Many in the UK Jewish community had hoped Thursday’s general election would be the last nail in the coffin for Jeremy Corbyn. A predicted resounding loss for the controversial Labour chairman, and his subsequent ousting, would end a period of perceived lingering antisemitism within the party and uncertainty over its attitude toward Israel, they anticipated.
But as exit polls were published at 10 p.m. local time and the real election results flowed in overnight, those hopes were dashed, with the news that the Conservatives had under-performed and, while still securing the most seats, lost their parliamentary majority.
While Labour stunned pollsters and pundits by clawing back from a deficit that at one point stretched to 26 points, no party gained the necessary 326 seats in the House of Commons to form a majority government, and none can therefore claim the election was an absolute triumph.
For the Jewish community and Israel, however, the result was unequivocally a “loss,” at least according to Jonathan Arkush, the lay leader of British Jews as the president of the Board of Deputies umbrella group, the country’s EJC affiliate.
“If the governing party, which is a strong supporter of Israel, loses so much ground, then of course it has to be something of a loss for Israel and the Jewish community,” Arkush, told The Times of Israel in an interview on Friday.
And that loss is compounded, he said, when it comes to the gains by Labour. Corbyn’s party, said Arkush, “has policies that are supportive of Israel, supportive of the two-state solution,” but will see its “far-left faction, which is far less sympathetic to Israeli concerns,” bolstered by the strong showing.
Corbyn, who became the head of Labour in 2015, is a hard-left politician whom Arkush has previously said “most people in the Jewish community can’t trust” due to his past praise for Hezbollah and Hamas and failures in addressing antisemitic rhetoric by some of his supporters.
In the year and a half since Corbyn became Labour leader, controversies about antisemitism in the party, and his continued criticism of Israel’s policies, have dogged media coverage. Many Jews who were lifelong Labour voters said they couldn’t bring themselves to put a cross next to the Labour candidate’s name on the general election ballot. Some have questioned Corbyn’s sincerity in his efforts to reach out to the Jewish community.
“Overall, without question, the result will be disappointing for Israel and disappointing for the Jewish community,” Arkush said Friday, adding that “the smell of antisemitism still lingers around some sections of the [Labour] party.”
