Two years ago, Jonathan Goldstein was cautiously optimistic. The Jewish Leadership Council chair had led the Enough is Enough protests against Labour Party antisemitism and issued a series of warnings about the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn-led government. With the 2019 election weeks away, Boris Johnson was ahead in the polls. It seemed the community’s fears were being heeded.

This was brought home in a TV interview with an elderly voter. “She told Sky, I’m not going to vote for him, he doesn’t like the Jewish people,” recalls Mr Goldstein. “That meant we’d got our message through, that he was losing votes because of this.”

Mr Goldstein, who last week announced he would step down early from his second term, acknowledges there were multiple reasons behind Corbyn’s routing — “Brexit, his own political incompetence” — but believes that one important factor was voters’ impression that “what he represented was unBritish”.

It was a campaign that Mr Goldstein hadn’t planned to spearhead when he took on the chairmanship from Sir Mick Davis in May 2017, but the circumstances required the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) to enter the political fray alongside the Board of Deputies and the Community Security Trust (CST). “If you put it another way, if he had become Prime Minister, and we hadn’t done this, we’d never have forgiven ourselves,” he says.

Yet he faced opposition, to the initial demonstration and what followed. “What we did was seismic, because the normal Anglo-Jewish way was to work with the establishment,” he says. Generally, that worked, but “we’d never had the challenge we faced with Corbyn. Some people couldn’t recognise that”.

The Labour leader’s intransigence became clear at the one face-to-face meeting he had with the JLC in April 2018. Mr Goldstein, a natural raconteur — keeping him on track proves a challenge during our conversation — thought a bit of football chat would warm the atmosphere.

Perhaps it was because Mr Corbyn is an Arsenal fan, unlike the Spurs-supporting Mr Goldstein, but “he put the shutters up, he absolutely closed the conversation down”, he says. “He indicated he had no interest in having a relationship with me.

“The truth is, he sees people as good Jews and bad Jews. If you’re a bad Jew, he just doesn’t want to know you. And that bad Jew is someone who recognises and identifies with the State of Israel.”

Two years on, Mr Corbyn is “a busted flush”, yet Mr Goldstein has not quite put down his boxing gloves. His worry is the political philosophy Mr Corbyn represented is becoming increasingly mainstream. His thesis is that although there have been problems, “1948 to 2021 has been a golden age for global Jewry. We live in religious freedom and happily across many countries. But the major threat is the dangerous antisemitism which derives from demonisation of Israel and prolific, endemic anti-Zionism.”

Mr Goldstein’s outgoing message as JLC chair is that the community should “understand this anti-Zionism is the new form of antisemitism, and we have to fight and defend the state of Israel, as if we don’t, it will lead to our organisations and us as individuals being exposed even further.”

Should we not differentiate between antisemitism and anti-Zionism? Mr Goldstein argues that someone can be “agnostic on Israel” rather than “anti” it. Someone like David Baddiel, he suggests, might say “it’s not my country. But he doesn’t attack Israel, he doesn’t use it as a tool with which to attack the community. Others do.”

Battle-hardened Mr Goldstein’s take is that “in 2021, anybody who currently argues that Israel does not have a right to exist is an antisemite, period. I’ve got to the point in my life just to make it very, very clear,” he says. “You can have a justifiable argument about the post-1967 status quo. It’s an argument reflected throughout Israeli politics. But if you start debating the UN resolution of 1947 or questioning what Lord Balfour put in his declaration, we can have no truck with these people.”

He gives two examples. Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy – ex-chair of Labour Friends of Palestine – and Liberal Democrat Layla Moran are both outspoken about Palestinian rights but clear that Israel has the right to exist. “It’s only this mad left-wing wokeism that is using Israel as a club,” he says.

On becoming JLC chair, Mr Goldstein’s focus was on things like education and social care. In fact, the lawyer-turned-businessman (he is CEO of investment firm Cain International) held improving community collaboration as his main ambition.

It’s no secret that the JLC, an umbrella body for communal organisations and charities, has occasionally rubbed up against the Board of Deputies. The latter — some say — claims a democratic mandate the JLC lacks. Last year its incumbent president, Marie van der Zyl, urged an end to the “wasteful duplication” between the two.

