Labour party

Among the first things I did when moving to the UK from Australia was sign up to three British institutions: Arsenal football club, the NHS and the Labour party. Sure, Jeremy Corbyn's party is further to the left than the Australian iteration. But following Labour's surge in the 2017 general election there was something alluring about the party. It was offering wholesale change, by improving public services, increasing the minimum wage and scrapping student tuition fees. These policies sat well with my millennial sensibilities. And like it or loathe it, Labour's grassroots campaign back then radiated a palpable sense of excitement about the party's future.

In some alternative universe the Labour party, as under Tony Blair in the mid 1990s, is busily preparing for government, its confidence boosted by a massive lead in the polls over a shambolic Tory administration. Back in this one, however, Labour is crumbling even faster than the divided and unpopular Conservatives. Remarkably, while the Tories have seen a collapse in their share of the vote to just 22 per cent, according to one poll this week, Labour has sunk to just 20 per cent. Just how it succeeded in throwing away such a remarkable opportunity to seize power is going to trouble its remaining members for decades to come.

Nothing better sums up the intolerance and sheer meanness of the hardcore Remainer set than their loathing for Kate Hoey. These are the kind of people who solemnly shake their heads when women in politics or business are subjected to sexist abuse on the internet. But such concerns fly full-speed out the window where Hoey is concerned. For her, no insult is off limits, no abuse out-of-bounds. She’s a traitor, a Faragist, a fascist, a hag. All those words, and worse, have been used about Hoey in the numerous media assaults and Twitterstorms she has been subjected to for the crime of standing by her principles. Especially her principled belief that the European Union is an anti-democratic oligarchy and Britons’ vote to leave it must be upheld.

A moderate, halfway-competent Labour party could crush the Tories. But given that Labour members are Corbynite in inclination, what are the chances of a moderate leader emerging? In my latest Daily Telegraph column, I argue that to change leader now in order to make Labour the party of Remain might well make this even worse for Labour – and create an opportunity for the Tories. The Morten Morland cover image we ran a few weeks ago – Corbyn depicted as a scarecrow being picked apart by the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats – has come to pass. The Brexit crisis has started to polarise voters, with many moving to the Brexit Party and the Lib Dems. Labour and the Tories are suffering badly.

This evening in Britain, the Jewish Shabbat dinner will follow the traditional order: blessing the candles and the wine, washing hands, giving thanks for the bread and trying to get through the first serving of noodle kugel before someone brings up the Labour party. The decision by the national executive committee to restore the whip to Chris Williamson will be on the menu tonight. The Jew-baiting Nosferatu was suspended in February for ‘a pattern of behaviour’, that pattern taking the shape of a giant middle finger to the Jewish community and culminating in a grisly speech declaring Labour ‘too apologetic’ about anti-Semitism.

Politics may seem to be deeply confusing at present, but in fact there is one very stark conclusion to come out of the Peterborough by-election – that while Labour and the Conservatives are both deeply unpopular, the Labour vote remains more tribal than that of the Conservatives and will hold up better in a general election. Hard though it might be to see the bright side when your party’s share of the vote has plunged from 48 per cent to 31 per cent, Peterborough is something of a quiet triumph for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour result is truly miserable until you realise that the Conservatives’ share fell from 46 per cent to 21 per cent.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s announcement last week that it is to formally investigate Labour over anti-Jewish racism is an hour of great shame for the party. It is also, finally, a moment of hope for British Jews. The public body set up, with chilling irony by the party it is now to probe, has seen evidence of the institutional anti-Semitism that Jews have been making complaints about for four long years and decided that it is credible enough to investigate. Its decision makes Labour only the second political party in British history to face a formal racism inquiry. The first? The British National Party.  Finally Britain's Jews are feeling as though their fears are being listened to.

