The depressing truth is that no one could have been in the least surprised that Tuesday’s meeting between community leaders and Jeremy Corbyn ended as it did — with the Labour leader offering not a single commitment to do anything of substance.
The meeting only happened because of a protest in Parliament Square prompted by Mr Corbyn’s defence of an antisemitic mural — hardly the most propitious background. But, if anything, the meeting turned out to be even worse than feared, with Mr Corbyn rowing back from the Labour NEC’s 2016 commitment to implement the full, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and then refusing to agree that he had any role to play in demanding that Labour MPs do not share platforms with alleged antisemites.
This is desperate stuff. For a man who says that he wants to be a “militant ally” in the fight against antisemitism, his actions — or lack of them — are rather those of someone who does not give a damn about it.
Fine words in newspaper articles are meaningless. All that counts is action and, on this, the jury is no longer out. As things now stand, only one conclusion is possible.
