Baroness Jenny Tonge Responds to Lib Dem party suspension following her resignation

The Labour Party Compliance Unit has suspended some members for a range of perceived, real, fantasy and or trumped up allegations. Justice is a long time coming for some still suspended from the party.

Today though it is a Liberal Democrat suspension, subsequent resignation and response and it is one of their peers, Jenny Tonge. On Facebook Ms Tonge writes:

Today I have resigned from the Liberal Democrat Party at more or less the same time as they decided to suspend me!

I have been a Liberal all my life and formally joined the party as a fresher medical student in 1959.

I was a a local councillor for 9 years and an MP for two parliamentary terms. I shall sit in the House of Lords as an Independent.

The reason for my suspension is that I chaired a meeting to launch the Campaign to commemorate the Balfour Declaration next year and to ask our government to apologise for not fulfilling the words of that declaration which sought to protect the rights and lands of the indigenous people of Palestine when Israel was created.

They have failed to do this and much suffering and extremism has ensued.

In the course of the evening one member of the audience made a 'rant' against Israel quoting some very confused history which I confess I did not hear or understand!

I then called the next member of the audience and moved on. The contribution was ignored by the audience after a few claps of relief!

Apparently this is my sin!

I am at last free of being told what I must and must not say on the issue of Palestine., lest it offends the Israel Lobby here, who like to control us, as they do in the USA.

They are trying to destroy the Labour Party with spurious accusations of anti Semitism and now they have set their sights on the LibDems.

I have never been anti Semitic, and never will be. I am anti Injustice and that is why I criticise the Israeli government's flagrant disregard for International Law and Human Rights in the Occupied territories of Palestine and Gaza.

The timing of the Lib Dem spat may be important.

Sky News reports "Earlier on Thursday afternoon, Jenny Tonge, Richmond Park MP from 1997 to 2005 and now a cross-bench peer, was suspended by the party only hours after protests from MPs over comments made at an event she chaired in Parliament. One speaker apparently compared Israel to Islamic State, and suggested the Jews were blamed for the Holocaust. Within an hour of her suspension, Baroness Tonge announced she was quitting the party."

"I was chairing, I did not make any speeches, I introduced the speakers and in the course of that meeting there was a great rant", she said.

Ms Tonge was not one of the speakers but chair person.

Sky News continues "A few hours before her suspension, Tory MP David Davies complained about the event to the Leader of the Commons, David Lidington, during Business Questions in the Commons. "May we have a debate on the use to which these premises may be put following reports that outrageously a member of the House of Lords presided over an event at which Israel was compared to Islamic State, and the Jews were even blamed for their own genocide?", said Mr Davies.
"Could we discuss this and also whether we should be issuing an apology for these outrageous comments to the Israeli government and the Jewish people."

Dare we ask if all this aggrieved anger is more to do with political advantage and the Richmond Park seat up for grabs?

Other than that dare we comment in McCarthy-style political Britain 2016?

Sky News
Guardian
JewishChronicle