Vote tactically to keep out extremism on right
V I USUALLY vote Labour. Except in European elections, where there’s proportional representation. Then I vote Green.
My parents were active in Labour. Growing up in Hendon, I was stuffing leaflets in letterboxes while still in short trousers. My parents believed in social justice, the welfare state, public ownership of basic utilities and internationalism: the common good.
I was suckled on those values. They never felt in conflict with my Jewishness. Indeed as I got older it seemed to me that it’s what Judaism was all about: kindness to the stranger; treating one’s neighbour as one would like to be treated oneself; siding with the underdog. With our history of persecution it was natural to identify with least powerful, the most vulnerable.
I hero-worshipped Ben Gurion and his vision of a strong Israel at peace with its neighbours, as a democratic state of all of its citizens.
While the new Jewish historians raised uncomfortable questions about the expulsion of the Arab majority during the war of independence, postHolocaust the necessity of Israel’s survival was for me axiomatic. I signed up to volunteer during the Six-Day War.
Then, the large majority of UK Jews voted Labour. Flash forward 50 years.
This January I gave up my membership of Labour. Not over antisemitism, which hadn’t yet reached peak uproar, but over Brexit. I wrote to Jeremy Corbyn threatening my departure after 40 years if he did not follow the lead of his members who were overwhelmingly pro-Remain. He took no notice, and I was obliged to follow through.
At the same time I resisted the furore around antisemitism. I wanted to believe it was exaggerated; that the anti-Corbyn bandwagon, whipped up by the right-wing press, was too easy to step onto; that Labour was educable about where legitimate anti-Zionism morphed into antisemitism. With a Netanyahu government imposing ever-greater humiliations on the Palestinians, some on the left found an easy target for self-righteous condemnation. They began to question Israel’s right to exist. They didn’t begin to understand our sensitivity to any threat to its survival.
Corbyn did himself no favours. Slow to respond and act. I found the Panorama programme detailing interference from the leadership in the internal body set up to probe complaints of antisemitism heartbreaking.
But I don’t fear the antisemitism of the left nearly as much as I do the antisemitism of the right.
The big spike in antisemitism in recent years happened after the Brexit vote. That vote legitimised the bitter and small-minded to speak out. I fear it will happen again, and the hatred will be worse. Don’t be fooled by the election sweet-talking. We stand to elect the most ideologically extreme right-wing government this country has ever seen. The Conservative Party has become the Brexit Party in all but name. It’s a xenophobic populist party which has expelled all the one-Nation Tories of substance. It has limited respect for democracy. Leaving Europe will continue to be painful for years to come. It will not be good for the Jews.
Nine years of Conservative government has brought rising wealth for a few, and a huge rise in poverty for many. This is not the Jewish way.
The received wisdom in the Jewish press is to vote for anyone but Labour. I beg to differ. I appeal to fellow Jews to vote tactically, for any candidate who will support a second referendum.
Paul Morrison is a film-maker
Leaving Europe… will not be good for the Jews’