Straight fight

The end of the party conference season provides a useful time for taking stock.

From our community’s perspective — leaving aside all other considerations — we have learned nothing new. Labour conference may not have had the volume of antisemitic poison of some years but it was no less distressing, with the Tuesday afternoon display of Palestinian flags proving what was, in effect, an en masse troll of the Jewish community.

In his speech, Jeremy Corbyn said nothing beyond his usual formulaic condemnation of antisemitism, while offering not a word of apology for his own actions or the slightest indication as to how his party might even attempt to regain the trust of genuine anti-racists.

We hardly needed to be told but we do at least now know for certain that Mr Corbyn’s Labour is not going to change.

Meanwhile the Conservatives went out of their way both to attack Mr Corbyn’s antisemitism and to pledge what one Cabinet minister called the party’s “unshakable solidarity” with the Jewish community.

Unless the Labour moderates suddenly develop a spine, the next election will be between these two options.

The issue will be how many non-Jews are as worried as Jews are by Labour.

Last word of many

Last week, Michael Freedland filed the piece that appears on page 14 of this week's JC. It was laid out on a page before the weekend and we are publishing the piece unaltered.

Typically, he had suggested the idea over a lunch a few days before. A journalist of the old school, he let neither his 83 years nor changing journalistic fashions alter his own modus operandi.

Although it was one of many commissioned over that lunch, it will be the only  one written. Michael Freedland’s sudden death on Monday robs our community of one of its giants — a man who was respected, indeed loved, by everyone who knew him. And that number was huge.

The guest list for his long-running You Don’t Have To Be Jewish radio programme was itself a roll call of recent Jewish history.

But he was also a wise counsel to rabbis, politicians, actors, writers and countless others, all of whom valued his warmth, discretion and sagacity. His knowledge of showbusiness history — especially Jewish — was unrivalled and he knew more stories than any one individual has any right to know, many of which he shared with his readers.

Michael Freedland’s life was full and rich, but even at 83 it is over far too soon.