James Cleverly: As home secretary I confronted police chiefs when they were failing British Jews

Cleverly said he had a proven track record of supporting the Jewish community dating back to his time at City Hall when he was an assembly member.

He said he worked with CST and other communal organisations “to make sure that Jewish community in London were safe and felt safe.

“When I was home secretary, I did a lot to help the community look after itself, but also to make sure that the police, the security services, and others were particularly focused on the threat to Jews in Britain.”

During his time at the top of the Home Office, Cleverly was “particularly proud” of introducing “a multi-year settlement of additional funding to help the community – particularly the CST – enhance the protection for Jews in in Britain”.

He also addressed the pro-Palestine marches and the Jewish community’s frustration with police tolerance of the extremism and racism on display.

The former home secretary revealed that he was not scared to have “some very forthright conversations with the senior leadership of the Met Police” about the way it handled them, especially towards the start of the war.

“Their response, particularly initially, was not good enough,” he said.

“I made the point that when people are putting up stickers – remember those paraglider stickers celebrating the mass murder of Israelis on October 7 – that is not a pro-Palestinian message. That is a clearly anti-Jewish, antisemitic message, and should be treated as such.”

He continued: “There is always a balance between free speech and protest, but when these protests are on a Saturday, routed and scheduled to go past synagogues, clearly to intimidate Jewish populations in London, that is unacceptable.

“And I made it clear to the to the police that I expected them to police robustly to make sure that where activity was criminal, it was dealt with, and to remind them that they have a duty, as we all do, to make sure that everyone in London feels protected, and that includes, of course, Jewish Londoners.”

Unlike his former Cabinet colleague Suella Braverman – now in Reform UK – Cleverly was hesitant about labelling pro-Palestine demonstrations as “hate marches”.

“For me, it's about what actions are taken.

“What are people on those marches doing? What are the authorities, the police, and others doing in in response to that? So, that has always been my focus.

"Where there is where there is blatant antisemitism, that should be dealt with. Where there's criminal behaviour, that should be dealt with. When people are wearing masks to hide their identity whilst promoting antisemitism, that should be dealt with. And I've always been more focused on people taking action rather than debating whether it should be described as this or described to the other.”

Cleverly said he was inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to marchers simply upset at the images of destruction in Gaza and wanting to stop the war. 

But he said the “sad truth” was that “there are a lot of people with very distasteful antisemitic views” who were using the conflict to “re-present an ancient prejudice”. 

He pointed out that “the first of those marches happened after the mass murders [in Israel on October 7] and before the military operation, which makes me think this is not really about the plight of the Palestinians. That for many people it is just another opportunity to display their antisemitic hatred.”

Days after October 7, Cleverly was one of the first foreign ministers to visit Israel to show solidarity. What he witnessed when visiting the kibbutzim hit by Hamas terrorists was “shocking” and “heartbreaking”.

“I met families of people who had children in the armed forces that had been kidnapped by the by the terrorists, and I met families of people whose young ones were just at the music festival, and they even didn't know whether their whether their kids had been held hostage or had been murdered.

“And for some of the families, they didn't find out for months that their loved ones had been murdered.

“I've never experienced a situation quite like that, and it worries me that people have very, very short memories in certain circumstances as to what actually what actually was perpetrated. It was a mass-murder, terrorist atrocity, and describing it in any language less severe than that, I think, is a deep injustice to the people who lost their lives and lost loved ones on October 7.”

Asked about the Green Party’s adoption of a motion equating Zionism with racism, the mayoral candidate said the party had been “taken over by people with a deeply antisemitic agenda”.

He said he had sympathy for some of his friends who had historically been party members, “left leaning but ultimately kind-hearted, passionate about the environment and climate change” but added that their party is now “gone”.

“I cannot see how the series of votes that the Green Party has just had around Zionism, which is the belief that Jews should have a safe homeland – that's my interpretation of it – that somehow they've contorted their belief in that to say it's racist.”

Cleverly expressed deep shock at the rejection by Green members of an amendment to the motion aiming to clarify that Jews would not be targeted for attending Zionist synagogues.

“It's shocking to get to a situation where, in liberal contemporary Britain, we have now got a political party basically passing explicitly antisemitic motions.”

The Tory hopeful was also happy to answer some more light-hearted questions.

Asked what his favourite bagel filling was, he instantly retorted: “It’s got to be cream cheese and lox”.

However, he sat on the fence on a key bagel-related issue. When he goes to Brick Lane, does he prefer the white or the yellow bagel shop?

“I'm trying to get support from right across London. This is last thing I want to do is alienate half of the bagel eating population of East London,” he said with a smile.

Asked whether any Jewish figures inspired him, the former Royal Artillery officer cited Israel’s iconic former defence minister and IDF chief of staff Moshe Dayan, commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 War of Independence.

Cleverly said he he learnt about Dayan shortly after joining the British Army and praised the Israeli leader’s resilience in the face of adversity.

“Israel had very little military equipment, very little international support. It was really, it's quite amazing,” he said.

He expressed a hope that military leaders in Israel would eventually be thought of just as “great figures of the past because Israel was safe and secure with good relationships with its near neighbours”.