But a resourceful Hannah Weisfeld, Yachad’s director, persuaded one of the guests to stand in for Mr Ellwood. Gina Miller, the businesswoman who has persistently challenged the government’s Brexit strategy in court, said she “completely understood” Mr Ellwood’s reservations as she herself had been the focus of unwonted and unwanted publicity.
She said she had made her court challenge on Brexit “because I felt that someone had to do it”. But she admitted that she had not expected the issue to drag on past last October, and also had hoped that other people would join her in her fight.
Ms Miller gave a gnomic response when asked by Ms Weisfeld if her next step was to go into politics. “No,” she said, but then quickly added that “now I have a voice and I don't want to waste it. For a democracy to work, you have to have an opposition — and we don't have that at the moment.”
Gideon Smith, the Yachad chairman, told the guests that in its six years of existence the organisation had helped to change the communal discourse on Israel. He said that in the coming months Yachad planned to re-pitch the conversation among politicians, and to show that to be pro-Israel one did not have to be anti-Palestinian, and vice versa.
