If there is one thing the commissars at Labour HQ could learn from Joseph Stalin it is this: if you are going to purge your party of those who have unacceptable political opinions, you need to do it thoroughly.
Of course, I am not recommending that Sir Keir, NKVD-style, rounds up all his party’s conspiracy theorists about Israel and has them shot in the head or consigned to the slow death of working in a salt mine. Not one bit. That is political murder and not something we British go in for. But the principle is the same: if you say you are going to root out of your party those with immoral and irrational views, you must do it properly, otherwise your opponents will accuse you of weakness and cant.
Despite his claims to have clamped down on Labour’s far left that has perfected the gruesome art of the conspiracy theory against Israel, Starmer’s party is not cured of this venom.
The latest example of anti-Israel views has been amply provided by Labour’s now former Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali who was exposed by the Daily Mail as having stated at a party meeting that Israel allowed the October 7 pogrom to happen to give it justification for its war on Gaza. According to Ali, who for a local councillor appears to have remarkable inside knowledge of Egyptian and American military intelligence, Egypt and the US warned Israel of Hamas’ impending attack which Israel ignored, thereby giving Israel the green light to massacre Palestinians. This kind of thinking is on the same asinine level as the proposition that the Jews hoaxed the Holocaust to blackmail the world into giving them a land of their own. Initially, senior Labour figures stood by Ali but on Monday evening, Pat McFadden, Labour’s National Campaign Coordinator, declared that Ali had been suspended after it was alleged he had made more unacceptable comments about Israel.
McFadden tried to put a spin on it all by averring that “the fact you have got very rare circumstances where a political party is withdrawing support for a candidate after nominations have closed” shows that Labour is serious about “rooting antisemitism out of the Labour party.”
But there is a serious problem with this reaction. Why was Ali not suspended immediately; why was he suspended only after he was accused of having made more unacceptable statements? Surely, what he was known to have said in the first place was sufficient to suspend him?
Ali, writing on X, apologised “unreservedly” to the Jewish community for what he described as his “deeply offensive, ignorant, and false” remarks. He went on to condemn Hamas’ ‘horrific terror attack’ and called for Israeli hostages to be released.
These are the right things to say, but saying the right things after you have been caught saying the wrong things, suggests you do not mean what you say. Unless Ali has had a conversion of Damascene proportions, you would be forgiven for thinking his apology insincere.
The problem is that it is too late to remove Ali from the ballot and people will still have the choice of voting for him, though if elected, he will not sit as a Labour MP.
Ali is not the only one to fall foul of party discipline recently. Graham Jones, Labour’s former MP for Hyndburn who hopes to regain his seat at the next election, was also suspended from the party pending an investigation after it was alleged that he said, “Fuck Israel” during the same meeting at which Ali was spouting his theory.
Starmer cannot afford any more of these sordid incidents and must act decisively if there are any more. If he does not, his creditability as leader within the Labour Party and before the electorate will suffer.
Is this the last we will hear of Labour politicians with anti-Israel opinions? Not a chance, for there are more of Ali’s ilk in the party’s ranks, believe me. However, as the election nears, it is likely that such individuals will tone down the rhetoric to avoid a scandal and deselection from the ballot. That means the problem has been submerged but not solved. Once elected, and it is likely Labour will win the next election by a large margin, these Labour MPs, local councillors and activists will be bolder in their anti-Israelism. Poor stuffed shirt Starmer: on this issue it looks as if he has much of his work ahead of him.
Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).
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As longas Islam has its hands all over Labour – indeed, all over the country – Anti-Semitism will be rife. It’s core to Islam.
https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/the-problem-with-islam/
Agreed, but what is anti-Semitism and why can’t it be defined in ways that separate genuine real or seriously threatened harm from mere words? The tenets of Islam are surely clear enough (I read your recommendation last year, everyone should) to make followers holding any public office in the UK unacceptable under virtually any circumstances.
Are we readers of a free speech supporting website really expected to applaud Labour, or any other UK political party, purging those who make statements that others in that Party (and cynically always with an eye to vote catching, appeasing the USA or supporting ‘the latest thing’ etc.) find offensive?
The Law, such as it is, ought to define exactly what constitutes such things as anti-Semitism in the UK and surely this ought to be solely to protect the well being of British Jewry, not hurty feelings that may result from perpetual claimed victimhood, secondhand support for that victimhood, and certainly not preclude criticism of Israel which is a foreign country over which the UK has no influence.