Jewish tycoon’s furious blast at Corbyn on return to misery
Jewish tycoon’s furious blast at Labour leader...
ONE of Britain’s most prominent Jewish businessmen has launched a withering attack on Jeremy Corbyn after the Labour leader refused to apologise for the party’s handling of antisemitism claims.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, Sir Lloyd Dorfman, the founder of foreign exchange giant Travelex, said he feared for ‘my country, the community and business’.
He warned that Britain risks a return to being known again as the ‘sick man of Europe’ if a Labour government recreates the ‘ economic misery and disaster’ of the 1970s.
Dorfman, who also founded and c hai r s parcel del i very s e r vi c e Doddle, said: ‘[Corbyn] has had so many opportunities to try to convince people that they’re not anti-Semitic. But the more he equivocates and the more he prevaricates, you end up with an inescapable conclusion... Does he think people are really stupid?
‘When the Chief Rabbi came out, followed by a whole range of other faith leaders who equally supported what he was saying – I mean, is that all some plot or conspiracy? It’s not a difficult thing to deal with if you want to deal with it convincingly. So why doesn’t he do that?’
Dorfman – a senior figure in the Jewish community – is deputy chairman of the Community Security Trust, a charity aimed at helping victims of anti-Semitism. He is also a trustee of JW3, the Jewish community centre in London, and a trustee of the charity behind the Holocaust Memorial to be built next to the Houses of Parliament.
A noted philanthropist worth a reported £ 720 million, Dorfman added: ‘This is not the traditional Labour Party that most Labour Party supporters have supported and indeed historically was a home for the Jewish community.
‘They call themselves the Labour Party but it’s not the Labour Party we know. I fear for my country and I fear for the community and I fear for business.
‘Who’d have thought that in the 21st Century after all that we’ve supposedly seen and learnt post the Holocaust that we would see across the media as much f ocus on antiSemitism as there is today?’
After working in the City, Dorfman founded Travelex in 1976, which became the world’s largest foreign exchange business. The 67-year-old no longer owns Travelex but has business interests spanning property and film production.
He believes that under Corbyn, Britain could return to the 1970s when it was seen as ‘the sick man of Europe’ amid long-running strikes such as the two-year dispute at the Grunwick factory in Willesden, North London.
‘I never thought that in my lifetime I would face the prospect of a return to that sort of thing,’ he said.
‘It comes back to the point I said before. You would think people would learn post the Second World War.
‘ You would think people would remember what it was like to have a heavily Left-wing, union-dominated government when it just created economic misery and disaster.
‘ You would think people would remember those things and the lessons from it. But here we are 40 or 50 years on and what do you know? We could face the prospect of similar sorts of things again. His much younger supporters would not remember what it was like when we were the sick man of Europe and how detrimental to everybody it was.’