The no-deal Catch 22 for the Tories is well-established, bringing comfort to those who oppose no-deal (and Brexit) and worry to those who rightly see no-deal as the only way of actually leaving the EU. The idea is that the Tories cannot fight an election until Britain has genuinely left the EU, but that it will be impossible to leave without an election that would put Corbyn in power and stop Brexit altogether. The conclusion drawn by some Tories is that the new prime minister, whoever it is, will have to ask for another extension. But that's wrong. And while there is an existential issue for the Tories, there could be an even worse one for Labour – and even a dilemma for the Brexit Party: should they seek a pact with the Tories?

Today’s confirmation that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is launching a formal investigation of the Labour party has huge personal significance for me. I was the chief operating officer for the Commission between 2012 and 2015, responsible for redesigning the approach to statutory enquiries and investigations. I also had a role in making the Commission a warmer house for Jews. The EHRC I joined was not an organisation beloved of the state. Unfortunately this was not a function of its fearless independence, more that it wasn’t taken terribly seriously with a poor reputation amongst ministers. Budget cuts and obsessive introspection by some staff who regarded the body as a pressure group for leftist causes had seriously imperilled its very existence.

Elections in Wales are supposed to be boringly predictable. Until the 2019 European election, Labour had come first in 38 of the last 39 Wales-wide election contests, including all 26 of the last general elections, in a run that began in 1922. But all good – or bad – things tend to come to an end eventually. To describe what happened in the European election as an electoral earthquake in Wales seems almost to understate the magnitude of what happened. The Brexit Party, who did not even exist until six weeks ago, got more than double the Labour vote share, and came first in 19 of the 22 local authority areas in Wales.

Protestors on the anti-Brexit marches have sensed an eerie absence. ‘What is it?’ I thought back in March as I stood on a soapbox to address an audience so jammed by the weight of numbers on Park Lane that it could not escape. Then it hit me. ‘What the hell have they done with the left?’ There were no Socialist Workers Party placards or George Galloways. The people who hijacked every demonstration I could remember had vanished. I saw plenty of left-wingers. On the neighbouring soapbox, a succession of socialists spoke well on the need to protect migrants and workers’ rights in a reformed Europe.

A Labour activist – since elected a councillor – sharing neo-Nazi material declaring that 'the Jews declared war on Germany in 1933'. A video of a Labour MP rousing a rabble with the incendiary suggestion that 'Zionism is the enemy of peace'. An activist for the self-proclaimed anti-racist party suggesting a march on their local synagogue. The secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour telling a crowd of pro-Palestinian marchers that Jews are ‘in the gutter’. In isolation, all of these are jaw-dropping and deeply alarming. That they all happened – or emerged – in a short period of time following years of similarly scandalous behaviour means that a certain ennui about Labour anti-Semitism has set in.

After a disappointing local election result for Labour last week, politicians were quick to blame the party's Brexit ambiguity for the net loss they suffered. Labour councillors in Sunderland and Barnsley said talk of a second referendum had been unhelpful on the doorstep. Meanwhile, MPs including Jess Phillips suggested that a clearer call for a so-called People's Vote would boost support for the party. Downing Street hoped they could capitalise on the party's Brexit worries by convincing the Labour frontbench to back some form of Brexit deal in order to bring the matter to a close. However, the view in Labour a week on is rather different.

These are the most extraordinary local elections of my lifetime. The Tories’ loss of more than 1,000 councillors is way worse than the gloomiest projections. And yet Labour should be as depressed as the government because the fact that it is losing more than 100 seats, and its share of the vote is broadly the same as the Tories' is devastating for it, when arguably this is the most shambolic government in modern history and the comparator elections are the 2015 Ed Miliband lowpoint. And although Brexit is one explanation for both parties’ poor performance, for Labour in particular it is a million miles from being the whole explanation – for the definitional reason that Labour isn’t in charge of Brexit.

Jeremy Corbyn has again shown his power over the structures of the Labour party by winning today's national executive committee showdown over its European elections manifesto. A faction of MPs, led by Tom Watson and backed by the GMB, Unison, Usdaw and TSSA unions, had hoped to change party policy to support for a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal that Parliament comes up with. But Corbyn and the Unite union had opposed this, and this afternoon, they came out on top.