Why is Labour finding it so difficult to shake off accusations of antisemitism?

Politics Explained: Journalists keep finding things in Jeremy Corbyn’s recent history that require strenuous explanation

To the intense frustration of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters, the accusations of antisemitism against him and the Labour Party refuse to go away.

Although party members continue to be suspended and expelled by Labour’s disciplinary committees, new instances keep coming to light.

And journalists keep finding things in Corbyn’s own recent history that require strenuous explanation. The latest example is his 2011 foreword to a reissue of John Hobson’s 1902 book, Imperialism: A Study.

This is not the first time Corbyn’s foreword has been held up to scrutiny.

A year ago its “comically doctrinaire” analysis was mocked by Robert Colvile, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a Conservative think tank. Colvile quoted this passage: “Free market capitalism cannot provide for everyone, or sustain the natural world. Its very imperative is of ever hastening exploitation of all resources, including people, and it needs armies and weapons to secure those supplies.”

Hobson’s work is justly obscure, and it was not until today that Daniel Finkelstein, in his column in The Times, pointed out that Hobson was an antisemite, and drew attention in particular to one passage in the book. The passage is about how international capitalism is supposedly “controlled … by men of a single and peculiar race” and asks: “Does anyone seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European state, or a great state loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?”

It is quite possible that Corbyn didn’t read that bit, or didn’t notice it was antisemitic. After all, he defended the mural in east London because he thought it showed the rich of the world oppressing the poor without noticing that most of the rich were stereotypically offensive Jewish caricatures.

Or – and this was the line of defence adopted by the Labour Party press office – it is well known that antisemitism was common among great thinkers at the time (Karl Marx, Keir Hardie, John Maynard Keynes). Therefore – the press office line implies – Corbyn didn’t think it was worth mentioning.

None of these defences is wholly satisfactory, and that is why the Corbyn-led Labour Party finds it so hard to stifle accusations that it is prejudiced against Jews. There is an ambiguity about antisemitism at the heart of Corbyn’s ideology.

Part of it is well known, which is that the ferocity of Corbyn’s advocacy of the Palestinian cause sometimes leads him and his supporters to suggest that Israel has no right to exist. Corbyn once complained, for example, that there was a “bias” at the BBC “towards saying that Israel is a democracy in the Middle East, Israel has a right to exist”. (That was, incidentally, in an interview with Press TV, the Iranian state broadcaster, in 2011.)

But, as Finkelstein said, the problem of left-wing antisemitism isn’t only about Israel: “It’s much more deeply embedded than that.” Corbyn and his fellow ideologues of anti-imperialism have a conspiratorial view of capitalism that too easily accepts the idea that Jews are part of a rich, oppressing global elite.

The reason the Labour Party finds it so hard to shake off the charge of antisemitism, in my opinion, is that the leader himself has always subscribed to a worldview that either fails to recognise prejudice against Jews when it sees it, or doesn’t think it matters because other aspects of the struggle are more important.