Jewish voters turning away from Labour pre-dates Corbyn

JVL Introduction

This Telegraph article from 2014 shows that Jewish voters’  disaffection with Labour predates Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

It is clear that Miliband’s willingness to hold Israel to account for its 2014 war on Gaza and his support for a Palestinian state underlies the disaffection

H/t Sue Hughes/title and intro changed on 17 June 2019

Labour’s first Jewish leader is losing the Jewish vote

The Jewish community is preparing to break with Labour. Ed Miliband needs to ask himself why

Dan Hodges, The Telegraph

30 October 2014

It isn’t just Maureen Lipman. This morning the actress and comedienne has announced she will not be voting Labour at the next election.

“Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse” she writes in Standpoint magazine, “just when the anti-Semitism in France, Denmark, Norway, Hungary is mounting savagely, just when our cemeteries and synagogues and shops are once again under threat. Just when the virulence against a country defending itself, against 4,000 rockets and 32 tunnels inside its borders, as it has every right to do under the Geneva Convention, had been swept aside by the real pestilence of IS, in steps Mr Miliband to demand that the government recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel.”

It’s a powerful – and accurate – critique of Labour’s Mid East policy. And it’s a critique that should have Ed Miliband and his advisers very, very worried, because the Labour party’s support within the Jewish community is now on the brink of collapse.

“It’s serious” one influential Jewish Labour supporter told me this morning. “There are now genuine questions being asked about whether we will be able to vote Labour next May”.

There are multiple reasons for this schism. One is the belief that Labour’s Middle East policy is now being set by the party’s left, which has historically aligned itself with the Palestinian cause. This view was confirmed when Miliband initially announced he would be whipping his MPs to support Palestinian statehood, although in the face of a rebellion from a number of shadow ministers and backbenchers he eventually backed off.

There was also anger at Miliband’s outspoken condemnation of Israel during the recent incursion into Gaza, and a perceived failure to condemn sufficiently the actions of Hamas. But by far the biggest issue – as Lipman identifies in her piece – is the failure of the Labour leadership to speak out forcefully on the growth of anti-Semitism, both across Europe and in the UK.

“People have been waiting for the leadership to speak up” said one member of the community with close Labour links “and all they’ve got is silence”. In particular there is seen to be a contrast between the response of senior Labour politicians and the broader Labour movement to the spike of Islamophobia that followed the murder of Lee Rigby, and the response to the rising anti-Semitism that has emerged in the wake of Operation Protective Edge.

Some Jewish Labour supporters, (and indeed some Labour MPs), have also been asking why Ed Miliband has left it to backbencher John Mann to lead the condemnation of a campaign of anti-Semitism currently being directed at Labour MP Luciana Berger. On Wednesday Mann took to the floor of the House of Commons to demand action over what he described as a campaign of “abuse against a member of this House continuing on daily basis”.

Miliband has been consistently warned about the deterioration of Labour’s support within the Jewish community. In July the Jewish Chronicle produced a pointed editorial in which it stated “In recent months, Ed Miliband has made a concerted effort to embrace the Jewish community. He has visited Israel. He has spoken of rediscovering his Jewish roots. And he ended his speech to the Labour Friends of Israel with the declaration that he would enter Downing Street proud to be a “friend of Israel, a Jew and … part of the community”. But, with Israel now in need of support from its friends, he has shown that words are cheap”. It went on to contrast Miliband’s stance on Protective Edge with David Cameron, who it said had been “clear, principled and firm in his support for Israel’s right to defend itself”.

All the warnings have been ignored. Much in the same way David Cameron’s policy on Europe is dictated by his party, so is Miliband’s stance on Israel and Palestine. The “35 per cent strategy” now extends as far as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Labour’s leader has calculated that his activists want to see him adopting a hard line towards Israel, and a hard line is what they will get. The fact that a calculation has also been made that a strong condemnation of anti-Semitism could been seen as undermining that stance is a reflection of the dangerous territory Labour and Miliband are now entering.

At the conclusion of her article, Maureen Lipman writes: “Come election day, I shall give my vote to another party. Almost any other party. Until my party is once more led by mensches.” The Jewish community is preparing to break with Labour’s first Jewish leader. Ed Miliband needs to ask himself why.