Former Labour MP Jim Sheridan suspended following remarks about Jewish community

Jim Sheridan faces disciplinary action, as an Israeli athlete who survived the Munich massacre accuses Jeremy Corbyn of antisemitism

Labour has suspended councillor and former MP Jim Sheridan over comments he made about the party’s antisemitism row.

Mr Sherdian, MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North until 2015, said he had lost “respect and empathy” for the Jewish community over the ongoing antisemitism row in the Labour Party.

“For almost all my adult life I have had the utmost respect and empathy for the Jewish community and their historic suffering,” he wrote on his Facebook page, in a post which has since been removed.

“No longer due to what they and their blairite plotters are doing to my party and the long suffering people of Britain who need a radical labour government.”

Mr Sheridan – now a local councillor in Renfrewshire – has been suspended by Scottish Labour over the post, according to the BBC.

A party spokesman said: “The Labour Party takes all complaints of antisemitism extremely seriously and we are committed to challenging against it in all its forms.

“All complaints about antisemitism are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures, and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken.”

Labour MP Ian Austin called Mr Sherdian’s remarks “utterly disgusting”.

The ongoing row over antisemitism in the Labour Party showed no sign of easing up this weekend after an Israeli athlete, who survived the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, called on Jeremy Corbyn to quit as Labour leader.

Professor Shaul Ladany, a Holocaust survivor who competed at the Munich games as a racewalker, condemned his visit to a Palestinian cemetery in Tunisia in 2014.

Mr Ladany said he had “no doubt” Corbyn was an antisemite.

“He knows at present he cannot fully express himself totally openly because he might lose some of his voters,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “I don’t know him personally but from what I have read and heard I have no doubt that he is an antisemite.

“He should disappear from the political scene. And I hope that it will happen.”

The comments follow the backlash experienced by Dame Margaret Hodge after the MP likened a recent Labour Party disciplinary investigation into her conduct to the persecution faced by Jews in Nazi Germany, saying she felt “as if they were coming for me”.

Ms Hodge said the inquiry left her “thinking, what did it feel like to be a Jew in Germany in the thirties”.

Her comments provoked an angry response from some Labour activists and supporters, who criticised what they claimed was an overreaction.

Mr Corbyn has faced fierce criticism over his appearance at a Palestinian cemetery in Tunis in 2014. A spokesman for the Labour leader was yesterday forced once again to explain the visit.

“Jeremy Corbyn visited the Palestine National Cemetery in Tunisia to support Palestinian rights and honour the victims of the illegal 1985 airstrike, many of whom were civilians, on the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s headquarters – an attack condemned by the UN,” said the spokesman.

“Jeremy did not honour those alleged to have been linked to the Black September organisation or the 1972 Munich killings. He of course condemns that terrible attack, as he does the 1985 bombing.”