Labour must not falter in rooting out antisemitism from the party
If you heard a colleague suggest that Israel had “deliberately allowed” the October 7 attacks to happen, and then bemoaned the Jewish-controlled media for amping up coverage of said terrorist outrage, you’d probably a) be a bit perturbed and b) consider flagging it with HR.
What you’re unlikely to do, we reckon, is put that same colleague up for selection as a Labour MP in a crucial by-election, but that’s what the Rochdale Labour party contrived to do when it selected Azhar Ali – now abandoned by the national party – to be its candidate.
Keir Starmer is receiving brickbats for allowing a 48 hour period between the first of the comments emerging in the Mail on Sunday at the weekend and the second raft of objectionable verbiage before pulling his support. That’s a fair criticism. It took far too long for the Labour Party to distance themselves.
But more worrying is the fact that Ali was selected in the first place. Why did none of his colleagues report the comments? How could a strict screening process fail so badly?
Keir Starmer has done by any measure an extraordinary job wiping out the worst of the Corbynista fellow-travellers from his party. Most pundits thought Labour would be out of power for a generation after its wipeout in 2019. And he has also produced a remarkable about-turn in the business community, which has found itself invited into the Labour leader’s inner sanctum.
All of that, though, will not amount to a hill of beans if the stench of racism hangs around any part of the party. The same is true for the Conservatives, who have had their own battles with Islamophobia over the years.
But the microscope is rightly on Starmer and in the past few days it is fair to ask whether the party’s rank and file is as committed to the anti-racism cause as the leadership.
There is, as ever, no place for complacency.