Suspended Labour MP Kate Osamor gets party whip back after Holocaust post

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox

Get our free View from Westminster email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Suspended Labour MP Kate Osamor has had the party whip restored four months after a controversial Holocaust Memorial Day post suggesting the Israeli action in Gaza is genocide.

Ms Osamor, a shadow minister under Jeremy Corbyn, subsequently apologised and instead referred to a “humanitarian disaster”.

But she was placed under investigation over the post, which also likened Israel’s war in the beseiged enclave to genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia.

Labour confirmed Ms Osamor had been given the whip following "a full investigation”.

For her part she said she wanted to “unreservedly apologise again for my comments. I made remarks which were insensitive, inappropriate, and which I apologise for and regret.”

The Independent revealed late last month that Ms Osamor would be given the Labour whip again within days.

But the decision has been condemned by the Jewish Labour Movement, one of the oldest socialist societies affiliated to the Labour Party.

A JLM spokesperson said: "Kate Osamor's original actions and non-apology were disgraceful and smeared the memory of all those who died in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia, as commemorated by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.”

He added that the onus was “now on her to engage with her local Jewish community... and the wider community, properly. Given her previous record and comments in this area, this will require a sincere and honest approach. Until and unless this happens, the jury is still out."

It is not the first time Ms Osamor has caused controversy. In 2020 she was ordered to apologise to the House of Commons after telling a journalist: "I should have come down here with a f****** bat and smashed your face open".

She was also found to have twice breached parliamentary rules in relation to events surrounding her son, whom she employed in her office, and who in 2018 pleaded guilty to having £2,500-worth of drugs at a music festival.

The move comes a month after Andy McDonald, who was suspended over remarks he made at a pro-Palestine rally, was also brought back into the parliamentary party.

The MP for Middlesbrough had been suspended from the party in October after he used the controversial phrase “between the river and the sea” during a speech at a demonstration.

But, after an investigation into his comments, Labour concluded he had “not engaged in conduct that was against the party’s rulebook”.

The party said it had reminded him that MPs had to be “mindful” of what they say and how their comments may be interpreted.

Mr McDonald said it was “never my intention” to use language that would cause anyone distress and that he “bitterly regrets” the “pain and hurt caused”.