New measures to tackle antisemitism that have been announced by the government are “transparently” political according to Shadow Transport Secretary Richard Holden.
He told GB News: “I think the biggest issue we’re seeing at the moment, and this is particularly around those London university campuses, has been those big concerns around those hate marches, which are often gathering around some of our London universities, and then moving on from there.
“You’re seeing actually unbelievably aggressive slogans, people calling for the death of people, calling for the eradication of the state of Israel. These are basically lines straight out of the Islamist playbook, straight out of the Iranian regime as well.
“We’ve got to absolutely tackle these issues head on, and we’re not going to be scared about it as well. Too often, particularly when the government, I fear, is sometimes too keen to try and tiptoe around this issue, for political reasons.
“What we have seen from the Labour Party over the last 18 months or so, Keir Starmer coming out a day before the local elections, and saying he’s going to get tough. Well, he could have done this over the last 18 months.
“We’ve been calling for more action for a much longer period of time. We’ve been standing behind our Jewish community. A lot of people will see his actions over the last couple of days transparently for what they are, although, obviously they are welcome.”
He added: “When it comes to the IRGC, there has been all sorts of arguments put forward why it should be proscribed, why it shouldn’t be proscribed, the Americans have used us as a conduit to try and have back room channels to the Iranian government, etc.
“What we’ve seen over the last few months, and in fact, a couple of years, is the Iranian regime moving to an increasingly extreme anti-Israel position, even more extreme than it’s been previously.
“We saw that a few years ago now with those horrific Hamas-sponsored [attacks] but they were obviously Hamas-sponsored by the Iranian government, the terror attacks. That has changed the dial on what we actually need to do here.
“We need to take it from that position. Basically, we are now seeing a regime that wants to wipe another country, which means killing all of its people, right off the face of the earth. We need to address everything, start with that as our basic building block, which is why proscription can’t come soon enough.”