Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith has claimed that the government is not doing enough to combat antisemitism.
He told GB News: “We don’t think the government is going far enough. I mean the Jewish community, like anyone, they don’t want to live their lives behind bars.
“They don’t want to have special police for their schools, their synagogues, their businesses. They want to be protected by the full force of the law. And when we see these repeated protests creating a hostile environment for British Jews, some of the acts of violence that have been perpetrated, we don’t think the government is going far enough.
“It’s not just about spending taxpayers’ money. Of course, if protection is needed, that needs to be provided, but it’s much more upstream of that. It’s a culture that simply does not tolerate antisemitism, just like it wouldn’t tolerate racism or persecution for any other minority.”
He also said the Conservatives would back the government if it left the ECHR or moved to offshore processing, as the number of people entering the country via small boats is set to hit 200,000 since 2018.
Griffith said: “It’s an absolute shocker, the state that the government’s presided over on this. There’s a key difference here, which is when we were in government trying to tackle this issue, night after night, the Labour Party in both Houses of Parliament, bishops, the BBC, everybody was opposed to us.
“Now the difference now is we’ve said we would support them if they want to leave the ECHR and allow us to properly get to grips with this issue, something that we try to do, that they frustrated if they want to go back to offshore processing as other EU countries, their new friends in the EU, are seeking to do, then we would support them.
“We have a clear plan to stop this. We would leave the ECHR. We would return those who come here illegally.
“But the government got elected on the premise that they had a plan, and they’ve presided over the fastest ever rate of people coming to this country illegally.”
