Local elections: Labour hopes to overcome antisemitism fears and take control of flagship Tory borough of Barnet

Sadiq Khan tells The Independent he is confident of winning the borough from the Conservatives, despite concerns among Jewish voters

It is a perfect spring morning in late April when an upbeat Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, bounds into a park in Barnet to address a large crowd of activists.

The recent political climate has not been so sunny. Jeremy Corbyn has spent the last few days embroiled in a raging row about antisemitism in his party. On the day Khan visits, his party leader has just been forced to apologise for defending an antisemitic mural. Days earlier, upwards of 1000 people had gathered in Parliament Square to protest against his response to anti-Jewish abuse. The two main Jewish community groups have accused the Labour leader of ignoring their concerns, and demanded change.

The row has been particularly pertinent in this part of north London. Barnet has one of the UK’s largest Jewish populations - around one in five of all Jews in England and Wales live in the borough. It is also one of the country’s most marginal councils, and Labour’s top target in today's local elections.

The borough is on a knife edge: the Conservatives retained control in 2014 by just 46 votes. This week, Labour is widely expected to win it back for the first time in 16 years – indeed, any other outcome would be a sign of an unexpectedly bad night for Jeremy Corbyn’s party.

Doing so will not take much. The council is currently under no overall control. The Conservatives had a majority from 2002 until this March, but lost it when one of their councillors, Sury Khatri, resigned after not being selected for re-election. Khatri has since urged people to vote Labour on Thursday.

Barnet is Labour’s top target, and one it looked certain to secure. But then came the national row over antisemitism, throwing the political fate of the borough into doubt.

In an area where more than one in seven people are Jewish – the highest anywhere in London – it is hardly surprising that this should be having an impact.

Except, according to local activists, it isn't. The predictions that the scandal could scupper Labour’s chances of taking the borough do not seem to be playing out.

Instead, campaigners say, it is Brexit and local matters that are much more frequently coming up in doorstep conversations.

“I can't say it's never come up but it's not the only issue," says Councillor Barry Rawlings, the leader of Barnet Labour and the council-leader-in-waiting, when asked about antisemitism. “If you ask what comes up more often, you can guess: it's potholes and pavements and bins. If there was a way of freezing dog poo to put into the potholes, we would walk every election.

“[Antisemitism] is an issue but it’s not necessarily the main issue if you're talking about what comes up on the doorstep.”

Brexit is a more common concern on the doorstep, he says - in part because one in 13 people in the borough are EU citizens. Unable to vote in the EU referendum or last year's general election, this is their first real chance to voice their views on Brexit.

Two of Barnet’s three Conservative MPs – Matthew Offord and former cabinet minister Theresa Villiers - backed Leave (the other, Mike Freer, eventually supported Remain, although by his own admission he is hardly the most vocal of politicians on the matter). The borough voted 62 per cent for Remain.

That’s not to say antisemitism isn’t a factor in local politics – it is. But Labour councillors say the concerns felt by many Jewish voters about the party did not begin when Jeremy Corbyn became leader. It was hostility towards Ed Miliband, and the various Hitler-related comments made by former London mayor Ken Livingstone, that did the damage. Jewish voters who had backed the party under Blair left in their droves. They are yet to return.

Recent events involving Corbyn and his approach to antisemitism have cut through but, in Barnet at least, they do not appear to have changed many minds. Voters worried about anti-Jewish sentiment on the left had already abandoned Labour. The latest controversies might have solidified their view, but, local campaigners say, they do not seem to have changed many other people's voting intentions.

“Antisemitism sometimes comes up on the doorstep but if people have been put off the Labour Party by antisemitism, that happened with Ken Livingstone two years ago,” says Rawlings. “I haven't seen a big transformation recently.”

There is also the fact that Barnet Labour has done everything it can to distance itself from its party leadership on the issue.

Rawlings and other Barnet councillors attended the “Enough is Enough” demonstration in Parliament Square against their own party leader. Rawlings says that, whenever Mr Corbyn has visited the borough, he has “pleaded” with the Labour leader to take a tougher stance against antisemites in the party, but believes “he still has a bit of a way to move“.

