Robert Philpot
Times of Israel, July 2, 2024
“As high-profile heads have rolled, the leadership has telegraphed a clear message: Labour’s political culture has changed and being a part of, or sympathetic to, the radical left will no longer be tolerated, appeased or rewarded.”
It has taken Keir Starmer less than a decade to climb what Benjamin Disraeli, the country’s only Jewish prime minister, once famously described as the “greasy pole” of British politics. Starmer, whose opposition Labour Party appears on course for a landslide victory in this week’s general election, only entered the House of Commons in May 2015. After the July 4 election results are tallied, he’s widely expected to bring about an end to 14 years of Conservative-led government — a feat all the more remarkable given that on the last occasion Britons went to the polls, in December 2019, Labour suffered its worst defeat in nearly a century
Starmer’s first five years in parliament were spent observing Labour’s then-leader, Jeremy Corbyn, dragging the party to the far left.
Corbyn’s anti-Zionist agenda — and the antisemitism scandal that accompanied it — didn’t just lead nearly half of British Jews to say they’d leave the country in the event of a Labour victory. It also alienated enough of the wider electorate to ensure Corbyn’s overwhelming rejection.
Elected to replace Corbyn in early 2020, Starmer has spent the second half of his parliamentary career ridding Labour of the far left’s legacy of extremism and racism and planting his party’s flag firmly in the electoral center. The result: a Starmer-led Labour government is likely to be far less antagonistic to Israel — and far more sympathetic to the concerns of British Jews — than one led by Corbyn, had he made it to Downing Street in 2019. Indeed, Starmer’s much-vaunted “changed Labour party” no longer even counts Corbyn as a member.
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