Labour peer Margaret Hodge 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.

Margaret Hodge, the former minister who was Labour’s MP for Barking for three decades, said it was only when she was in the polling booth that she realised she could not vote for Mr Corbyn.

“I spoilt my ballot paper and scrawled ‘antisemite’ all over it,” she writes in her new memoir Battleaxe.

The 82-year-old, who now sits in the House of Lords, was an outspoken critic of Mr Corbyn and accused him of being in “permanent denial” about antisemitism in the party.

She wrote: “Election day, 12 December 2019, 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. There were a few other MPs who indicated that they would act alongside me.”

In the book she writes how she had known Mr Corbyn since 1983, when he first became the MP for Islington North and she was the leader of Islington Council.

She said that at that stage she saw him as “a rather harmless, disorganised nonentity who seemed to care more about what was happening in Nicaragua than he did about what was happening in Islington.”

She also says that she did not not actually swear during an infamous moment in which she called Mr Corbyn an antisemite to his face in the House of Commons.

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. By the time I confronted Corbyn the two young MPs had disappeared.

“When Corbyn emerged, I approached him and said I wanted to talk. We spoke just outside the Chamber, with a few people milling around. I said that I thought he was an antisemitic racist. I said that he was creating a hostile environment for Jews in the Labour Party.

“In the passive-aggressive manner I’d come to recognise, he urged me to look at one of the recommendations on one of the pages of the report on the IHRA definition that had been considered by the NEC that afternoon. I retorted that it was his actions, not his words, that had convinced me he was an antisemitic racist.”

A spokesperson for Mr Corbyn said: “Jeremy’s leadership transformed the Labour Party into a mass movement that confronted economic injustice, opposed all forms of racism and stood up for peace around the world.

“Baroness Hodge could have helped elect a government that sought to end the grotesque levels of poverty and inequality in Britain. It is regrettable that she chose to engage in baseless smears and personal abuse instead.

“These disgraceful accusations about Jeremy are – and always have been – demonstrably false, and he will continue to speak up for a more equal and inclusive society as the proud MP for Islington North.”