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*Thread* Brighton Labour Councillor Nichole Brennan serves a city that finds its pride in tolerance.
Backed by Momentum, she was first elected in 2019.
It's a telling far left tale. Over and over, Brennan has tolerated antisemitic activism. So much so that she joins in. 1/16
Backed by Momentum, she was first elected in 2019.
It's a telling far left tale. Over and over, Brennan has tolerated antisemitic activism. So much so that she joins in. 1/16
In March, Brennan resigned her cabinet positions after a local paper reported her participation in a demonstration against the council’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism back in 2018. Photos of the demonstration showed her standing... 2/16 https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18302417.brightons-labour-housing-chief-resigns-anti-semitism-row/
…alongside Tony Greenstein one of the key figures in Labour’s antisemitism crisis. Note that he had been expelled from Labour eight months earlier.
The definition proposal passed with 47 votes, with one abstention. Even in left-leaning Brighton, Brennan is an outlier. 3/16
The definition proposal passed with 47 votes, with one abstention. Even in left-leaning Brighton, Brennan is an outlier. 3/16
It seems this episode was not politically instructive for Brennan. Local media have reported that she said she would neither resign nor “bow down to white supremacy” just days after leaving her council roles in March. 4/16 https://tinyurl.com/ybtasffk
At the time, the Sussex Jewish Representative Council expressed its concern about her “offensive language, suggesting that either Israel or those who report antisemitism are white supremacists”. This “racist language should be unacceptable”, it added. 5/16
https://tinyurl.com/ycw3j8vn
https://tinyurl.com/ycw3j8vn
In May, Brennan went on to promote an appeal to sign a petition backed by Labour Against the Witchhunt, a group which keenly supports nasty figures in the party's antisemitism crisis. Notably in Brennan’s case, the petition asks people to “reject” the IHRA definition. 6/16
The petition backs Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein. Their expulsions from the party, “like the vast majority of others”, were “hugely unjust and the investigations deeply flawed”, it claimed. It also attacks the Board of Deputies of British Jews. 7/16 https://tinyurl.com/ybxaew9k
Brennan has also backed the disgraced former Labour MP Chris Williamson. She did so long after he was mired in antisemitic controversies of his own making. Here, for example, she echoes the Corbynista fanatic Kerry-Anne Mendoza in 2019. 8/16
In 2019, local Labour council candidate Alex Braithwaite was suspended for sharing posts suggesting the crisis was "whipped up by Israel" to hit Corbyn, backing Ken Livingstone, and claiming that the Rothschilds controlled the European Central Bank. 9/16 https://tinyurl.com/y55uuhk6
The revelations shocked the party – Braithwaite was suspended. Nonetheless, local media reported that Brennan and other local Labour figures expressed their “solidarity” with Braithwaite at the time. 10/16 https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2019/04/29/brighton-labour-official-suspended-over-march-on-synagogue-post/
In 2019 Brennan also backed a flat rejection of BBC Panorama’s revelations about the scale and depth of the antisemitism crisis in the party. Corbyn is “a decent man who has fought hate and fascism throughout his life”, you see. 11/16 https://tinyurl.com/yxvahztg
In summer 2018, Brennan took aim at the IHRA definition of antisemitism once again by signing an open letter rejecting its pending adoption by the party. She had plenty of local company, including Tony Greenstein. 12/16
https://tinyurl.com/y7p5zppn
https://tinyurl.com/y7p5zppn
Jackie Walker sparked one of the biggest antisemitism controversies of the early Corbyn era when it was reported that she had said Jews were “the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade”. Not in the least shocked, Brennan came to her aid on social media. 13/16
Taken together, these events show a pattern: offending Jews and backing their abusers. Exposures, setbacks and censure do not deter. Brennan simply carries on. 14/16
Brighton context counts. During the party conference in 2017, the Labour council leader said he would “face questions as to why we allow any event where anti-Semitic views are freely expressed to happen in the city, particularly on council premises”.15/16 https://tinyurl.com/yc9xanse
Warren Morgan’s reward was to be chased out, by his own comrades.
While Nichole Brennan is still in service, apparently in good standing with the party.
Why, Labour? 16/16 https://tinyurl.com/y8cqdjc6
While Nichole Brennan is still in service, apparently in good standing with the party.
Why, Labour? 16/16 https://tinyurl.com/y8cqdjc6
