I am away on a long weekend in the Med and wrote the previous post in the departure lounge at Gatwick. I have not been following the news as much as usual but I have kept in touch. I had not planned a further post until my return to the UK but I think more needs to be said now. I want to begin by reminding readers that I have a great grandmother who was 100% Jewish, making my paternal grandmother technically Jewish according to tradition and therefore my father likewise, but not me. I am in fact an eighth Jewish which is not a lot but enough to enable me to comment with some candour.
The Labour Movement is not and never has been anti-Semitic; indeed the reverse and has always welcomed and been well served by great men and women who were Jewish. As is often the case in politics people sometimes say things which offend because their meaning has much wider implications than the muddled thinking behind the comment. Many a political career has foundered on such a gaffe and there may be careers now in jeapody because of comments, which even if not intended as anti- semitic, are deeply offensive, even frightening, to Jewish people everywhere.
But there seems to be some evidence that individual failures are being magnified into institutional culpability designed to damage Labour’s electoral chances and undermine the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. If there is even a chance that this the case, those who are cynically using the anti-Semitic card for domestic political ends are politically disgusting and should be driven from public life for good. New Labour is now widely regarded among the public, especially the young, as the rotten apple of British politics and its remnants should be finally emptied from the barrel of the Labour Movement, which it has for years betrayed by prioritising power over principle.