This has already been one of the most depressing election campaigns in living memory.
That antisemitism is, for the first time in our nation’s history, an election issue is not so much depressing as appalling. But in some ways worse is that it is not a bigger issue, with Labour repeatedly managing to divert attention away from its institutional racism.
The Labour leadership has no compunction in lying about the party’s tolerance of antisemitism. In Tuesday’s debate, Jeremy Corbyn was blatant in his dissembling over the issue, as we report on our front page. And he was, once again, allowed to get away with it.
Too few journalists marshal the facts to hold Mr Corbyn or his allies to account. Too few journalists even know the facts.
But this week has been salutary in another respect. Labour propagandists argue that there is antisemitism in other parties and that the focus on Labour shows that it is ‘weaponised’ to attack the party, as if the existence of Conservative racists somehow undermines exposure of their own party’s racists.
There is indeed antisemitism in other parties. There always has been and, as history teaches us, there always will be. This newspaper exposes antisemitism wherever we find it. This week two Conservatives and one Liberal Democrat candidates have been revealed as having made grotesquely antisemitic comments.
They have rightly been suspended. But no one is fooled by the Corbynites’ attempt to use these examples to excuse their own record on the basis that the parties are all as bad as each other.
No evidence has been produced to show that the LibDems or Tories are institutionally antisemitic. So much evidence exists against Labour that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission is now investigating the party.
