Corbyn doesn’t care about reassuring British Jews

An allegedly racist party protesting its innocence has many strategies open to it. The best is to admit its guilt and reform. Labour cannot because Labour’s leader and his supporters are so contaminated by racial prejudice they lack the moral capacity to change, or even admit to themselves the need to change.

Labour might try to meet specific Jewish fears and begin by accepting that they are genuine. It is not just that Jewish people and their allies would not like prime minister Corbyn to take power as a result, one assumes, of some tartan-Stalin pact between Labour and the SNP. Our biased electoral system ensures that most voters don’t like any and every administration. It has taken the modern Labour party to produce an emotion closer to dread than mere dislike.

How might Labour calm the fear? After the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush moved to reassure American Muslims that he would not tolerate their victimisation as the war against al-Qaeda began.