Heather Stewart

Political editor

Jeremy Corbyn has caved in to pressure and suspended Naz Shah, the Bradford West MP, over remarks she made about Israel on Facebook.

Shortly before he faced David Cameron in the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon Corbyn had issued a statement saying that he had accepted Shah’s “fulsome” apology for a series of posts from 2014 in which she appeared to endorse a suggestion that Israelis be deported to the United States.

Even after the prime minister said it was “extraordinary,” that she continued to hold the Labour whip, and accused the Labour leader of failing to get to grips with antisemitisim in his party, Corbyn’s aides defended Shah, saying the comments were antisemitic but the MP had “shocked herself,” and did not mean what she said.

But later in the day, Labour announced that the Bradford West MP had been suspended, “by mutual agreement,” while claims against her were investigated by the compliance committee of Labour’s national executive committee.

The allegations centre around a 2014 Facebook post, in which Shah shared a graphic of Israel’s outline superimposed on a map of the US under the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict – Relocate Israel into United States”, with the comment: “Problem solved.”

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