A former Tory candidate for the Greater London Authority has told the JC he was once advised not to stand for Parliament because he was Jewish.
Ben Seifert — who left the Tories in September — claimed a member of the Hackney Conservative Association told him that it would “look like a stitch-up”.
Mr Seifert said he received a phone call from “quite an old member” (who he wished not to name) in April or May this year when he was on a shortlist of candidates for the 'unwinnable' seats of Hackney North and Stoke Newington or Hackney South and Shoreditch.
“Because all the Conservative councillors on Hackney Council are Charedi… he called me to say, ‘It will look as if it’s a sort of stitch-up if we have a Jewish candidate in Hackney South or Hackney North, and therefore I don’t think you should stand in that seat, because you can have too many Jews’.”
Mr Seifert added: “He was basically trying to discourage me from standing in Hackney because he felt it wouldn’t look good if there was a Jewish candidate.”
He said he “thought about” making an official complaint, but decided against it because he “also thought he didn’t speak for the selection committee.
“But my feeling was: this is someone who holds a position in the Conservative Party who believes it’s ok to say ‘you’re Jewish, and therefore you should not be able to do x, y and z.’ And that’s what I found a bit difficult. I was quite surprised.”
Mr Seifert said he thought there was “a latent element of sort of English nationalism and fear of the other” but that there was not instituitionalised antisemitism or islamophobia.
He blamed this on “old-fashioned bigotry”, as opposed to the “endemic and systemic” antisemitism in the Labour party, which he said was “obsessed with where you came from and defining you as a person.”
“The fundamental issue is that, for the Labour Party, Jews are rich people who could never be oppressed and therefore they can’t see any problem in criticising Jews, per se, as Jews,” he added.
The Conservative Party has been contacted for comment.
