Anti-semitism

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s May 2021 World edition.  As I walk toward Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s office, I notice a large flag and sign opposing one another across the hall. Greene’s neighbor, Democratic Rep. Marie Newman, has recently planted a transgender pride flag to protest Greene’s opinion that biological men should not be playing women’s sports. Greene responded by posting a sign that says, ‘There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE. “Trust The Science.”’ I’m expecting a rather tense atmosphere inside Greene’s office, given how often the congresswoman from Georgia finds herself at odds with her colleagues.

Fifty-five years ago, Martin Luther King delivered a speech to 50,000 Americans in which he demanded justice for persecuted Jews behind the Iron Curtain. ‘The absence of opportunity to associate as Jews in the enjoyment of Jewish culture and religious experience becomes a severe limitation upon the individual,’ he said. ‘Negros can well understand and sympathise with this problem.’ He then stated, in typically uncompromising style, that Jewish history and culture were ‘part of everyone’s heritage, whether he be Jewish, Christian or Moslem.’ He concluded:  ‘We cannot sit complacently by the wayside while our Jewish brothers in the Soviet Union face the possible extinction of their cultural and spiritual life.

It’s been just over a year since the British people finally squashed a hard-left push for power under the dismal but unyieldingly dangerous leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. On 12 December 2019 we dodged a collective bullet. But Corbynism lasted almost half a decade; it reshaped the national conversation. As we enter 2021 it’s worth considering what it has taught us about our politics and what its legacy might be for Britain. First off, Corbynism provided something much-needed: a reminder that the left does not have a monopoly on virtue, or even on that vague but actually pretty important political quality – niceness. The dangers of an unfettered right are a staple of western politics.

Sir Keir Starmer has just announced he will not be restoring the Labour whip to Jeremy Corbyn following his comments about the extent of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party being exaggerated for political purposes. A panel of the party’s ruling National Executive Committee last night reinstated Corbyn as a member, but this morning Starmer said he would not do the same with the whip. You can read his full statement below. The reaction last night from Jewish groups to the NEC’s decision had made very clear that if Starmer accepted Corbyn back into the party on the basis of the non-apology he had issued, it would undo the new Labour leader’s work repairing relations with the Jewish community.

At the end of October Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the party he loved and led, after suggesting that concerns about Labour’s anti-Semitism problem during his tenure had been ‘dramatically overstated’ for political reasons. At the time of his suspension, the former Labour leader seemed to strike a defiant tone. In a broadcast interview, Corbyn suggested that the number of Labour’s anti-Semitism complaints had been ‘exaggerated’ and that he was ‘not part of the problem’. Mr S wonders though if Corbyn might be worried about being re-admitted to the party. Today, the former Labour leader released a statement on Facebook which he had given to the party on the day of his suspension.

It was all going so well for Sir Keir Starmer. He won the Labour leadership handsomely, appointed a fresh shadow cabinet, and was riding a wave of blessed non-scrutiny thanks to Covid-19. He had begun to make amends to the Jewish community for his party’s racist vendetta against them and there was a solid chance that political correspondents would learn how to spell his name. Then, it leaked. An 860-page dossier prepared in the final months of Corbyn’s tenure which, going by the reports of those who have seen it, essentially exculpates the party of mishandling anti-Semitism charges. It says these complaints were not treated differently, a central allegation made by whistleblowers who spoke to Panorama.

What will we do without Jeremy Corbyn? We may never find out given how long it’s taking him to leave the stage. Even Sinatra’s farewell tour didn’t last this long. The problem is that Corbyn wants to be useful. While that would certainly be a change of pace, it places the onus on others to find a use for him. His disciples propose that he be kept on the front bench, perhaps as shadow foreign secretary, marking their progression through all six stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and Richard Burgon. There is a cruelty to all this. No one who has watched the video of Corbyn ambling around in the street encouraging his neighbours to applaud the NHS will have failed to feel some pang of pity for the man.