With the Conservative Party in crisis and the “red wall” northern constituencies reportedly ending their brief love affair with the Tories, the Labour Party is said to be back in the political game after its near-death experience under Jeremy Corbyn.
Everyone apart from Boris Johnson appears to believe that, unless the Conservative Party changes course, Labour’s current leader Sir Keir Starmer has a good chance of becoming prime minister at the next general election.
This is because Starmer’s purge of Corbynistas and his repeated declarations that he will rid the party of antisemitism have enabled him to reposition Labour once again as a moderate party that won’t frighten the horses.
Certain Jewish community leaders appear to have swallowed this with enthusiasm. Last September, Mike Katz, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, wrote: “Slowly but surely, Labour is regaining the community’s trust”. In October, Dame Louise Ellman, the former MP for Liverpool Riverside and former JLM chair, who resigned from the party in 2019 over antisemitism, rejoined it.
The Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, recently met Starmer for what appears to have been a mutual love-in.
Afterwards, Rabbi Mirvis tweeted that there had been a “warm and constructive discussion”. For his part, Starmer tweeted: “I’m heartened to receive his appreciation for the progress we’ve made in earning back the trust of Jewish communities”.
It’s obvious why Starmer is so keen to be awarded a hechsher by the Jewish community. The stain of antisemitism destroyed Labour as the moral project that its followers believe it to be.
It’s not so clear, however, why the Chief Rabbi and others are falling over themselves to gather the Labour Party to their collective bosom. First of all, most of the community generally votes Conservative.
Second, regardless of what people think about Boris Johnson himself, he is presiding over one of the most pro-Jewish administrations in living memory. A significant number of his ministers are extremely well-disposed towards both Jews and Israel.
In February, the Government supported an amendment to stop local authority pension funds from backing BDS attacks against UK companies connected with Israel. A bill to prohibit public bodies supporting BDS is promised before the end of the current parliament.
The government has also taken condign action against the National Union of Students, removing it from all official groups and committees and refusing to engage with it over a string of antisemitic incidents within the organisation.
Third and most important, just as in Jaws it really wasn’t safe at all to get back into the water, the reassurance that it’s now safe for Jews to vote Labour again may be distinctly premature.
True, Starmer has gone to great lengths to rid the party of its most egregious antisemites. But the idea that the party is now largely free from anti-Jewish bigotry is very far from the truth.
Like the rest of the “progressive” political world, it continues to be riddled with poisonous anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Of 148 disciplinary cases heard by the party’s NEC from January until March this year, 81.08 per cent involved claims of anti-Jewish racism. Labour MPs and councillors continue to spread Palestinian lies demonising Israel. A Wolverhampton Labour councillor, Ansar Hussain, has been suspended by the party for sharing antisemitic claims and conspiracy theories about Israel.
In a recent demonstration marking the “Nakba” — the term used in the Muslim world for the “catastrophe” of the creation of the State of Israel — Zarah Sultana, Labour MP for Coventry South, declared outside Downing Street that Israel “is an apartheid state and we should not be afraid to say it”.
At last year’s Labour conference, delegates passed a resolution condemning Israel for “the ongoing Nakba in Palestine, Israel’s militarised violence attacking the Al Aqsa mosque, the forced displacements from Sheikh Jarrah and the deadly assault on Gaza”.
Several Labour MPs spoke out against February’s anti-BDS amendment. Zarah Sultana said it would have a “chilling effect” and ensure that pension funds were “weaponised against human rights campaigns”. Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle said it wouldn’t allow any fund to operate with an “ethical framework”.
When the party invited members last year to undergo antisemitism training, this provoked hundreds of comments peppered with antisemitism, conspiracy theories and foul language.
So why are Jewish community leaders laundering the Labour Party? What they should be saying is that there can be no rapprochement with Labour unless the party stops demonising Israel, falsely accusing it of illegal occupation and promoting a Palestinian cause which writes Jews out of their own national story and produces an unstoppable torrent of rabid antisemitism, complete with Nazi tropes.
But then, when was the last time these community leaders themselves stated such unequivocal facts about Israel and the Palestinian cause?
It’s hard to avoid concluding that, anxious as ever to keep their heads below the Israel parapet, these leaders are desperate for the fig-leaf provided by Starmer to enable them to resume their customary position of cosying up to the powerful.
Melanie Phillips is a Times columnist
