Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Britain Votes, With Labour Under a Cloud of Anti-Semitic Allegations

Rarely if ever has an election in Britain ever been conducted during such a loud public debate about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. The irony of this election falling on Holocaust Day has not been lost on the Jewish population of the UK.

The biggest ticket race is that for London mayor between Sadiq Khan (for Labour) and Zac Goldsmith (Conservative) but there are races all over the country that will have a real effect on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour.

Eyes are on London because Khan might become the first Muslim mayor of London and also because one of the leading political figures suspended from the Labour party is the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. Livingstone has compounded his remarks that Hitler was a Zionist “before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews” with a refusal to apologize.

In contradistinction, Naz Shah — the Labour MP from Bradford who was also labeled anti-Semitic, because of her social media posts before she was elected — submitted a formal apology to the Labour Party as well as aremarkably frank written apology to the Jewish community after attending an interfaith Seder for Passover.

Not all Jewish voters were able to vote. Due to a registration error in the heavily Jewish borough of Barnet in North London, many Jews, including the Chief Rabbi Efraim Mirvis, were turned away. Though the Jewish community has recently tended Conservative rather than Labour, the numbers gathered by the London Jewish Chronicle on the eve of this election seem to show a staggeringly low 8.5% voting for Labour. The reason: anti-Semitism.

Here is Howard Jacobson talking to BBC reporter Chris Cook for background footage (hence appearing oddly cut) about the current forms of anti-Semitism in Britain.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.