Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
That is revisionism to some degree. Labour clearly had/has an nasty anti-Semitic element in its more frothy pro-Palestine/anti-Israel base (I’m talking members and supporters here more than than MPs) and the party failed to tackle it promptly and fully, so it stuck. It took the party far too long to fully adopt the IHRA definition and some Jewish MPs, members and Jewish groups had already been bullied out of the party by the time it did.
The whole perception of Labour ‘having a problem with Jews’ is down to Corbyn’s hopeless leadership. I fully understand Starmer wanting to kick back against that and dig the party out of that hole, he absolutely needs to, though I do think RL-B was the wrong target here.
WRT the first para. The problem is that - just as in *other* parties - there has been a range of views, some of which are AS and others which are not. But the LP gets a kicking for it because it is a convenient stick the Tory press can use.
WRT the second. The reality is that Corbyn was *presented* as the problem, by the press, etc, because he tried to take a nuanced view of the above, and tended to have a 'lets sit and sort this out' approach rather than a 'hang and flog' one.
There was a time when the same press did much the same using 'Friends of the IRA' against those on the left who showed any willingness to talk to the IRA, etc. Yet now we have found that (secret) talks did help the peace process.
And so we once again do what the press want when we keep arging about this rather than focus on issues like housing, social inequality, etc, which the Tories and their rich mates want off the headlines...