Another Labour MP, Joan Ryan, has tonight announced she is leaving the party to join the Independent Group. This is significant, and not just because it creates a sense of momentum. Ryan is the first Labourite to leave who wasn’t involved in the months of secret planning meetings. She was, until fairly recently, arguing that the best thing to do would be to stay and fight to change the party back. Now, she has gone, releasing a potent statement about her reasons.
Those reasons include what she calls ‘the scourge of anti-Jewish racism’, which ‘simply did not exist in the party before his election as leader’. She argues that she has ‘fought for as long as I can within the Labour Party’. Ryan is the parliamentary chair of Labour Friends of Israel, and the organisation has already said that she will remain in that role.
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