Anti-semitism

There are many reasons why I am suspicious of the Conservatives’ current lead in the polls. The Tories may have peaked too soon. Labour voters flirting with the Liberal Democrats could return the more they see of Jo Swinson. Many Conservative target seats, while Brexity, have voted Labour since there was a Labour Party to vote for. Landlines still dominate over mobile phones in the sampling methodologies of some pollsters, under-reflecting younger and poorer voters. Labour supporters and Remainers are more likely to turn out than Tories and Brexiteers and a million more voters have joined the roll than did prior to the last election, which just reeks of young people.

Labour launched its 'Race & Faith Manifesto' earlier today amid a storm of criticism over the party's anti-Semitism problem. The latest person to condemn Jeremy Corbyn is the chief rabbi, who questioned whether the Labour leader is fit to become prime minister. During today's event in north London, Corbyn hit back, insisting that under his government 'no community will be at risk because of their identity'. The party had hoped the mini-manifesto launch would focus attention on policy ideas such as a wholesale review of the Prevent strategy or the scrapping of random stop and searches. But it didn't go to plan. Outside the venue in Tottenham, activists had parked up trucks with phrases such as 'A vote for Labour is a vote for racism'.

'What is it with Jews and Corbyn?' the guy asked. 'Why are you so against him being in Number 10?' I tend to avoid conversations about Jews and Corbyn with Labour voters these days. What more is there to say about the party’s anti-Semitism? If people still can’t see it, I generally take the view they are part of the problem. Over the last four years evidence of Labour’s institutional racism has been overwhelming. But this guy – let’s call him Matt, an architect I met at a friend’s 40th birthday party in Hackney last week – really did appear to have been living under a rock since 2015.

Anti-racism campaign Labour Against Anti-Semitism (LAAS) has today issued its position on the General Election. LAAS, responsible for exposing a litany of anti-Semites in Labour’s ranks, warns party members that ‘Jeremy Corbyn is unfit to be Prime Minister and that the Labour Party is unfit to be in government’. It says Labour poses ‘the greatest risk to our democracy and to the safety and security of the British Jewish community’. As such, they urge the general public to vote ABC: ‘Anyone but Corbyn’.  Other positions are available, most notably from Labour MPs who once spoke of Corbyn in the same terms as LAAS. But where are they now?

The December election that now looks inevitable will be, as all elections are, a test. A test of a decade-old government that isn’t entirely sure what its achievements in office have been. A test of the public’s continuing appetite for Brexit and its tolerance for parliamentary histrionics. A test, too, of whether the country is ready to return to majoritarian government or whether volatile voter intentions and hung parliaments will be with us a while longer.  None of these is the most important metric. That dubious honour goes to the anti-Semitism test: will the UK put a party of Jew-haters into power? All of us will have to confront that test and each and every one will be judged on how they measure up.

Another female Jewish MP has left the Labour party, apparently bullied out of the movement she has worked in for decades. Louise Ellman, MP for Liverpool Riverside, announced in a letter last night that she 'cannot advocate a government led by Jeremy Corbyn' because he 'is not fit to be Prime Minister'. She complains that 'anti-Semitism has become mainstream in the Labour Party' and that the leader 'has attracted the support of too many anti-Semites'. It is a damning letter, and one that has widely been tweeted by the colleagues Ellman has left behind as proof that something needs to change in the party. The problem is that we've seen this before: the same MPs made the same sort of comments when Luciana Berger quit earlier this year.

When Labour last came to Brighton for its annual conference, I sat in a studio listening to people who had faced abuse because they were Jewish. I heard statements recorded at a fringe event suggesting it was fine to question whether the Holocaust had ever happened. As leader of the city's council, I had to act. I wrote a letter saying Labour would not be welcome back in Brighton if it failed to sort out its issues with anti-Semitism. Two years on, I have been forced out of the party I loved. But Labour's dark problem remains. The backlash against my message was swift and took me by surprise. I had been a member of the party for a quarter of a century. Perhaps I was naïve, but Jeremy Corbyn's vow to root out racism made me feel I was helping.

'The Labour Party welcomes everyone* irrespective of race, creed, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (except, it seems, Jews)'. So says an unprecedented advert in the Guardian today, which is signed by more than 60 Labour peers. It could hardly be more damning. Yet while the advert is shocking, it stops short of pointing out the only way that Labour can solve its anti-Semitism crisis for good: by getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn. Labour peers who backed the statement aren't the only ones to fail to state the obvious. Deputy leader Tom Watson, who says he favours the introduction of an independent complaints procedure, has also fallen short.