Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis can never be solved under Corbyn | 5 March 2019

If racism is to succeed in corrupting institutions and countries it needs authorisation from the elite. The popular caricature of the racist as a white working-class man, or superstitious east european peasant, or shabby paranoid academic, shows not only class bias, but a lack of understanding that what transforms extremism from poisonous men muttering in corners to political movements with the power to ruin lives, is the authorisation given by leaders and intellectuals.

A party can have racist members – as the Conservative party undoubtedly does. But because its leadership is not anti-Muslim their effect is constrained to personal abuse. I don’t mean to diminish it. If my experience is typical, race-based insults are something you never forget. But by their nature they remain a part of the everyday ugliness of life. Corbyn’s Labour, like Trump’s Republicans, has an institutionally racist leadership working with the worst of the party’s membership. Anti-Semites everywhere were empowered by Corbyn’s victory.