Jeremy Corbyn Launches Plan To Tackle Labour's Anti-Semitism Storm After Livingstone Shambles

Hopes to make it 'explicitly clear' Labour won't tolerate racism.

Jeremy Corbyn has launched an action plan to address anti-Semitism and other forms of racism within the Labour Party.

He will launch an independent inquiry into anti-Semitism and racism which will be led by Shami Chakrabarti, the former director of human rights organisation Liberty.

Corbyn said he will also be proposing a new 'code of conduct' on anti-Semitism to the party's national executive committee next month, Sky News reported.

Corbyn's move comes after MP Naz Shah was suspended on Wednesday over tweets linking Israel to Hitler, and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended on Thursday over his remarks after a string of embarrassing events for the party.

Corbyn has been criticised by figures including the shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham for not taking action quickly enough after the debacle.

He yesterday denied there was a 'crisis' in the party after events including Livingstone being branded a ‘Nazi apologist’ in an angry confrontation with Labour MP John Mann.

Shah quit as an aide to shadow chancellor John McDonnell and was then suspended after it emerged she had appeared to endorse the relocation of Israelis to the US.

Livingstone insisted everything he said about Hitler was “true” on Friday, after he was roundly condemned by Labour MPs for saying the Nazi leader supported Zionism before he went “mad” and engineered the Holocaust.

Corbyn's inquiry will report back in June and will speak to Jewish people to form its guidance.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell tweeted that something "good" could come of Labour's "dreadful week".

The code of conduct and inquiry will aim to make it "explicitly clear for the first time" that Labour is not prepared to tolerate racism, according to Sky.

Here is how yesterday's furore over Livingstone's comments unfolded:

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