Antisemitism crisis: Chief Rabbi shames Corbyn and delivers Britain a wake up call
Britain’s election has just turned from being an already bitter battle between – and within – the political parties over Brexit to one in which Britain’s Chief Rabbi warned that “the very soul of our nation is at stake.”
In a significant intervention, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, has claimed in an article published in The Times that the way in which the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has handled antisemitism allegations makes him “unfit for high office” and called on voters to use their conscience in the forthcoming election.
Furthermore, the Chief Rabbi added that “a new poison” has taken hold in Labour “sanctioned from the very top.” He said that Corbyn’s claim to have dealt with antisemitism is a mendacious fiction and “incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud.”
Rabbi Mirvis went on to explain that British Jews are gripped by an understandable and justified anxiety. He wrote: “How complicit in prejudice would a leader of Her Majesty’s opposition have to be to be considered unfit for office?”
“Would associations with those who have incited hatred against Jews be enough? Would describing as ‘friends’ those who endorse the murder of Jews be enough? It seems not.”
“It is not my place to tell any person how they should vote. I regret being in this situation at all. I simply pose the question: What will the result of this election say about the moral compass of our country? When December 12 arrives, I ask every person to vote with their conscience. Be in no doubt, the very soul of our nation is at stake.”
This is an existential moment in British political life, one more used to the Punch and Judy show style rows about funding for the NHS, the police or schools and ludicrous TV head to head debates in which all the leaders are revealed to have feet of clay.
Unprecedented is a word often used far too lightly but the Chief Rabbi’s criticism of Corbyn is one of those occasions when the description fits perfectly: no one can remember a time when a religious leader has intervened so boldly in a national election. It’s not the British way.
Once the Chief Rabbi’s bombshell dropped, you could almost hear the gasps of amazement and feel the shivers following his comments which are being blazoned across every media and broadcast outlet.
Whether you think Rabbi Mirvis was right to intervene in this way is academic. What is clear from reading his article is his own unease about getting involved, a discomfort that makes his assertions all the more pertinent.
As he wrote: “Convention dictates that the Chief Rabbi stays well away from party politics — and rightly so. However, challenging racism is not a matter of politics, it goes well beyond that.”
What comes across so strongly is that the spiritual leader of Britain’s 300,000 Jews feels it necessary to express this anxiety, and the community’s fears over a Labour government. These are not new fears: Lord Sacks, his predecessor, has already accused the pro- Hamas supporting Corbyn of being an antisemite, and likened him to Enoch Powell.
Allegations of antisemitism have bedevilled Labour and Corbyn ever since he was elected to the leadership in 2015. Over the last two years, thirteen Labour MPs have left the party, mainly in protest at its handling of antisemitism and the vilification directed towards several of Labour’s female Jewish MPs.
Predictably, Rabbi Mirvis’ claims have been rejected by Corbyn and Labour, prompting angry supporters to say the antisemitic allegations are a conspiracy drummed up by the Conservative party – itself hit by claims of Islamophobia – and an antagonistic press hoping to smear Corbyn. It’s a risible view, backed up by the fact that much of the mainstream media has been slow to follow up on these allegations swirling around the community for years and they have only recently been taken seriously.
Ironically, British Jews have been among the most ardent Labour backers, and leading members of the community were instrumental in helping former prime minister, Tony Blair, to power.
It’s become part of the folklore that when young Jews become a bar or bat mitzvah, rabbis joke that they be given lifelong membership in the Labour Party.
The Jewish Labour Movement is one of the country’s oldest socialist groups but it is not campaigning nationally for Labour for the first time in its 100 year history.
The Jewish Chronicle, the UK’s most influential Jewish newspaper, ran a front-page editorial recently calling on non-Jews to wake-up to the dangers of a Corbyn government. Now they might listen.
There have been other shockers in this election campaign. As Rabbi Mirvis prepared to declare Corbyn unfit to hold power, so did Blair, the last Labour leader to win an election.
Blair refused to endorse the Labour leader as fit to run the country, recommending that Britain should vote tactically for a hung parliament. He reckons that Corbyn’s chances of a majority are tiny and that Labour’s manifesto plans – which include a massive nationalisation plan to take over the UK’s key industries and huge tax hikes – would “end badly.”
A zealous europhile, Blair also described Britain’s politics as “utterly dysfunctional” and he believes only another referendum can end the Brexit blockage.
There have been nasty jolts on the Tory side too. Michael Heseltine, former deputy Prime Minister and Cabinet minister in Lady Thatcher’s government, is telling voters today that he would vote for the Liberal Democrats, although as a Peer he can’t vote. Heseltine advised fellow Tories that they should either vote for the Lib Dems, or other Independent candidates, particularly those former Tory MPs now standing independently.
With little more than a fortnight to go before voting on December 12th, what other stingers are there in store?
The shape of the race has already changed since the election was announced. Then it was a four-horse race between the Tories, Labour, LibDems and the Brexit Party. There’s a fifth horse if you include the SNP, the front-runner in Scotland.
But the field is almost back down to the traditional two party race between the Tories and Labour following Brexit’s Nigel Farage decision to stand down candidates in previously held Conservative seats and focus on marginal Labour Leave seats. After a good start to the race, the shrill, head-girl style of Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, has run out of puff. She advocates revoking Brexit.
The polls are showing leads for the Tories of between 7% and up to 19%. Even at the lower end, this would give enough seats to hand Boris Johnson the majority he needs to form a new government and “Get Brexit Done.” But the very latest polls show some movement in Labour’s direction.
Perversely, could Labour’s problems with the Jewish community benefit the party at the polls? The row has certainly taken criticism of the party’s mind-blowing manifesto off the front pages which de facto reduces the proper scrutiny that Labour’s Marxist takeover of huge swathes of industry deserves.
The problem is not so much the cost of Labour’s spending and investment plans. More critical is the impact that its nationalisation plans and higher wealth taxes on income and capital gains will have on hindering the growth of businesses of all sizes but also on the attitude towards enterprise.
Would we see a repeat of the 1970s brain-drain, for example, when some of the UK’s best and brightest left the country? Will businesses up sticks, and move overseas? Will overseas investors stop coming?
For without question, Labour has designed the most radical, socialist transformation of the economy ever attempted in Britain: several of the UK’s biggest power companies are already switching their domicile overseas.
In the City, people are already moving money abroad to protect against a Labour government which will inevitably have to bring in exchange controls to stop capital flight. The public need to be told what Labour’s policies really mean, and how they will affect their work, their savings and their pensions.
Yet the charges of antisemitism eclipse even those serious concerns. And if Britain is still a decent country the public will be sickened by what they have heard from the leader of Britain’s Jews, and horrified by the extravagance and danger of the manifesto created by Corbyn’s Marxist and Stalinist advisers.
When the historians come to write the story of this election, they may look back to a few hours on November 25th – and the intervention of the Chief Rabbi – as the day when the election was decided in the public’s mind. But also, sadly, when British politics was revealed to be hateful in a way that would once have been unthinkable.
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