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Review: Léon Blum

Top French player in the premier league

August 23, 2015 09:27
Léon Blum

By

Vernon Bogdanor,

Vernon Bogdanor

2 min read

By Pierre Birnbaum
Yale University Press, £14.99

Britain has never had a Jewish prime minister - the nearest, Disraeli, though loyal to his roots, had been converted to Christianity by his father. But we have twice come close: in 2005, with the Conservative, Michael Howard, and in 2015 with Labour's Ed Miliband. On neither occasion, however, was their Jewishness a matter for public comment. Indeed, I doubt whether it swung a single vote one way or the other.

In France, things have been quite different. There, since the time of the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s, antisemitism has been a respectable public doctrine, but France remains the only country in the world, apart from Israel, to have elected a number of Jewish prime ministers.

The first was the Socialist, Léon Blum, prime minister of a Popular Front coalition of the left in 1936, among whose achievements was a 40-hour week and paid holidays for all workers.