U.K.: Can Labour shake off its persistent antisemitism?
The British left is marinating in “antiJewish prejudice” that “has plunged the Labour Party into crisis,” said Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express. Azhar Ali, a Labour candidate for Parliament, was revealed last week to have spouted “the grotesque conspiracy theory” that Israel deliberately allowed Hamas to carry out its Oct. 7 massacre in order to provide a pretext for bombing Gaza. Rather than immediately disowning the candidate, Labour leader Keir Starmer stood by him for days. Only after another recording became public, this time showing Ali casting aspersions on “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters,” did Starmer finally cut him loose. The party has also had to suspend another candidate for saying that Brits who volunteer for the Israeli army “should be locked up.” Starmer claimed to have purged Labour of the antisemitism that permeated it under the previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Yet since he took over in 2020, there have been more than 700 complaints of antisemitism displayed by Labour lawmakers, candidates, or activists. Clearly, “the flames of enmity are burning out of control.”
This isn’t entirely Starmer’s fault, said Jack Kessler in the Evening Standard. “Progress has been made”—it’s just that there was such an awfully long way for Labour to go. Corbyn came from the far left of the party, the part that believes Israel is a colonialist state working for evil capitalists. Under him, as an “excoriating report” by the Equality and Human Rights Commission made clear, Labour was “responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination” against Jews. Starmer expelled Corbyn and many other party members, but it will take longer to “achieve a proper clearout.” That Ali’s offensive comments came at a local Labour meeting shows that the candidate assumed his fellow party members agreed with his “anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.” That’s because Starmer hasn’t “changed his party fundamentally, only put an agreeable PR gloss on it,” said Rod Liddle in The Spectator. Views such as Ali’s are still “all too prevalent,” particularly “within our Muslim communities,” and they’re likely shared by “the majority of Labour activists.”
Yet this problem runs far deeper than one party, said The Observer in an editorial. The Conservatives, too, just had to expel one of their own, Salisbury Mayor Atiqul Hoque, for social media comments ranting about Zionist paymasters. The sad reality is that antisemitism is “flourishing” across Britain. A Jewish charity that tracks antisemitic incidents reported more than 4,000 in 2023, the most in 40 years, with “a huge spike following the Hamas attack on Israel.” Depressingly, the abuse began the day of Hamas’ attack, well before Israel mounted its military response. That shows that the trigger wasn’t Israeli actions, “but the massacre of Jews itself,” said Danny Cohen in The Telegraph. The terrorism radicalized a shocking number of British citizens, who now feel free to act out their hatred. “Synagogues have been targeted, posters of kidnapped babies defaced with swastikas, cemeteries desecrated.” Everyone needs to denounce this loudly: the parties, yes, but also ordinary people. Unless the antisemites face consequences, “I fear for where this story will end.”