Who is Luciana Berger? Former Labour MP who slammed Jeremy Corbyn
LUCIANA Berger left the Labour Party in February 2019 in protest of the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
The former Liverpool Wavertree MP and Labour frontbencher alleged Mr Corbyn made "a number of different anti-Semitic comments".
Who is Luciana Berger?
Luciana Berger is a British Labour party politician and has represented Liverpool Wavertree since 2010.
She was born on May 13, 1981, in Westminster, and lived in Wembley.
She was appointed Shadow Minister for Public Health on October 8, 2013, before becoming Shadow Minister for Mental Health on September 14, 2015.
Berger is the great-niece of trade union official and Labour MP Manny Shinwell, who rose to be a Minister in the Attlee government.
Ms Berger is married to Liverpool music manager Alistair Goldsmith and the couple have one daughter, born in March 2017.
Before entering the House of Commons she worked for management consultancy company Accenture and the NHS Confederation, a body representing healthcare organisations.
What did Luciana Berger say about Jeremy Corbyn?
Before leaving the Labour Party, Ms Berger faced the threat of a no-confidence vote from local Labour members for criticising Jeremy Corbyn.
The MP expressed her outrage over a video dating back to 2013 showing Labour Leader Corbyn accusing British Zionists of having "no sense of English irony".
She described his comments as "inexcusable".
In the clip the then-leader said: "[British Zionists] clearly have two problems. One is they don't want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don't understand English irony either."
He added: "They needed two lessons, which we could perhaps help them with."
In response, Luciana tweeted: “The video released today of the leader of @UKLabour making inexcusable comments – defended by a party spokesman – makes me as a proud British Jew feel unwelcome in my own party. I’ve lived in Britain all my life and I don’t need any lessons in history/irony.”
Mr Corbyn was forced to apologise for hosting an event in 2010 where a Holocaust survivor compared Israel to Nazism.
He said he had "on occasion appeared on platforms with people whose views I completely reject" and was sorry for the "concerns and anxiety that this has caused".
He was also criticised for his presence at a ceremony in Tunisia in 2014, which is said to have honoured the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich terror attack.
In October 2020, after Mr Corbyn was suspended by Labour for his response to a report by equality chiefs over anti-Semitism, Ms Berger said "many things happened that should never have occurred".
She added: "For the Labour Party found to be guilty of both harassment and discrimination of Jewish party members gives me absolutely no pleasure.
“The anti-Semitism permeated the Labour Party from the very top, right through to the very, very bottom."
Why did Luciana Berger join the Liberal Democrats?
Berger left the Labour party and then joined other former Labour and Conservative MPs in forming Change UK.
She left this group in June 2019 to sit as an Independent MP, before joining the Liberal Democrats in September 2019.
The former MP said she joined the Lib Dems in order to help Britain through a time of "national emergency".
"I want to be part of something that can offer British people something to vote for," she said.
She stood unsuccessfully for in the .
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Is Luciana Berger still an MP?
No Ms Berger is no longer an MP.
On July 2, 2020, Berger became head of public affairs at PR company Edelman UK.
She left Parliament on November 6, 2019, following her unsuccessful election campaign.