“Jewish members tell me that their local Labour Party and their experience of being in the Labour Party is completely transformed” – This was the optimistic tone struck by Jewish Labour Movement head Mike Katz.
Speaking at a JC event, key Labour figures told a packed audience in South Hampstead Shul that Labour has changed under Sir Keir Starmer.
As Labour continues to surge ahead in the polls, the JC hosted an event with Labour insiders, chaired by editor Jake Wallis Simons. Labour figures affirmed that Starmer had led the Party in the right direction, away from antisemitism and towards winning an election, while commentator Melanie Phillips said that the Party still had some way to go.
Mike Katz, head of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) said that constituency Labour Party groups – the CLPs which are the grassroots of the Party – have changed for the better.
Former Liverpool MP, Dame Louise Ellman, spoke about how she was hounded out of Corbyn’s Labour Party but rejoined under Starmer.
Dame Louise Ellman on the panel (JC photographer)
During a campaign of “dehumanization” against the veteran MP, members of Ellman’s CLP would avert their eyes from her, slam doors in her face and refuse to say her name, referring to her only as “the MP.”
“I didn’t want to leave [Labour] but I couldn’t stay,” Ellman told the room, adding that her CLP might still harbour antisemites, but the worst have been ejected from the Party.
On the day he was elected, Starmer told Ellman that he would make it his mission to rid Labour of antisemitism: “He had one goal on his hands; to make the Labour Party electable and deal with the problem of antisemitism.
“Keir Starmer has turned the fortunes of the Labour Party around from a Party that people could not vote for – and they were right not to vote for it – into an electable Party that can form the Party of government.
“There is no barrier for a Jewish person now to say they can’t vote Labour because of the antisemitism. I think that is now gone,” Ellman said.
The head of the progressive think tank Labour Together, Josh Simons, worked at the centre of Corbyn’s office during the antisemitism crisis.
“As the only Jew in the office, they put me in charge of Corbyn’s relationship with the Jewish community," Simons said.
Corbyn would often make tea and jam for meetings, but Simons said he treated a crisis meeting with the Board of Deputies with “disdain.”
Noting that the Party had changed immeasurably under new leadership, Simons left the JC editor seemingly puzzled when he said: “Do I trust the Labour Party as a Jewish person? No, I do not trust the Labour Party.”
“The underlining point is the institution of the Labour Party is not why I do my job [...] I care about centre-left values and a set of things like democracy and freedom. I believe that the Labour Party is the best vehicle right now to advance those things.”
The crowd at South Hampstead United Synagogue (Ben Castiel)
But, JC columnist Melanie Phillips drew applause when she said, “If the majority of [Labour|] members support the [Palestinian] cause, you have a structural fundamental problem.”
The problem involves the progressive world, according to Phillips, “They support the Palestinian cause, and to me, this is constructed entirely on the desire to annihilate Israel and to appropriate Jewish history”.
The commentator said “Starmer understands that if the Labour Party is besmirched by the stain of antisemitism, it is nothing. He absolutely believes that and will do everything he can to remove that stain.”
“But a stain is something you can see,” she said, suggesting some antisemites remain.
“A number of people have been left in the Party, some in positions of significant influence, who have views which are in my view obnoxious and dangerous to Jewish people and to the state of Israel”.
