Jeremy Corbyn dealt serious blow just hours after leadership win as senior Jewish Labour figure resigns claiming hard-left has the ‘party by the throat’
Lord Parry Mitchell attacked the hapless leftie for making life 'very very difficult' for Jews within the party.
JEREMY Corbyn was dealt a serious blow just hours after his leadership victory as a senior Jewish Labour figure resigned, claiming the hard-left has the "party by the throat".
Lord Parry Mitchell claimed Labour was a "lost cause", and attacked the hapless leftie for making life "very very difficult" for Jews within the party.
The businessman said: “My view is that it’s a lost cause, I think the Momentum people, Corbyn’s pals, have got this party by the throat and they’re never gonna let it go, at least not in my lifetime.
"I think for Jews this is very very difficult, it’s a hard place to be... I’m a fighter, but this is now a lost cause, it’s gone.”
Speaking on the BBC One Sunday Politics, he outlined why he was leaving - citing anti-semitism a major reason.
Lord Mitchell, who was awarded a life peerage in 2000, said: “The first reason is that many of the issues that seem to be important to him and his friends, I’m absolutely opposed to.
"I’m supportive of Nato, I’m supportive of Trident, I’m supportive of America and in particular I’m supportive of Israel - and he and his group seem to me are very hostile to that.
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"But secondly this is about leadership and this is about becoming Prime Minister, and Jeremy’s fine with his group of people and the membership who’ve put him in.
"But at the end of the day you’ve got to win an election and you’ve got to appeal to middle England and I don’t think he has a hope in hell of doing that."
Lord Mitchell added: "Jeremy has no leadership qualities whatsoever, his little group like him and they think he’s the Messiah, but he will never become the leader and Prime Minister of this country.
"I’m Jewish and I’m very strongly Jewish and I make no bones about it and there’s no doubt in my mind that Jeremy himself is very lukewarm on this subject.
"He’s never been as vociferous in condemning anti-semitism as he should be, and when he does make a mention of it he combines it with other forms of racism, so he will never say specifically as far as anti-semitism is concerned.
"But even more than that he surrounds himself with a coterie of people who hold violent, violent anti-Israel views and allied with it they are very hostile to Jews so, in my view, they’re pretty bad guys.
“I think it’s very difficult if you are Jewish and you support Israel to be a member of the Labour Party.”
Lord Mitchell, who previously described the party's inquiry into anti-semitism as a "insipid whitewash", said he was leaving the Labour Party “with a very heavy heart” and that he would not be joining another political party.