A is for anti-Semitism.
On a Monday evening in March, placards filled Parliament Square: “NO to anti-Semitism”, “NO to Holocaust Denial”. A crowd of more than 500 people had gathered to protest about a Facebook comment by Jeremy Corbyn from 2012 that had recently resurfaced, in which he defended a mural bearing grotesque anti-Semitic imagery. For Jewish community leaders, it was the final straw after a “whitewashed” 2016 inquiry by the human rights barrister Shami Chakrabarti, who was subsequently given a peerage by Labour. Dismay at Labour’s attitude towards anti-Semitism was compounded in July when the party declined to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s anti-Semitism definition in full. Its ruling body eventually reversed that decision in September, after a long and toxic summer.
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