Labour MP Louise Ellman has announced she is leaving the party because she "can no longer advocate voting Labour when it risks Corbyn becoming PM".
Ms Ellman, who represents a constituency in Liverpool, has been a member of the party for 55 years.
I have made the truly agonising decision to leave the Labour Party after 55 years. I can no longer advocate voting Labour when it risks Corbyn becoming PM. I will continue to serve the people of Liverpool Riverside as I have had the honour to do since 1997. pic.twitter.com/3BTzUacZvo
— Louise Ellman MP (@LouiseEllman) October 16, 2019
In a tweet she said it had been an "agonising decision", but that she intends to continue to serve the people of Liverpool Riverside.
Ms Ellman, who is Jewish, also posted her resignation letter which stated that she believes Mr Corbyn “is not fit to serve as our Prime Minister”.
She said: “Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, antisemitism has become mainstream in the Labour Party. Jewish members have been bullied, abused and driven out.
"Antisemites have felt comfortable and vile conspiracy theories have been propagated.”
She said she feared if Mr Corbyn became PM, his “seeming tolerance of antisemitism would embolden racists, poison our public debate and damage the social cohesion of our country”.
A BBC Panorama programme in July reporting claims of anti-Jewish bias from former party members, Jewish former Labour MP Luciana Berger quit the party in February citing antisemitism.
Mr Corbyn has insisted party members engaged in antisemitism faced withdrawal of membership or expulsion.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here