The writing’s on the wall for real Labour after Jeremy Corbyn anti-Semitism scandal
IS Jeremy Corbyn a racist?
I think so, don’t you?
Until last week he claimed he had missed evidence of Labour’s rampant anti-Semitism.
It just hadn’t occurred to him.
Now he says it exists “in pockets”.
But if wilful ignorance is the legal definition of complicity, then Corbyn is guilty as charged.
That is why Jewish tycoon Lord Alan Sugar’s barbed tweet showing the Labour leader with Adolf Hitler is so devastating.
It reveals a harsh and unpleasant truth.
All forms of racism are deplorable.
But anti-Semitism was the pretext for the greatest act of genocidal racism in human history.
Even Jezza cannot turn a blind eye to the systematic Nazi slaughter of six million Jews.
Anti-Semitism is the scourge of the Momentum-dominated Labour Party.
It has bubbled near the surface for years — even before Jeremy Corbyn seized control.
Corbyn may not be a Holocaust denier, but he is more identified with Jew-hating “friends” in Hamas and Hezbollah than anyone else in his party.
His knee-jerk defence, more like defiance, is to argue that he is anti-Zionist, rather than hostile to Jews personally.
But you can only judge a man by the company he keeps.
His support for a cartoon depicting big-nosed Jewish caricatures making money off the backs of kneeling slaves tells us all we really need to know.
Jeremy claims he didn’t look closely enough at the picture to spot its vicious message.
Just as he never quite appreciated the virulent anti-Semitism in Facebook groups that he had been a member of.
But I bet he got the message from Lord Sugar’s hastily-deleted tweet in a flash.
It mocks up an image of Jezza sitting in an open-top limo alongside Hitler.
The caption reads: “When you’re pictured at Nuremberg and claim you thought you were going to a car rally.”
“Many a true word spoken in jest,” jibed Sugar.
Fellow Jewish peer and popular TV medic Robert Winston then blamed Jezza for encouraging Labour’s “endemic” anti-Semitism.
Having dreamed only recently of becoming “Prime Minister by Christmas”, Corbyn is today a deeply damaged figure.
He is at war with his own party over anti-Semitism and his blinkered support for Kremlin tyrant Vladimir Putin.
He has sacrificed the Jewish vote taken for granted by Labour since the day it was born.
To add to his woes, he is also under fire over an alleged wife-beater Labour MP (and other incidents of bullying).
The party is in crisis and must split
These ugly home truths expose Labour as the real Nasty Party, with a leader who is unfit to be Prime Minister.
Even pink-lipsticked trans comic Eddie Izzard won’t be able to put a gloss on that.
Ex-leadership hopeful Tristram Hunt spoke for many who believe the Labour Party is in crisis and must split in order to offer voters “a different political option”.
Having quit Parliament for a job as V&A museum chief, Hunt urged his moderate pals to mimic French President Emmanuel Macron and launch their own party.
“You need a strong, substantive leader — somebody like Sadiq Khan or David Miliband.”
Well, maybe.
But with crucial local elections just a month away, moderates such as Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna are certainly weighing their options.
Can they really bring themselves to campaign for Momentum’s Marxists on May 3?
Can they cover their eyes and pretend they are simply backing their local councillors, rather than endorsing the leadership?
Can they side with the overwhelming majority of new Corbynite Labour supporters, who think the anti-Semitism row is concocted to destroy their hero?
And do they want to be identified with a party they cannot change and which no longer belongs to them?
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Indeed, the party they once hailed as TIGMOO — This Great Movement of Ours — no longer exists.
Victory for Labour next month will be victory for Corbyn, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and everything they stand for.
It will strengthen Momentum’s throttle-hold over the party — and seal their fate as Labour MPs. Wilful ignorance is no excuse.
BLUNT-SPOKEN Aussie High Commissioner Alexander Downer warns Britain must never surrender to Brussels over trade.
“Imagine a great country like this having its trade policy determined by bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels without the British people having any say,” he opined last week.
“You would be better off in the EU or being completely out of it than in a position of weakness and irrelevancy.
“It would be humiliating for a once-great country to end up being little more than a dependency of the European Union.
You like to beat us at sport.
For heaven’s sake, don’t let us beat you at trade negotiating.”
Hear! Hear!