How could this possibly have happened to Jeremy Corbyn, the least racist person ever?
Donât want to tempt fate, but it could be turning into a historically bad week for the self-proclaimed least racist people ever.
Though they have, in fairness, tempted fate a touch themselves. When, last summer, Donald Trump described himself as âthe least racist person everâ, the journalist Owen Jones pointed out that, âAnyone who says, âIâm the least racist person everâ is almost invariably always a racist.â
Mr Jones is rarely wrong about anything, and never has he been more vindicated than when, on Thursday morning, Jeremy Corbynâs son Tom said his dad was âas far away from a racist as itâs possible to beâ. Two hours later, Corbyn senior was suspended from the Labour Party â over racism.
Weâll come to the details shortly, but the first thing to make clear is that none of this is Jeremy Corbynâs fault. He has been fighting racism all his life, donât you know, and in all its forms as well. With so many battles on the go at once, he can hardly be blamed for letting his eye off the ball for just a second, specifically in the anti-Jewish fight, which, come on, letâs be honest, isnât really proper racism anyway.
Itâs not even that the news itself was so utterly damning. The Equality and Human Rights Commission had spent 16 months investigating allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party on Jeremy Corbynâs watch, and its conclusions were bleak. It was not merely that the party had been found in breach of the law for three separate offences, and one of those, clear in black and white, was âpolitical interferenceâ in antisemitism complaints.
It was, as ever, Corbynâs trademark refusal to accept anything less than his own complete moral infallibility. Yes, he said in a statement, there was a problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party, but it was no wider than the problem in society as a whole.
Yes, okay, there are racists in the Labour Party, but there are also racists in Britain, so to blame Labour for it was, if anything, unpatriotic.
âThe scale of the problem,â Mr Corbyn said, âwas dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media. That combination hurt Jewish people and must never be repeated.â
A heady cocktail, that. Not only was the problem exaggerated, but it was those doing the exaggerating that had hurt Jewish people, and that exaggerating must never be repeated.
Later in the day, the Jewish former MP Luciana Berger, who was hounded out of her party by racist trolls, was on the television, talking of the unimaginable pain and suffering inflicted upon her and others by an antisemitic online hate mob, which had involved her having to employ private security.
Of course, itâs possible sheâs just making it all up to attack Saint Jeremy, but itâs worth at least considering the possibility that not all hurt to Jewish people was necessarily caused by the media.
What was especially unfortunate for Corbyn was that, within 20 minutes of issuing his non-apology, Keir Starmer was giving a press conference of his own. âThose who pretend it is exaggerated or factional are part of the problem,â he said. âThere is no room for them in the Labour Party.â
This meant, in clear terms, that there was no room in the Labour Party for Jeremy Corbyn, and within a couple of hours, there wasnât.
His suspension was announced, and within minutes he was pledging to contest the âpolitical decisionâ that had been taken against him. Absolutely nothing became him, in his political life, and certainly not the ending of it.
There will, of course, be a hellish fight to come. Starmer canât pretend that he didnât see others walking out of the party, like Mike Gapes, Chuka Umunna and Ms Berger. And he canât pretend he didnât see others, like Stephen Kinnock and Ed Miliband, essentially refusing to serve in a Corbyn shadow cabinet. Starmer made no such refusal.
The debate over whether to walk out, or whether to stay and fight, is as old as politics itself, and it has no right or wrong answer. But politics is a rough business, and those who prize absolute moral purity above all else, rarely get very far.
Just ask Jeremy Corbyn, who at the end of it all, doesnât even have his reputation intact.
Read more
Keir Starmer apologises to Jewish community on ‘day of shame’
Keir Starmer has acted with precision over the antisemitism report
Luciana Berger reveals how antisemitic abuse made her physically ill