“Jeremy Corbyn, who I've got a lot of time for, has a lot of good qualities - but he seems to have a blind spot when it comes to antisemitism,” he says.

“There are signs that that is moving but it's moving too slowly. At first he didn't attach it with other forms of hate crime, and I think that has moved. I'm more hopeful that the Labour Party will end up in the right position, but it's not there yet.”

11 of the 63 Labour candidates in the borough are Jewish, including a prominent liberal rabbi, Danny Rich.

Another, Adam Langleben, is a sitting councillor and prominent figure in the Jewish Labour Movement. Last year he was the victim of alleged antisemitism from another party member.

He has no doubts about the problems within his party.

“A lot bigger than I thought a month ago,” he replies when asked how big he thinks Labour’s antisemitism problem really is. “That by no means means a majority of Labour members are guilty of this, but you only have to look through the Labour Party Facebook forums and the reactions to the very legitimate rally held by the Jewish community in Parliament Square.

“The reactions went from the idea that this was a set-up plot by the Tories or Israel – conspiratorial antisemitism – and I saw thousands of these posts in the immediate days afterwards.”

Khan is here to rally the troops and help shore up support amid speculation about the impact the relentless coverage of antisemitism will have. The truth is, no one really knows – and the Mayor is counting no chickens.

Khan has himself faced criticism in the lead-up to the elections following a spike in knife crime in the capital. He is optimistic Barnet will turn red, but cautiously so.

“It's hard,” he tells The Independent. “It's basically about getting the vote out on 3 May. It's neck and neck - 30-30 [councillors] - so it's all to play for.

“If I were to call it I think we're probably going to do it, but it's going to be tough.”

He admits fears about left-wing antisemitism could cost the party votes.

“I'm not going to pretend that there aren't Londoners of Jewish faith - and Barnet is the borough with the largest number of Londoners of Jewish faith – who are concerned”, he says.

“An impression has been created, in my view unfairly, that somehow the Labour Party tolerates antisemitism. We've got to do all we can to reassure those Londoners who for genuine reasons think there are issues with antisemitism in the Labour Party. Our job is to reassure them that there aren't.”

He, too, believes the problem predates Corbyn: “My experience is that, for a number of elections now, there has been a concern from some Jewish Londoners that the Labour Party is not for them.

“That troubles me and upsets me. I saw it in 2012 during the mayoral elections when Ken Livingstone stood, I saw it in 2015 during the general elections, I saw it in 2016 because of the Ken issues when I was standing, and we're seeing it now.

“[But] we can't escape the fact that in the last two or three months in particular there have been concerns.”

“You saw the 'Enough is Enough' demonstration. You've seen some of the views expressed by some of the respectable leading members of the Jewish community, who aren't political but are apolitical."

Two other factors boost Labour’s chances of seizing this flagship Tory borough. First, the council seats it needs to win are not in the areas with the highest population of Jewish voters - those, presumably, who would be most likely to turn away from the party after recent events.

Instead, the wards where Labour needs to make inroads are in other parts of the borough: stereotypically suburban Hale, where the Tories currently hold two seats and Labour one, and diverse Childs Hill, where 60 per cent of children do not speak English as a first language at home.

Secondly, Conservative-run Barnet Council’s record is contentious – to say the least. The council is well-known for its penchant for privatisation. It has enthusiastically outsourced numerous public services, mostly to private sector giant Capita, in a series of multi-million-pound contracts totalling more than £300m This has earned it the nickname easyCouncil. Some Tories highlight the borough as a case study in how to deliver public services at a time of swingeing budget cuts. Many residents are not so impressed.

The local Conservatives have made their campaign entirely about local matters: bin collections and council tax. One leaflet focused heavily on what it said were Labour plans to reduce weekly bin collections – a move, the Tories are warning residents, that will lead to more foxes and rats infecting their streets. The Conservatives have also criticised Khan for, they say, not allocating Barnet its fair share of police officers.

Labour is quietly confident that it is its own message - about housing, living costs and parking - that is cutting through. The antisemitism row does not look likely to stop it winning control of Barnet. Talking to activists, though, it is hard to avoid the feeling that, if Labour does indeed regain this leafy part of north London, it will be despite national events, not because of them.