The Guardian’s Peter Walker offered some interesting insights into Momentum’s own antisemitism event which took place before the Jewish Labour Movement’s rally. One way of minimising the problem is to set the bar (very) low:
Meanwhile some were expressing their own concerns about antisemitism by handing out leaflets calling for the Jewish Labour movement to be expelled from Labour.
And while one delegate was insisting antisemitism on the left was an impossibility (they need to read Dave Rich’s new book)
elsewhere at the same conference a Labour Friends of Israel member was told there was a ‘Jewish plot’ against Corbyn.
At the JLM rally itself Luciana Berger cut to the chase by insisting that there is no place in Labour for Ken Livingstone.
Michael Dugher also got to the heart of the problem.
Ditto Joan Ryan of Labour Friends of Israel:
Another speaker, Lisa Nandy, vice chair of Labour friends of Palestine, expressed her solidarity with those fighting antisemitism, as did Naz Shah.
In the absence of John McDonnell (who had been listed as a speaker, but then apparently delisted at short notice), the most controversial speaker was probably Shami Chakrabarti.
And finally, some words from Ruth Smeeth – which capture the feelings of many disappointed Labour moderates, reluctant to abandon the party to the hard left, but feeling increasingly uncomfortable within it:
