Labour and anti-semitism: a good start, but not enough

I know this happened a couple of weeks back now, but I just wanted to comment on Ed Miliband’s piece in the New Statesman, where he uses his Jewish heritage to try to rebuild bridges with London’s Jewish community after the disaster of Ken Livingstone’s relationship with them over recent years, which started to go wrong in 2005 with the Oliver Finegold incident.

It is well, good and long overdue that this should happen, as my good colleague Dan Hodges comments at his Telegraph blog. It is, indeed, a tragedy that it should ever have come to this in the first place, in the proud party of anti-apartheid, which has undoubtedly done more than any other in British twentieth-century history to combat racism. But where I think I differ from Dan is that I believe that it is still way too little. Now he has the opportunity, and has established a firm hold on the leadership, Miliband is in a position to go much further.

The truth is that the only way that London’s Jews will really begin to trust Labour again is if it can stop turning a blind eye to those who tolerate anti-Semitism within its own parliamentary party. After the Raed Salah affair, the Jewish affairs website TotallyJewish.com reported:

A source close to Ed Miliband said: “We have been clear with MPs that it is unacceptable to meet with anyone holding these kind of extremist views”.

Funny that, because it just happened again: last month, two Labour parliamentarians turned up at a conference chaired by the extremist Sabah al-Mukhtar. In other words, they have paid absolutely no attention to the occasional wrist-slappings they have received on the matter.
Miliband acted with the unpleasant Lord Ahmed and withdrew the whip, but there are still people left on Labour benches who continue to consort with anti-semitic, Islamist extremists and then apologise for their obnoxious views. This is not ok for a mainstream political party, and it only serves to reinforce the infiltration of the far left into the labour movement, pushing forward in our unions with the same unpleasant agenda.
I’m talking about you, Yasmin Qureshi, Richard Burden, Jeremy Corbyn, , Alf Dubs. Please stop it.

5 comments

  1. Well said Rob!Maybe Ed Milliband should also cut ties with Mehdi Hasan until he drops his fundamentalist,anti semitic and anti Israeli views given that Hasan is fond of accusing others of racism but convienently forgets his own racism!

  3. @Damien: I don't call Hasan a racist, it's a very strong term. But he is supportive of some who clearly are, such as Raed Salah.

    @Ron: Didn't know that.

  4. I apologise for that but to me Hasan strikes me as an anti semitic, fundamentalist hothead who has more in common with Respect than Labour!

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