The British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of anti-Semitism allegations makes him “unfit for high office,” according to the country’s chief rabbi in an unprecedented intervention weeks before a general election.
Ephraim Mirvis said “a new poison” had taken hold in Labour “sanctioned from the very top.” The result is that “British Jews are gripped by anxiety” at the prospect of Corbyn forming the next government after the Dec. 12 ballot, which he’s seeking to depose Conservative Party Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“The Jewish community has watched with incredulity as supporters of the Labour leadership have hounded parliamentarians, members, and even staff out of the party for challenging anti-Jewish racism,” he wrote in The Times of London.
“Even as they received threats, the response of the Labour leadership was utterly inadequate. We have endured quibbling and prevarication over whether the party should adopt the most widely accepted definition of anti-Semitism.”
His comments were backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, while Johnson, the British prime minister, said the Labour leadership had failed to “stamp out this virus” of anti-Semitism.
The issue has dogged Corbyn since he won the party leadership in a shock election result in 2015. As an outspoken defender of the Palestinian cause, he and his defenders said their hostility towards Israel should not be conflated with anti-Semitism.
However, some 13 of his MPs have left the party since 2017, citing among their concerns abuse on social media and the leadership’s handling of complaints. The UK’s equality watchdog launched an investigation into the party over discrimination allegations.
And earlier this month, a senior Labour politician was accused of singing “Hey Jews” to the tune of the Beatles’ Hey Jude.
[Previous coverage: Jeremy Corbyn concedes that the Left sometimes ‘dip into anti-Semitic tropes’]
The chief rabbi’s concerns surfaced hours ahead of the publication of Labour’s “race and faith” manifesto.
“There is no place, whatsoever for anti-Semitism in any shape or form or in any place whatsoever in modern Britain,” said Corbyn at its launch in London, “and under a Labour government it will not be tolerated in any form, whatsoever, I want to make that clear.”
The intervention, a little more than two weeks before voters go to the polls, has catapulted the issue back into the headlines.
Jonathan Goldstein, chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council, told the BBC that he believes nine candidates standing for the Labour Party in the general election face complaints of anti-Semitism.
Mirvis’s comments were also backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rev. Justin Welby, who said his words reflected the concerns of many in the Jewish community.
“That the chief rabbi should be compelled to make such an unprecedented statement at this time ought to alert us to the deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews,” he said.
