Why has UK’s Labour Party suspended two election candidates over Gaza war?

The party has become embroiled in yet another row over anti-Semitism amid Israel’s war on Gaza. The British Labour Party, currently the odds-on favourite to win the next UK general election, found itself on the back foot this week when two of its parliamentary candidates were suspended by Keir Starmer, the party’s leader. But, he added, “at times, it has seemed that Labour’s leader has been more intent on opposing a caricature of Jeremy Corbyn than the real Jeremy Corbyn in order to maximise the sense that Labour has changed.” Indeed, many worry that today’s Labour Party has become a political movement largely intolerant of voices seeking to condemn Israel and to hold it to account for its actions in Gaza. “Any decent person wants to root out anti-Semitism but Starmer and the Labour right weaponised it against the Corbyn left, long-term supporters of Palestinian rights,” Simon Pia, a former spin doctor for the Labour Party at the UK’s devolved Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, told Al Jazeera. Starmer is Labour’s third opposition party leader during this period, but a victory at the next UK general election would see Labour replace the Conservatives as the UK’s party of government, and see Starmer assume the mantle of prime minister.