Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker has been suspended from Labour over controversial comments she made at a party training event.

Leaked footage showed the campaigner saying she had not found a definition of antisemitism she could work with.

The footage also showed her questioning why Holocaust Memorial Day was not more wide-ranging to include other genocides.

Labour said it did not comment on individual party memberships but it is understood Walker has now been suspended.

Labour MP John Mann called Walker’s comments “unacceptable in a modern political party” by any standard.

But former London mayor Ken Livingstone defended some of Walker’s comments, saying “there’s a difference between ignorance and antisemitism”.

He said most people were unaware that Holocaust Memorial Day commemorated other genocides besides those perpetrated by the Nazis.

“I suspect you’ll find the majority of people in Britain didn’t know the Holocaust Memorial Day had been widened to include others,” Livingstone told the Press Association. “There’s a difference between ignorance and antisemitism.”

Walker, who along with her partner is Jewish, previously released a statement apologising for any offence. In an interview with Channel 4 News, she also questioned why Holocaust Memorial Day doesn’t mark genocides that occurred prior to the Nazis.

When she was asked whether she had considered resigning given the outrage among some Jewish groups, Walker said: “Some other prominent Jewish groups, of which I’m a member, think a very different thing. What we have to look at when we’re talking about this subject, particularly at the moment, is the political differences that are underlying this as well.”

She said whomever leaked the footage from a Labour party antisemitism training event “had malicious intent in their mind”. She also said she was anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic, adding: “I think Zionism is a political ideology, and like any political ideology, some people will be supportive and some people won’t be supportive of it. That’s a very different thing.”

The steering group of Momentum, which arose from the campaign to get Jeremy Corbyn elected as Labour leader last year, meets on Monday. A spokesman for the group said that it would be seeking to remove Walker as its vice-chair.



