand down last December, after Labour’s disastrous showing in the British general election.

Starmer also pledged to restore relations with British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who took the rare step of publishing a scathing attack on Corbyn in The Times of London a few weeks before the election.

“It is an important relationship and it has to be restored,” Starmer said. “I would meet with anybody to restore trust.”

Starmer also identified another major problem within the party — namely, those activists and supporters “that have denied we’ve got a problem” with antisemitism.

“To my mind, they are part of the problem,” Starmer remarked. “So you’ve got those who are antisemitic, then you’ve got those who tend to suggest that we don’t have a problem. That is part of the problem. So that needs to be dealt with.”

Commenting on the experience of the last election, Starmer said it “genuinely breaks my heart to have to knock on doors and to have the door opened by a Jewish family who said to me we have always voted Labour in this household but we are not going to vote Labour because of antisemitism.”

Concluded Starmer: “I think it is very very important for the incoming leader to demonstrate on day one, the difference that new leadership will make on the issue of antisemitism.”