Corbynism acts against antisemitism. And trips over its own feet

Many Brexiters believe that the world is watching Britain, expecting it once more to roar so the whole world not only hears it, but heeds it.

My own view is that there may be people out there who don’t follow every detail of British political news. For their sake, here’s a little context.

The Conservative Party, which tends to be in power most of the time, is in power right now. Just. Clinging on by its fingernails as it tries to prepare for Brexit. Since there’s no formula for Brexit that finds favour even across the Conservative Party, let alone the nation, the government is one of the most unpopular for decades.

In Opposition is my own party, Labour. It ought to be 15 or 20 points ahead in the polls. Instead it languishes stubbornly two points behind. Why?

Two years ago Labour elected one Jeremy Corbyn to the office of leader. It was then flooded by new members principally committed to keeping him in that role. It’s all ‘Jeremy for Prime Minister’, ‘Jeremy, man of integrity’, ‘Jeremy: the second coming of JC’, and so on.

I may have made up that last one, but you get the drift.

These new members, or Corbynistas as they are technically known, are turning Labour from a party into a cult, in which they can follow not a leader but a guru, offering him not so much support as worship.

They may not have noticed how lamentable our position is in the polls. So they certainly aren’t asking the obvious question, ‘why?’

The answer is the same as the explanation for why the Conservatives tend to be in power most of the time. Conservatism is deeply anchored in Britain. It is strongly helped by a firmly right-wing press that looks for any stick with which to beat Labour. That means Labour leaders start off at a disadvantage, so where a Conservative merely needs to be competent, a Labourite has to be brilliant.

Sadly, only a worshipping Corbynista could be persuaded that the blessed Jeremy displays such brilliance.

Corbyn: out of his depth

The current stick with which the media are beating Labour is an accusation of antisemitism. The revered Jeremy promised to do something about it as soon as it was advanced. And then did practically nothing.

The leading instance of the party, the National Executive Committee or NEC, did adopt the definition antisemitism produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). It wouldn’t, however, adopt all eleven the examples of antisemitism that accompany that definition. It balked at four, which it felt would stifle legitimate criticism of Israel.

This was a matter of principle. Corbynism could not tolerate this limitation on its freedom of speech. There was no way those four examples could be endorsed.

Suddenly the stick got far bigger and far more hands came forward to wield it. So Corbynism gave way. ‘Well, OK, we’ll accept three more of the examples. But not the fourth. Oh, no, that would be a step too far, a red line crossed, that we will die in the trenches to oppose.’

Then came 4 September 2018. On that date, the Corbynist NEC decided that, well, after all, on mature reflection, it could accept that final example too. Though it has come up with a little statement about how it still asserts its right to free speech about Israel, which, funnily enough, no one had challenged in any case.

Margaret Hodge, who is both a Labour MP and Jewish, summed up the problem just two days earlier. Had Labour adopted the entire IHRA definition with all the examples immediately, it would have defused the attack from the outset. Now it’s too late, and the dispute will fester on. In my view, an incompetent leadership has made it look as though Labour was unwilling to confront antisemitism seriously until forced to do so. By only caving in under pressure, it appears nasty, curmudgeonly and at the same time spineless – the worst of all possible worlds.

That’s not to say that early adoption of the full IHRA definition would have won the wholehearted support of the entire Jewish community. Many British Jews support the Conservatives. Many are more than happy to work with the right-wing press to hammer Labour. All we could have hoped for was to win the argument with the non-aligned and detoxify the accusation. But to do that would have required political professionalism, not at all the hallmark of the Corbynista.

Outside the NEC meeting where the IHRA definition was finally adopted in full but far too late, were protestors with placards proclaiming ‘for the many, not the Jew’. That’s a neat riff on the Corbynist slogan, ‘for the many, not the few’.

In reply to a recent tweet of mine, expressing my annoyance over some new Corbynist cockup or other, I was offered an even better riff: ‘for the many sheep, not the thoughtful ewe’. I liked the reference to thoughtfulness, because a failure to think things through is the central characteristic of Corbynism. As it wends its way from blunder to blunder, making our party look nasty and incompetent.

Leaving us adrift in the polls, behind a deeply unpopular government that should be trailing in our wake.