That Black Is White

“The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”

If John Rentoul believes that The Independent might have published those words without first having triple-checked, not only that Maxine Peake had uttered them, but that they were factually accurate in themselves, then he ought to resign from its employ.

Until Thursday afternoon, some people decried this Israeli instruction industry, and other people defended it, but nobody denied or disputed that it existed. Then, however, it became the means to what had always been the intended purge of Rebecca Long-Bailey. So now the entire Liberal Establishment is almost literally saying that black is white.

Not that the Government has said anything about this, and that cannot only be because it welcomes the distraction from Robert Jenrick, whom the useless Keir Starmer had already let off the hook. In any case, the Labour Right is up to its eyes in dodgy deals with property developers, and 20 years ago Richard Desmond gave it £100,000 to allow him to buy Express Newspapers. £12,000 is chickenfeed.

Moreover, it makes the case for alternative centres of comment, research and activism that people the corners of whose triangle are the official London media, liberal academia, and right-wing Labour politics, assume a strong Zionism or a sort of explicit philo-Semitism in the electorate at large.

That is simply not there. The idea that Jeremy Corbyn was brought down by allegations of anti-Semitism is absurd whether it is voiced by his defenders or by his detractors. Corbyn very nearly became Prime Minister in 2017, and he went down to a catastrophic defeat in 2019 only because he had given in to Starmer over Brexit. His original pro-Brexit and anti-austerity stance was so popular that the Government has broadly adopted it, both in order to hold onto the Red Wall, and because nothing else works. 

In the official London media, in liberal academia, and in right-wing Labour politics, then one in three people whom you know may be Jewish, and Jewish in a very particular way. But there are not well over 20 million Jews in Britain. On the principle of matrilineal descent, there are not 20 million Jews in the world.

And the rapidly growing section of the British Jewish population is the Haredim. Those have little or no connection to things like the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Campaign Against Antisemitism, and the Community Security Trust. But they do maintain close ties to their MPs such as Long-Bailey, Diane Abbott and Ian Mearns, as well as to Corbyn.

Alternative centres of comment, research and activism. The Budget of March 2020 has ended the era that began with the Budget of 1976. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. It already has plenty going on. And nothing could better embody the blow to the hegemony, if not necessarily of the official London media, then certainly of liberal academia and of right-wing Labour politics, than the loss of his seat next year by the Leader of Durham County Council. Some of us know just the man to do it.