A singular issue

The JC has never, nor will it ever, endorse any candidate or party in an election. We are, above all, independent — and our readers are informed enough to make up their own minds. But, in this election, we most certainly have a view over who should not be prime minister. Our usual editorial in the week before an election would go through the main parties and their leaders, highlighting the key issues. But this is no ordinary election. Next week, there is one overriding imperative for our community: ensuring that Jeremy Corbyn does not become prime minister. In the four years since he became Labour leader, Mr Corbyn has injected the poison of antisemitism into British politics. He has transformed the landscape, entirely for the worse. Before his ascent to the leadership, anyone suggesting that the Chief Rabbi would feel the need to intervene in an election to accuse the leader of the Labour Party of “mendacious fiction” over antisemitism would have been regarded as mad. But that is the reality of politics today. Barely a day has gone by since Mr Corbyn became Labour leader when an example of antisemitism within his party has not emerged — and despite his claims to have dealt with it, today’s Labour Party remains an institutionally antisemitic party, under investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

In 2017, few took the prospect of Mr Corbyn as PM seriously. His strong performance then changed everything, and there is now a very real prospect that, next Friday, he could emerge as prime minister. At the start of the election, we used our front page to speak to non-Jewish readers, asking those who abhor racism to act on that when they cast their vote. We repeat that request. But we hardly need to remind our regular readers of the implications of Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister — and of the need to use our votes to play our part in stopping that happening. There are some Jewish supporters of Mr Corbyn but they are a small minority. So infected has this once-great political party become that, even if it doesn’t win the forthcoming election, there will nonetheless be a depressing legacy. First, even if it gets down to properly and thoroughly tackling its own racism, as opposed to pretending to be doing so, Labour will take a generation to rid itself of antisemitism. And, sadly, this election has shown that many supposed friends seem, either by endorsing Labour or standing as a Labour candidate, to have ignored this contamination. That is a salutary lesson to us all.