The police are giving in to anti-Semitism

How have we got to a point where a police officer thinks it legitimate to tell a man he cannot cross a street on which a pro-Palestinian demonstration is taking place because he is “openly Jewish”? For months, Jewish groups have warned that the centres of Britain’s cities have become “no-go zones” for Jews because of the hate marches. A shocking video lays bare the extent to which the police appear to be complicit.

Gideon Falter, the head of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, did not threaten the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. He has stated that he was “not part of any protest or counter-protest”, and was simply “exercising my right to walk around my home city”. But one officer told him he was “worried about the reaction” to his presence. Another warned him that, if he did not leave the area, he would be arrested.

Mr Falter has made clear that his issue is not with the individual officers but with the shameful policy adopted by the Metropolitan Police. It has done almost nothing as anti-Semitic slogans have been chanted on the capital’s streets, and notoriously said that calls for “jihad” had “a number of meanings”.

Clearly, it recognises that the marches pose a danger to Jewish people’s safety. But its reaction is not to seek to ban the protests or to curtail them. It is to tell a Jewish man that he should go elsewhere. It is hard to imagine that an officer would make such a statement about a member of another minority group.

The Met released a statement yesterday, saying the use of the term “openly Jewish” was regrettable. But it also appeared to criticise what it described as a new trend – counter-protesters appearing along the march route to express their views, calling them “provocative”. Obviously, this will have public order implications, but it is intolerable that the Met seems to regard its role as facilitating extremist anti-Israel demonstrations while cracking down on those who voice their opposition to terrorism. A man was even arrested last month for carrying a “Hamas are terrorists” sign at a protest.

As the former home secretary Suella Braverman has noted, “it appears that they’ve picked a side”. It is wrong, she says, that “one group of people cannot exercise their rights to enjoy London peacefully in order to allow another group to express their hatred and intimidation freely”. Indeed.

This cannot be allowed to continue. If the Met refuses to put its own house in order, the Government has a duty to intervene. It is disgraceful that the police seem to think it preferable to restrict Jewish people’s freedoms than to confront the anti-Semites in our midst.

Fighting sick-note culture

There was a certain irony to the Prime Minister making a speech on worklessness on a Friday when swathes of Whitehall are empty due to the rise in home-working. But Rishi Sunak’s intervention was commendable nonetheless. He struck a bold note, setting out his belief in the “moral mission” of reforming welfare to get people back into work.

Since the pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns, something in Britain’s economy has fundamentally shifted. Some 850,000 more people have joined the ranks of the economically inactive due to long-term sickness, with this rise disproportionately concentrated in the young. As Mr Sunak noted, this has “wiped out a decade’s worth of progress”.

It is clearly right that we offer support for those who genuinely need it, but that safety net must not become a hammock. People should not be abandoned to a life on welfare, but supported to find work that is a source not just of income but of dignity – and, as Mr Sunak says, a potential pathway to better mental and physical health.

The Prime Minister has shown courage in taking on a controversial issue and we must now hope that his speech is built upon. Welfare reform was popular under the Coalition, and Labour is not going to address this crisis.

Mr Sunak also has a strong political narrative he can draw on. As the chancellor who introduced the furlough scheme, he spent billions protecting people threatened by unemployment. Who better to now make the case that, to pay the bill for that help, Britain needs to get back to work?

The wasteland

Pupils have been mugged on “ghost town” roads created by a low traffic neighbourhood, or LTN, in London, we report today. In the deserted streets of Streatham Wells only criminals thrive, while schoolchildren might have to wait an hour for a bus delayed by the traffic scheme imposed by Lambeth council. As many of us discovered during lockdown, streets feel unsafe not just through a lack of police (who are seldom present at the best of times) but through a lack of fellow citizens. LTNs create deserts, empty of friendly faces. It’s as though the medieval label “Here be dragons” were updated to “Here be muggers”. It won’t do.