This time it’s different – why anti-Semitism could finally sink Labour Stephen Bush
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/07/11/time-different-anti-semitism-could-finally-sink-labour/
The crisis may now cost Labour significant votes
What is left to be said about Labour and anti-Semitism? The moment when a reconciliation could be effected by the party’s present leadership passed long ago. The majority of British Jewish community organisations and the leadership of Labour’s own affiliate, the Jewish Labour Movement, believe that Jeremy Corbyn is at best a facilitator of anti-Semitism and at worst an anti-Semite himself. According to the pollster Survation, which accurately predicted the result of the 2017 election, 86 per cent of British Jews believe that the Labour leader is anti-Semitic.
There is division over exactly when the point of no return was reached. For some it was Corbyn’s defence of an anti- Semitic mural, for others it was his comment that two British Zionists had “no sense of irony”, for a few it was the repeated indulgence of Chris Williamson. But they are united on the important fact, which is that the moment of redemption has been and gone.
As far as the struggle for power in the United Kingdom as a whole is concerned, the lesson of both the recent and the distant past, is that the row doesn’t really matter. The history of race relations is that majorities tend not to consider the fears of minorities when they cast their votes. Outside of the handful of constituencies where Britain’s Jews gather in significant numbers, there is no evidence that Labour’s anti-Semitism problem cost the party electorally in the 2017 election.
To the extent that the problem might have wider purchase, it always hinged on whether or not the failure to tackle anti-Semitism in the party’s ranks could trigger a full-blown split in the Labour party. And yet, when Luciana Berger, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, quit the Labour party over antisemitism, although her former colleagues were quick to tweet their solidarity with her, just six made the jump from Labour to the short-lived Independent Group.
Nor were the voters any more inclined to defect as a result: Brexit, rather than anti-Semitism, was the dominant force in moving voters away from Labour in the local and European elections, and the Liberal Democrats, rather than the Independent Group, were the beneficiaries.
So this week’s Panorama documentary was always destined to be something of a non-event as far as the life of the Labour party is concerned. Within the party, there are three groups: the first regards the anti-Semitism crisis as a manufactured smear to defeat Corbyn, the second regards it as a genuine problem that Corbyn is committed to solving, and the third believes that the problem cannot be tackled without a change in leadership.
Just as it is hard to see how relations between this Labour Party and British Jews could ever be rebuilt, it is hard to see what event could shift opinion within those three tribes.
Added to that, because disaffected members of a political party tend to become former members of a political party, stories about anti-Semitism strengthen rather than weaken Corbyn’s grasp of the party: Corbynsceptic members and leave, and even if they are not actively replaced by new Corbynite members, the internal balance of forces shifts towards Corbyn.
But it might be different this time, not because of any particular highlights in Panorama, but simply because of the weight of repetition. Growing number of Labour figures, including those who are strongly supportive of the leadership, believe that the perception that Labour has questions to answer is beginning to sink in among the country at large.
That realisation erodes Labour’s longstanding brand. If the Conservatives are British politics’ equivalent of the Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man – all brain, and no heart – then Labour are the Scarecrow: all heart, no brain. Voters may not have acquired any particular concern for minority groups themselves but they expect Labour to do so. It could yet prove the party’s undoing if it comes to be seen as the party with no heart and no brain.
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