Originally Posted by Chris

Which is the reason Corbyn is in such hot water at the moment.

Labour has a large and quite specific problem with anti-Semitism, brought about by the hard left’s obsession with Palestine. They are powerless to affect the issue directly because Israel doesn’t export that much to us, so they can’t demonstrate their righteousness with a high-profile boycott, so they do the next best thing, which is to put the boot in to anyone they perceive as an ideological opponent. The difference between the state of Israel and the traditional religion of Israel becomes blurred and hey presto.

Meanwhile on the far right there is the same old obsession with people who look a bit funny, sound a bit funny and are attacking our way of life. But their hatred lacks the focus of the anti-Semitism of the left. There are no Tory-affiliated fringe groups organising meetings where the platform is regularly given over to people who question a nation state’s right to exist. Their racism is no less serious in itself but it simply is not the same embedded, organised, campaigning cancer that it is on the left.

Crucially, the leader of the Tories is not an ideological bedfellow of those on the far right who express anti-Islamic racism. (No, he just isn’t, and no amount of whataboutery will alter that essential fact). Johnson is prone to writing buffoonish caricatures because he is a newspaper columnist who is used to being read only by those who share his casual disregard for the power of words to offend those of different backgrounds. Senior Muslims have called him out over it. But none of them has ever gone so far as to say their entire community is beginning to question its safety in the UK in the way the Chief Rabbi did yesterday.

Corbyn, while I’m certain he does not consider himself racist, seems absolutely blind to what his personal obsession with the Palestinian question has enabled his ideological supporters to do. The Left is obsessed with who it shares a platform with, yet Corbyn is unable to see how his repeated sharing of platforms with his “friends from Hamas” has thereby domesticated and justified those in his party who think it is justified to believe a nation state should be driven into the sea. Labour has a serious, organised problem with anti-Semitism among the very people within the party who put Corbyn in his post. And yet Corbyn just can’t see how he is damaging his own cause by refusing to call them out, directly and specifically, preferring instead to stick to his usual formula of generic condemnation of all bad things everywhere at all times. No matter how sincere he is, he sounds evasive and unfocused.

Above all, Corbyn makes himself look like he doesn’t know how to handle a crisis. In fact he makes himself look like he doesn’t necessarily see a crisis, even when it’s right on top of him. In the middle of a general election campaign, that’s not a good look.