Labour MPS should leave their racist party
Jeremy Corbyn is not going to quit over the anti-semitism row – so there is only one answer
Why did the Labour Party water down the official definition of anti-semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) – the one accepted by governments around the world, the Crown Prosecution Service and local councils? Why did Labour’s National Executive Committee refuse to listen to the pleas of the British Jewish community, including the Chief Rabbi and 68 rabbis? Why does the party’s own definition not see it as racist to compare Israel to Nazi Germany?
The answer is now clear: Jeremy Corbyn, whose spokesman last week insisted he was “militantly opposed to anti-semitism”, hosted an event in Parliament which would surely mean he would fall foul of the IHRA definition. Entitled “The Misuse of the Holocaust for Political Purposes”, the event was part of a UK tour called “Never Again for Anyone – Auschwitz to Gaza”. It was held, provocatively, on Holocaust Memorial Day, the most solemn of occasions commemorating the murder of six million Jews. The IHRA definition is clear: drawing comparisons between Nazi Germany and Israel is anti-semitic. If Labour were to accept that definition in full, its leader could be classed as an anti-semite and put under investigation.
It doesn’t matter that this happened in 2010, five years before Corbyn became leader. At 69, his politics have changed little in 40 years. Hajo Meyer, a Holocaust survivor and long-standing opponent of Zionism, was an official speaker, but, according to Rubin Katz, another survivor present, Corbyn instructed police to throw out Jewish people who objected to comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany.
In normal circumstances, a party leader would have to resign at the news that he or she had hosted an anti-semitic event in the very recent past. Yet under Corbyn’s Labour, there is no normality. The Labour leader has issued the weakest and most qualified of apologies, admitting that he did not agree with views expressed at the event and is sorry for any “concerns and anxiety” he has caused, but it falls far short of full atonement.
Neither did this happen in isolation. In 2012, Corbyn gave an interview to Iran’s Press TV in which he said he suspected the “hand of Israel” was behind an Islamist terrorist attack on Egyptian police and referred to a Hamas terrorist as a “brother”. The same year, he defended a blatantly anti-semitic mural on Facebook.
It is possible to criticise the actions of the Israeli government – from the killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters to its controversial “nation state” bill – without resorting to the dog whistle of anti-semitism which questions Israel’s right to exist, draws comparisons with Nazi Germany, or accuses British Jews of dual loyalty to Israel (all permitted under Labour’s weakened definition). Clearly, Labour’s anti-semitism problem is far from being limited to the fringe, where anonymous Corbyn supporters post vile racist imagery and Labour councillors are suspended for antisemitic comments. Just this week, Peter Willsman, a friend of Corbyn and member of Labour’s NEC, accused Jewish “Trump fanatics” of fabricating anti-semitic abuse.
the problem goes higher than that, to the leader himself. Corbyn’s own views, affiliations, dodgy history of platform-sharing and planet-sized blind spot on anti-semitism are being accommodated to such an absurd extent that Labour, a party with a great history of anti-racism, is the only political organisation in Europe bar Hungary’s far-right Fidesz party that refuses to adopt the full definition of anti-semitism. This accommodation is tearing Labour apart: members are leaving and MPS such as Dame Margaret Hodge and Ian Austin, who lost relatives in the Holocaust, are threatened with disciplinary action for protesting.
So what are Labour MPS going to do? They can’t mount a leadership challenge, after the failed coup in 2016, and Corbyn will not resign. Moderate Labour MPS assume they can save the party if they carry on trying to fight Corbyn on this issue, but I fear that this assumption is misguided and the party is already lost, sacrificed to its leader, who is too stubborn to see the damage he is causing. As risky as it may seem to those MPS, they have little option but to leave. There is a great, socially democratic, centre-left party out there for the taking. It is just no longer Corbyn’s Labour Party.