It's impossible to ignore that antisemitism was high up the agenda in the King's Speech. Not mentioned in passing, not buried in a sub-clause about community cohesion, but placed right near the top, in the opening lines: “My Government will take urgent action to tackle antisemitism and ensure all communities feel safe.” Those words were delivered in the House of Lords just six days after Labour was hammered in the local elections, losing nearly 1,500 councillors and 38 councils. The timing tells its own story.
An embattled Prime Minister has finally recognised that the British public have had enough. But let's be clear about why we are here. The extremists Keir Starmer tried so hard to appease don't vote Labour anymore. The Gaza independents and the Green Party took their votes long ago. And the mainstream voters Labour was supposed to represent? They walked away to Reform UK – a party that nobody can quite explain the platform of beyond immigration, but which still managed to gain over 1,400 council seats and take control of 14 councils from a standing start. That voters chose a protest party with no coherent programme over the sitting government tells you everything about the scale of failure.
For the Jewish community, there is a cautious welcome for the speech's contents. It feels, at last, like we are seeing the political will to enforce the law and protect citizens. Arrests and prosecutions are now following the string of antisemitic attacks in London. But a lot of people will be asking why it has taken this long. A synagogue shooting in Manchester last October left two people dead, but it still wasn’t enough to move the dial. Only after a series of arson attacks, when the terror threat level was raised to severe – the first time since 2021 – did the government appear to treat the situation with the urgency it demanded. Why were the British values of “decency, tolerance and respect for difference” not defended until British Jews were under sustained, coordinated attack?
It is welcome that Starmer named the threat as Islamist in his response to the King's Speech –you cannot begin to challenge something you are afraid to name, and too many people in public life have been exactly that. He spoke of fighting antisemitism in his own party. But Starmer served in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet and resigned over Brexit, not antisemitism – before returning to serve again. The silent majority, meanwhile, has been speaking up for two years. It was Starmer who wasn't listening.
The centrepiece of the security agenda is the Tackling State Threats Bill, which will introduce legislation to address “the growing threat from foreign state entities and their proxies.” Although the King’s speech didn't name them, this relates to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Proscribing the IRGC was an electoral pledge – part of what Labour, then in opposition, called a “three-point plan to update the UK's counter-terror strategy.” Yvette Cooper promised it from the despatch box. David Lammy demanded it of the Conservatives. Starmer himself championed it. Only now, after a sustained campaign of terror against British Jews – with an Iranian-linked front group claiming responsibility for at least half a dozen attacks – is the legislation finally being brought forward. The EU proscribed the IRGC months ago. Australia designated it a state sponsor of terrorism. The US, Canada, and Bahrain acted years before that. Britain has been inexcusably slow, and Jewish lives were put at risk because of it.
We will wait and see whether the legislation is implemented swiftly and whether it is robust enough. Starmer has promised to “fast-track” the bill. He, or whoever may succeed him, should be held to that. But even a strong Tackling State Threats Bill would not amount to a proper counter-extremism strategy. The speech fails to address the Muslim Brotherhood's influence in British civic life, or how Islamist antisemitism – distinct from the Iran-linked state threat – will be tackled at the ideological level. We have seen consecutive failures by Prevent, the safeguarding programme designed to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. The government quietly cut their budgets as the Islamist threat escalated, while the Shawcross review identified its “institutional hesitancy to tackle Islamism for fear of charges of Islamophobia”. The King's Speech offers no indication that this will change. Policing and proscription address the symptoms. Without a credible strategy to tackle the ideology that produces the violence, we will be firefighting indefinitely.
There is also a broader economic dimension to the problem that the speech only partially acknowledges. Antisemitism thrives in conditions of economic insecurity and disillusionment with the system. The government is introducing bills designed to bolster growth and raise living standards. But the damage has already been done. AI displacing entry-level jobs has driven youth unemployment upward – something outside the government's control. But raising National Insurance and the minimum wage had a predictable effect on hiring, and that was entirely within the government's control. You cannot tackle radicalisation without addressing the material conditions that make people vulnerable to it.
On foreign policy, the speech pledges to “continue to promote long-term peace in the Middle East and the Two-State solution.” It is difficult to know how this will be achieved when the government has so little influence on Israel after a series of hostile, performative gestures – from arms export restrictions to ICC referrals – that achieved nothing except to alienate a democratic ally. And how can a government hope to confront Islamist extremism abroad when it is still struggling to get to grips with it at home? Ministers cannot even stop Iran from directing attacks against Jews in London. The idea that they can broker peace in the Middle East while failing to secure the safety of British Jews on British streets is, to put it politely, aspirational.
The King's Speech contains some welcome commitments. But British Jews have heard promises before. The test is not what was read from the throne. It is what follows.
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