The BBC has apologised for smearing Jeremy Corbyn in Newsnight reports.
The broadcaster referenced the former Labour leader’s “refusal to offer up any kind of apology” for the row over anti-Semitism in the party during his time as leader.
They also questioned whether he would refuse to apologise “as he has all the way up to now” if antisemitism came up in an election campaign.
In the corrections and clarifications page, the broadcaster noted:
To be clear, Mr Corbyn apologised for antisemitism in Labour on a number of occasions as Party Leader, including ahead of a meeting with Jewish community leaders in April 2018. In 2020, after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) investigated antisemitism in the party and found unlawful harassment and discrimination, Labour suspended Mr Corbyn after he said he did not accept all the EHRC findings and said the scale of antisemitism had been ‘dramatically overstated’.
The apology comes as Sir Keir Starmer’s move to block Corbyn from running to be a Labour MP at the next election was backed by the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC).
A Labour spokesman revealed that the leader’s motion passed by 22 votes to 12, meaning it is now down to Corbyn to decide whether to run as an independent candidate.
Corbyn, the veteran left-winger who has represented Islington North since 1983, had criticised the move as “undermining the party’s internal democracy” before its approval.
The motion says he “will not be endorsed by the NEC as a candidate on behalf of the Labour Party at the next general election”.
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