LEGENDARY US television host Jon Stewart has slammed the Labour Party following the blocking of a would-be candidate in the upcoming General Election.
Keir Starmer’s party denied Faiza Shaheen the chance to stand in Chingford and Woodford Green after she allegedly liked anti-semitic posts on social media site X.
One of the pieces of media that had been liked by Ms. Shaheen was from Stewart’s Comedy Central weeknight programme The Daily Show.
The show’s former host, who stars in the decade-old clip which talks about Israel and Palestine, was left dumbfounded last week after being told of the party’s decision.
In the clip, Stewart’s skit makes light of the fact that if someone speaks about either Middle Eastern nation, a rush of people will scream opinions in your face to the contrary.
The 61-year-old New York native, who hosted the Daily Show from 1999 until 2015, took to social media to share his views on the situation.
In an expletive filled post, the comedian told how the United Kingdom had not done anything this stupid since electing former Prime Minster Boris Johnson.
He wrote: “This is the dumbest thing the UK has done since electing Boris Johnson, what the actual f**k.”
His post received over 22,000 likes with hundreds of comments from social media users who supported Ms. Shaheen following her suspension.
One said: “You didn’t deserve this sort of treatment, especially from your own party.”
Another added: “The fact that the video has not lost one bit of relevancy is one of the saddest things I can think of. The entire video holds as true today as the day it aired.”
A third replied: “I don’t think it was as much about the skit as it was about the tweet.”
Another commented: “Just for clarity, rightly or wrongly, she liked a tweet which included the sketch.
“The tweet itself made several points relating to the first half of the sketch (and none to the latter part).”
A fifth remarked: “It’s a great sketch, says a lot that people are taking it so seriously.”
Faiza Shaheen appeared on BBC’s Newsnight yesterday evening where she apologised for her liking of the tweet involving Jon Stewart’s sketch.
She said: “If you see that tweet, it was a retweet of a Jon Stewart sketch, I watched the Jon Stewart sketch.
“Probably it was the middle of the night, I was probably with the baby breastfeeding, I don’t even remember liking that tweet.
“I know what’s wrong with it [the tweet], the line that’s there about they’re [Jewish people] in professional organisations.
“It plays into a trope, and I absolutely don’t agree with that and I’m sorry about that.”
Whoever is selected by the Labour party will go head-to-head with former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith who holds a narrow 1,262 majority.
