Labour peer spoiled her ballot at 2019 election to write ‘antisemite’ in protest at Jeremy Corbyn, new book reveals

A Labour grandee has revealed she spoiled her ballot paper in the 2019 general election to call then party leader Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite. She wrote: “Election day, , was gruesome. I was up early as I needed to spend the day campaigning in Barking. “I’d moved from our family home in Richmond Crescent and bought a smaller house next door to my daughter Lizzi, near Finsbury Park. Now I haplessly found myself voting in Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency. I usually had a postal vote but given the circumstances I had decided to vote in person. “As I walked into the polling station, I still could not make up my mind. Standing with pencil in my hand in the booth I realised that I just couldn’t vote for him, so I spoilt my ballot paper and scrawled ‘antisemite’ all over it.” Mr Corbyn has repeatedly denied accusations of antisemitism and said he was "always determined to eliminate all forms of racism". Dame Margaret also reveals she would have voted to stop Mr Corbyn becoming prime minister. “I had my own red lines,” she writes. “I promised myself that should the unthinkable become a reality – if Corbyn won the general election – I would use my position as an MP to do everything I could to stop him becoming prime minister, whether that meant voting against him in a motion of no confidence, or voting down his first budget. At the time it was written up that she had called him a “f****** antisemite”. In the book, however, she writes that in July 2018: “I remember standing outside the chamber behind the Speaker’s chair chatting with two young men, both Labour MPs, both deeply hostile to Corbyn, and one of whom was deeply involved in the fight against antisemitism in the party. I’d spent the day caught up with other things and was eager to know what had happened at the NEC meeting (where the definition of antisemitism had been discussed). “They told me that we had lost the argument and the vote. The party’s ruling body had decided to pursue Jeremy Corbyn’s definition of antisemitism. I was furious. ‘I’m going to tell him to his face what I think of him,’ I told them. ‘He’s a f****** antisemitic racist.’ “‘Go on Margaret,’ they urged. ‘You go and tell him.’ …I waited and told myself that I mustn’t swear when I spoke to him as that would weaken the impact of my words.