Utterly, totally unexpected developments are occurring in Britain’s Labour Party, which is led by Jeremy Corbyn, a man who once described Osama bin Laden’s death as “an assassination attempt, and . . . yet another tragedy, upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy.” It turns out—and certainly, no one could possibly have seen this coming—that some of Corbyn’s supporters don’t like Jews very much.
In 2014, Labour MP Naz Shah, elected to the Bradford West constituency in 2015, made a series of until-now unnoticed Facebook postings, arguing that the “solution” to the Israel-Palestine conflict is to “relocate Israel into the United States,” that the “transportation costs” would save the U.S. “some pocket money,” and comparing Israel with Hitler. So: eradicating the nation of Israel, and shipping all the Jews away. Shah isn’t just any Labour MP: she was, until these Facebook posts became public, the Parliamentary Private Secretary to John McDonnell, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, who had previously pledged to expel anti-Semites from the party. She also sits on the Home Affairs Committee, which is currently conducting, of all things, an inquiry into anti-Semitism. You can’t make this stuff up.
Then things got worse. One of Shah’s aides, a Labour Party councillor, was revealed to have accused “orthodox Jews” of being “involved in the sex trafficking trade,” among numerous anti-Semitic canards. Yesterday, former London mayor Ken Livingstone, said it was over the top “to think of anti-Semitism and racism as exactly the same thing” and that “Hitler was supporting Zionism.” He was publicly confronted by Labour MP John Mann, who described him on camera as “a disgusting Nazi apologist.” A wave of centrist and Blairite Labour MPs, to their credit, weighed in demanding that Livingstone be suspended from the Party. As of today, both Shah and Livingstone have been—belatedly—suspended.
What’s going on here? Well, partly, it’s Bradford West. One of us spent a day there for the Weekly Standard before last May’s general election. Shah won the seat from the notorious and noxious George Galloway (described by Corbyn in 2010 as “my good friend”), but there was little reason to expect that her victory would be a cause for celebration, never mind a triumph of liberal values. In Britain, Bradford – the site of some of the nation’s worst race riots – is known as an Asian city. What that really means is that Bradford West, in particular, is dominated by Kashmiris. It is clearly, and sadly, a poisonous place, riddled with ethnic politics of the most tribal kind. It would take a miracle for it to elect an MP who wasn’t an anti-Semite.
But this isn’t just about Bradford West. The fish rots from the head down: the reason why Shah, and especially Livingstone, found a welcome in today’s Labour Party is that Jeremy Corbyn has a long track record of support for Palestinian causes, and a similarly long track record of aligning himself with anti-Israeli,anti-American, and anti-British causes. His accusation that NATO was responsible for “provoking” Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its invasion of Ukraine just shows he’s on form; in 1984, immediately after the IRA came close to killing Margaret Thatcher in the Brighton bomb attack, he invited Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA’s political wing, to tea in the House of Commons. In that company, Shah and Livingstone don’t stand out. In fact, they fit right in.
It’s impossible for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, or anyone else, to be genuinely surprised at this latest turn of events. As historian Andrew Roberts pointed out, Livingstone combines deliberate offensiveness with invincible ignorance, generously seasoned with his “filthy politics.” He has spent years cozying up to those who would like nothing more than Israel’s destruction. He invited Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, to London in the summer of 2004 and praised his “moderation and tolerance.” Qaradawi promotes wife beating and praises Palestinian suicide bombings as “martyrdom in the name of God”. He is a great fan of Hitler, because “he managed to put [the Jews] in their place”, an act which was “divine punishment”.
In this Hitler adulation, Qaradawi has something in common with several Labour party members and councilors, one of whom praised Hitler as “the greatest man in history” and another whom approvingly uploaded Josef Geobbels’s film The Eternal Jew. Livingstone’s response some months later would be to dub Qardawi “one of the leading progressive voices in the Muslim world.” If Corbyn had a problem with Livingstone dabbling with pro-Hitler clerics, he said absolutely nothing about it. Nor did Livingstone’s views stop the party from making him the chair of its International Policy Commission, which helps develop Labour’s policy on foreign affairs. And indeed, if you watch this 2010 interview on Iran’s Press TV between Corbyn and Galloway, there can be no doubt about Corbyn’s beliefs.
As Labour’s appalled MPs show, there are still decent men and women in its ranks in the Commons. But the party, and its media backers, have for too long moved slowly down the path of pandering to people who make a habit out of nudge-nudge wink-wink “anti-Zionism.” Everyone knows what they mean by this, but that didn’t stop former Labour leader Ed Miliband from grubbing for votes by promising before the last election, in an interview with Muslim News, to outlaw “Islamophobia” if he won. Nor did it stop the Guardian from supporting the corrupt czar of the London borough of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, largely on the grounds that he was Britain’s first democratically elected Muslim mayor.
This week’s scandal is the result of a toxic mix. It combines the political influence and culture of places like Bradford, with the hard leftism of figures like Livingstone and Corbyn, with the lack of principle of men like Miliband, with the wider retreat of the left from any willingness to stand up for the democratic nation of Israel, and – indeed – the left’s increasing embrace of efforts to delegitimize entirely a nation whose cause they used to champion. Labour is going to keep on getting worse unless its decent MPs, and its decent voters – who aren’t synonymous with the smaller group of party members who selected Corbyn as their leader – decide they’ve had enough of it.
Ted R. Bromund is the senior research fellow in Anglo-American relations at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. Robin Simcox is the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Fellow.