Mr Goldstein is reluctant to be drawn on this, saying, simply, that he believes in “unity and collaboration”, and that initiatives such as Enough is Enough are proof of the benefits of this. “We’ve worked much closer with the Board,” he says, adding that there has been “far less antagonism” in his relationships with presidents Jonny Arkush and Ms van der Zyl. “Each organisation needs to understand its place within the communal fabric,” he says. “No one has a God-given right to certain positions. It’s about recognition from the community.”

Mr Goldstein also wanted to address the proliferation of Jewish charities operating in the same space. He hasn’t made the inroads he had hoped, partly due to the pandemic. But things are changing, he says, highlighting the consolidation in Manchester with a formal alliance between the Jewish Representative Council and the JLC. “I do think there is understanding that this proliferation of charities is not something we can continue,” he says. “Did we achieve as much as I would have liked? No, but I’m an ambitious person.”

Nearly five years on, however, he feels he has made strides to expand the JLC’s reach, citing messages from Orthodox voices since he announced his resignation.

And he is proud of its pandemic response; raising funds to support a range of charities and establishing a hardship fund. It was a practical demonstration of the role the organisation plays as “a focal point” for getting things done.

A veteran of the fundraising world (including Jewish Care and Camp Simcha), Mr Goldstein praises how Jewish charities have reacted, shifting to online giving drives. Is the move away from black tie dinners a good thing?

“Phenomenal,” he says. “In terms of a cost-benefit ratio, it’s magnificent. The thing we need to think about is that people don’t lose their connectivity with those charities, because the physical event has been such an important part of that.

“Charities need to think about how they maintain that opportunity to be introduced to new initiatives.”

Connection to the community is the driving force in Mr Goldstein’s life. Growing up in Ilford, the 55-year-old was involved in various organisations, then served as Manchester JSoc president. His son has followed in his footsteps, though at Leeds.

Having come of age during the Zionism is Racism controversy, he is no doom-monger. But events such as the recent scenes at LSE have reinforced his fear that the left-wing anti-Zionist narrative has become a dominant force at universities.

“As a result, there’s a bigger problem for Jewish students than probably there has been historically,” he says.

But the father-of-four believes passionately that Jewish students should be the ones on the front lines.

“Our student organisations do a great job at the national and local level,” he says, pointing to the student-led fightback against David Miller at Bristol University. “I get frustrated when I see organisations stepping in.”

Better, he says, to empower our youth, something he worries we are not achieving. “Across the spectrum, I don’t think we’re doing enough to educate our teenagers to understand post-Second World War Jewish history, the progress of Israel, the dynamics of the situation,” he says.

Of course, as the ex-BBYO member knows, this is something youth movements were traditionally great at. Mr Goldstein, the product of a Jewish primary but secular secondary school, acknowledges that “an unfortunate consequence of the growth of Jewish schooling is that youth movements have suffered”.

He offers no clear solution, but says our education system is too splintered. “We need a more holistic strategy to ensure children come out of Jewish schools empowered to fight for the causes they believe in.” He is more cheerful about Labour’s future, flagging Sir Keir Starmer’s attendance at this week’s LFI dinner, and people such as Louise Ellman rejoining.

Of course, two years ago Sir Keir was inviting us to back a Corbyn government. “He has a lot of questions still to answer, but ultimately we can spend all ours days debating whether his strategy was right or wrong, but we have to be able to move forward.”

As leader, Sir Keir has “done everything that we could ever expect”, he says, from adopting the EHRC recommendations to making expulsions and embracing Jewish Labour members. Two years on, enough is again enough. “The time has come to say Keir is on the right road, and we have to support him in that process.”

Mr Goldstein is stepping down for personal and professional reasons, but mainly because communal roles require absolute focus, and he can’t guarantee that over the next year or so. Accordingly, “the right thing to do is “to move your ego out the way and say it’s time for someone else’s go”.

He adds that whoever succeeds him must know “you can’t conquer the world… there’s no golden bullet to communal problems”. Having been through the wringer, how would he score his tenure out of 10? He fumbles and suggests a two, but says it’s for others to judge. “I don’t look back and pat myself on the back. I’ll let other people give me a score.”

So is this his last great role in Anglo-Jewry? Don’t bet on it. “I’m not 105,” he says. “The community has been in my family’s blood for ever and I’m not finished.”