John Cryer MP and Labour’s endemic anti-semitism UPDATED

There is a sobering post on the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s website, here

https://antisemitism.uk/three-months-after-107-labour-mps-issued-an-ultimatum-to-expel-livingstone-the-labour-party-remains-a-dystopia-for-jews/

which looks at what has happened – or rather not happened – since Ken Livingston advised the world that ‘Hitler was supporting Zionism’.

And for some reason, this got me thinking about my old friend, John Cryer, MP.

Because though 107 Labour MPs (including Stella Creasy) responded to Mr. Livingston by expressing their disgust, and declaring ‘We stand with the Jewish community and British society against this insidious racism‘, Mr. Cryer was not among them (see http://archive.is/w88K1).

So what, I wonder, explains his reticence.

Is he just too busy with nappies and the shenanigans of the Parliamentary party to get involved in this sort of thing?

Or does he perhaps think that Mr. Livingstone’s statement is unexceptional, and like some on the left, believe that charges of anti-semitism are essentially a put-up job, a Zionist subterfuge to discredit true socialists?

Or is he just instinctively programmed to keep his head down when controversy threatens, in other words a milksop?

From my own experience of the man, I’d opt for the latter.

But whichever explanation is correct, it is does him little credit.

UPDATE

Relatedly, it slipped my mind that, in contrast to his silence on so many matters, including that dealt with here, Mr. Cryer did rouse himself in 2012 to sign an early day motion congratulating Hugo Chavez on his re-election as President of Venezuela.

However, given what has happened to that unfortunate country subsequently, this looks like a significant error of judgement, though of course in this Mr. Cryer is far from the only one culpable, as The HistoryJack blog has pointed out:

https://historyjack.com/2017/07/07/starvation-and-silence-british-left-and-venezuela/