by Rob Marchant
With all the stories in recent weeks about Labour and anti-Semitism, it would be understandable if some members started to suffer some kind of “Jewish fatigue”.
But the reason for coming back to it is simple: normal Labour politics is currently suspended, as people gaze on in horror at the internal, self-inflicted crisis currently unfolding. We are witnessing something entirely unprecedented in the party’s century-long history: the slow-but-now-accelerating implosion of a party leadership, if not perhaps the party itself as well. And because of an infection with one thing this, of all parties, had never thought to have to endure: racism.
At the same time, we have a leadership which is so inept, so arrogantly convinced that this is all overblown, that it is now embarked on a collision course with the rest of the political planet.
We might first look at the dropping of the investigation into Margaret Hodge. The extraordinary conclusion we must draw from this matter is that it was not because Hodge backed down (although that was what the Leader’s office stupidly tried to spin, convincing precisely no-one in the Lobby). It was, on the contrary, that Corbyn knew that he could not win. That is, that the most he could say was that Hodge was rude to him: in the rough and tumble world of politics, hardly grounds for suspension.
Let’s just reflect on that for a second.
The leader of the Labour party and of HM Opposition, a potential prime minister, judged (presumably on legal advice) that he would struggle to prove that he was not a racist.
But it makes total sense when you consider the other facts brought to light this week.
In an interview with PressTV, Corbyn implies that Israel’s right to exist is in question (anti-Semitic under the IHRA definition). And we also find him – thanks to academic blogger James Vaughan for this – chairing a 2010 meeting chock-full of anti-Semites, who are busy calling Israelis Nazis (also anti-Semitic under the IHRA definition). On Holocaust Memorial Day. But I’m sure that day was chosen just at random, eh, Jeremy?
Quite simply, we can see that the IHRA definition has been rejected, not just because many of Corbyn’s supporters would fall foul of it but because the man himself would. Yes, the Leader of the Opposition.
Finally, let us just look at the last, and perhaps ugliest, revelation (in a crowded field, admittedly).
