‘Utterly betrayed’: Britain’s Jews are now politically homeless

We Jews have evolved to be neurotic; so neurotic that, in certain circumstances, the Syrian border feels slightly safer than Muswell Hill. I’ll take Muswell Hill. Polls say that only 7 per cent of British Jews will consider voting for Labour on 12 December, while 47 per cent of British Jews will consider leaving the country if Labour win. I’d rather fight Dave (generic name) from the Labour Representation Committee than Dave from Hezbollah (likewise generic). But I shouldn’t joke; and nothing feels funny any more. Things are always OK until they aren’t.

Jews have fled Labour since Ed Miliband’s time. In 2010 we were split quite evenly between Labour and the Tories: but Gordon Brown is a serious man. Despite the fact that Miliband is Jewish, support dwindled under his leadership — he was too ashamed of Israel, the homeland to which Jews remain attached, whatever the Jewish Corbynista fringe may say — and he is a nebbish. Corbyn, though, is something awful: the leader whose response to the Enough’s Enough rally in 2018 was to spend the Passover seder with Jewdas, the ‘radical diasporists’ who have prayed ‘Please God, smash the state of Israel / Smash it in the abundance of your love’. That was his answer to Jewish fear, and we knew him then for what he was: a Jew baiter, and a coward. Under his leadership, and the semi-respectable sheen of anti-Zionism — let’s have a Rainbow Nation with Hamas! — the poison spreads. The libel that the Jews are the enemy of everything holy (formerly Christ, now socialism) has returned.

There are allies, but they are largely outside Labour now. Ian Austin, a Labour MP for 14 years, now an independent, this morning asked Labour supporters to vote Tory: due to anti-Semitism. ‘For a party that’s got a proud record of fighting for equality and opposing racism, the Labour party’s been poisoned by anti-Jewish racism under his leadership and it is a complete and utter disgrace.’

Among Jews who care about Labour, or what Labour once was, there have been fierce battles since 2017: between those who would fight from within, and those who think that any vote for Corbyn is a vote for an anti-Semite.