Luciana Berger

Luciana Berger    (politician)
Religion	Jewish

Luciana Berger is the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Liverpool Wavertree, having been elected in May 2010, and is a former Director of Labour Friends of Israel. She is the current Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement.

In July 2017, following her reelection in the UK/2017 General Election, Berger was threatened with deselection by her local CLP because of her disloyalty to the Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn. However, newly elected Labour Party Chair Ian Lavery told the Daily Mirror that he doesn't see the deselection of MPs critical of Jeremy Corbyn "as the way forward".

Imagined connections with Euan and Tony Blair

David McKie writes:

Sunday Telegraph story on April 17, 2005 headed: "Labour should have fought back on immigration, says Euan Blair's girlfriend". This was based on an interview by deputy political editor Melissa Kite with a "strikingly beautiful" 23-year-old postgraduate London University student called Luciana Berger, who recently resigned from the executive of the National Union of Students accusing it of turning a blind eye to anti-semitism.

In the interview, Ms Berger - repeatedly described, Melissa Kite contended, as a future Labour leader; she did not tell us by whom - was strongly critical of Labour's stance on immigration and condemned the party's portrayal of Michael Howard in election posters as Fagin and a flying pig. Though Melissa, unlike the headline writer, stopped short of describing Luciana as Euan's girlfriend, she said they had been "romantically linked". "Rumours of a close friendship with Euan Blair," she mused, "have elevated an admirable stand against anti-semitism from a campus dispute to the stuff of national debate."

McKie notes that he had:

a feeling that if Luciana was not in fact Euan's girlfriend there wouldn't be very much left of the story. And sure enough, the following letter appeared in last Sunday's Telegraph. "You published a story headed 'Labour should have fought back on immigration, says Euan Blair's girlfriend', which described Luciana Berger as my girlfriend. Luciana Berger is not, and has never been, my girlfriend - Euan Blair, University of Bristol". ^[1]

All Women Shortlist

Luciana Berger's selection as prospective parliamentary candidate in early 2010 was controversial within the Liverpool Wavertree party. During the selection process, Berger lived for a period at the home of Jane Kennedy, then the sitting MP, whose partner was Labour official Peter Dowling, who ran the selection process. The completed ballot papers were returned to Kennedy's home address. In the run up to the UK/2010 General Election, the Labour leadership was accused of "parachuting" Berger in as a candidate. Kennedy insisted that she and Dowling had acted properly.

A further source of controversy was the Labour National Executive Committee's imposition of an all women shortlist (AWS) on the local party. Berger was selected as Labour candidate for Liverpool Wavertree by "a margin of around 2-1" according to the Liverpool Echo, over the other female candidates. Berger shared the criticism of AWS after her selection, stating "I would like to have won in an open contest. People have already said I didn't deserve to win."

Student activist

Berger was a member of the National Union of Students executive from which she resigned in 2005, in her words, "because of a continued apathy within the National Union of Students to Jewish student suffering." In the words of a report distributed by NUS: "Anti-semitism is a very light sleeper indeed."^[2]

As a member of the Union of Jewish Students, Berger campaigned for Muslim organisations Hizb ut-Tahrir, Al Muhajiroun and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee to be banned from campus.^[3]

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Anti-semitism is cover for a much deeper divide in Britain's Labour party	Article	20 February 2019	Jonathan Cook	Paradoxically, the Labour breakaway group may have inadvertently exposed the weakness of its hand. The eight MPs have indicated that they will not run in by-elections, and for good reason: it is highly unlikely they would stand a chance of winning in any of their current constituencies outside the Labour Party.
Document:The Origins of Labour’s Civil War	Essay	21 July 2016	W. Stephen Gilbert	"The greatest difficulty that the anti-Corbyn MPs, the media and the Tories all share is a fact that they simply cannot stomach: Jeremy Corbyn is the most popular politician in Britain."
Document:The Unprincipled – and Potentially Racist – Lib Dems	blog post	13 September 2019	Craig Murray	If LibDem candidate Clareine Enderby is indeed replaced by Luciana Berger she will be a victim of racism, as the sole grounds on which Ms Berger is being touted as preferable for the 20% Jewish Finchley and Golders Green constituency is her ethnicity.

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References

1. ^  Luciana Berger Why I had to resign The Guardian Education, 15 April 2005.
2. ^  NUS, NUS representative addresses government committee on campus incitement Press Release, undated, but prior to March 2005 when Berger resigned her position.
3. ^  PAUL PALMER Luciana and an affair that wasn't, Evening Standard (London), Apr 21, 2005.
4. ^ David McKie 'The spirit of Meilyr lives on' The Guardian Thursday May 5, 2005.