Corbyn’s Labor digs deeper into an anti-Semitic hole

By HUGH ASH
Updated: AUGUST 12, 2016 19:36
THE late Denis Healey, a big beast of British politics for half a century, once noted, ‘The First Law of Holes is: if you’re in one, stop digging.’
As holder of many high offices of state in various Labor governments, Healey – who died last year, aged 98 – had ample experience of being stuck in political pits, especially when his party lurched far Left in the 1980s and condemned itself to 13 years in the graveyard of opposition. 
There’s nothing on record to suggest Healey had any views about a gobby, back-bench rabble-rouser called Jeremy Corbyn, but the veteran grandee certainly thought serial rebels behaved treacherously.
[For the record, long-time maverick Corbyn – ‘friend’ of Hamas, Hezbollah and the IRA – voted against Labor more than 500 times]
Though a close buddy of Shimon Peres, Healey was no great fan of Israel, especially when he headed the pro-Arab Foreign Office (a.k.a. ‘The Camel Corps’). But his disfavor nowhere neared the obsessive hostility towards the Jewish state held by today’s Labor leader.
What Healey would have found profoundly repugnant, however, is how the current regime has practically sanitized anti-Semitism and left Labor reeking of racism.
I’d bet, too, Big Denis – his bushy eyebrows bristling with righteous indignation – would have demanded gaff-prone Corbyn stop digging himself deeper into the excrement of the People’s Party’s ‘Jewish problem’, showed some guts and booted out the bigots for all time.
That’s essentially the message of Owen Smith, who is mounting a challenge for Labor’s leadership and who pointedly referenced how the rising tide of Jew hatred within the ranks coincided with Corbyn’s shock elevation to power last October.
At a recent hustings, the Welsh MP observed, ‘I’ve been a member of this party for over 30 years and I only remember discussion of anti-Semitism taking place in the last nine months.’
For good measure he added, ‘I suspect the problem is growing and we should all be ashamed.’
Smith’s right. No previous leader in Labor’s 116-year history has allowed the bile of prejudice to tarnish the party as hypocritical Corbyn has and many wonder where is the ‘kinder, more inclusive politics’ he promised.
Virtually week in, week out – like a tune on a loop that drives listeners to loopy – one or another anti-Semitic meme is played out by Corbyn and his mob of acolytes, who, having hijacked Labor, are hell-bent on steering it hard Left under the banner of their new Messiah (who, eerily, even has the initials for the job).
Most disturbingly, the Corbynistas are consolidating their stranglehold, having expanded membership to over 500,000 – mainly ‘Trotsky entryists’, in the opinion of deputy leader, Tom Watson – hitherto branded personas non grata.
Backed by powerful trade unions, they’ve now mugged the National Executive Committee legislature, all but guaranteeing the artless, arrogant Corbyn is re-elected leader.
So, if Labor – trailing an unpopular Conservative government by 14 points – isn’t already in meltdown, it soon will be.
Only its 232 elected MPs truly represent the views of the party’s nine million voters. But, with 80% of them in open revolt against Corbyn, these moderates face the unsubtle threat of deselection by refusing to back the sneering Lenin lookalike’s vision of a Utopian UK USSR.
Many, like the forthright John Mann, are further incensed at their leader’s vacuous bleating about not tolerating anti-Semitism – or, as Corbyn incessantly adds in the same breath, ‘Islamophobia and other forms of racism’ – yet doing little to eradicate it.
[For the record, Labor has no history of Islamophobia, so it’s utterly disingenuous to equate it with the transparently abhorrent Jew baiting that’s put the ruling cabal to shame]
However, finally forced to act, Corbyn appointed lawyer, Shami Chakrabarti, to lead an ‘independent’ inquiry into anti-Semitism…except its credentials were derailed from Day 1, when the earnestly hand-wringing human rights campaigner naively announced she’d become a Labor member.
It came as little surprise, then, her report was tantamount to a whitewash, claiming there was no systemic anti-Semitism in the party and, tellingly, it failed to mention Baroness Jan Royall’s earlier probe into Oxford University Labor Club, which found Jew hatred there flourished.
Royall concluded Jewish students were frequent targets of anti-Semitism and recommended, ‘It is appropriate for the disciplinary procedures of our Party to be invoked.’
Chakrabarti – soon to be a peeress in recognition for her services to Corbyn – now stands accused of ignoring key evidence from Josh Simons, a former Labor policy adviser, who told her some of the leader’s closest aides had ‘at least a blind spot with anti-Semitism and at worst a willful disregard for it.’
One, according to Simons, referred to a ‘Jewish conspiracy’.
Now, even members of Corbyn’s Islington North constituency party have become embroiled in accusations of defaming Jews and Israel.
A meeting last week to discuss the leadership election – which Corbyn didn’t attend – is said to have sparked a racist controversy, after one member allegedly stated, ‘It’s very difficult to get elected in this country without the support of Rupert Murdoch and the Israeli ambassador’.
Another tweeted from the event, ‘Meeting now dissolving into an open argument about whether randomly blaming Jews for things is anti-Semitic.’
Meanwhile, Corbyn blunders on regardless, disdainful of his MPs in much the same way Donald Trump snubs the US Republican establishment.
Though ideologically poles apart, both are ego-driven populists, who have tapped into an odious minority’s discontent and now consider themselves mightier than the parties they supposedly represent.
So carry on digging, fellas. Dig for defeat.