As the Community Security Trust has just just published its report of antisemitic incidents in 2025 – the second-highest total ever recorded — the Jewish Chronicle reveals the price the country as a whole is paying for allowing such hatred to fester.
Contemporary antisemitism, now commonly repackaged as militant anti-Zionism, is damaging the UK economy by deterring investment and costing jobs. So-called pro-Palestinian activists have vandalised, occupied and attacked banks and financial institutions – often with little sense that serious punishment will follow. These incidents feed directly into overseas risk assessments. One experienced international investor told the JC that projects which would have created “many highly skilled and well-paid jobs” have been abandoned, asking: “What sort of message does it send when activists vandalise with seeming impunity?” asked one investor with long experience of international trade.”
Former Business Secretary Grant Shapps added: “They (investors) look at images of financial institutions being attacked on the streets of London and draw a simple conclusion – that the UK is failing to enforce the rule of law consistently. That perception alone is enough to deter investment.”
For a country whose global standing rests on trust in its legal and regulatory order, that is reputational damage with long-term economic consequences. Investors seek order, predictability and protection for lawful enterprise. Where those appear uncertain, capital moves elsewhere.
The problem is not merely timid policing, questionable political compromises or prosecutorial drift, though all those matter. It lies in the nature of contemporary antisemitism itself, which projects classic conspiracy theories about Jews onto the world’s only Jewish state. This is not simply hostility to Israel or its policies. It is a conspiratorial worldview that casts “Zionists” as the malign hidden force behind finance, politics and global disorder.
Societies that allow such conspiracy theories to shape public life rarely prosper. The modern Middle East offers a cautionary tale of how anti-Jewish or antizionist obsessions have warped decision-making, encouraged self-destructive behaviour and entrenched long-term decline.
Britain imports these pathologies at its peril. Investors, unlike politicians, do not indulge fantasies for long. They are allergic to chaos, indulgence of lawlessness and states that appear unwilling to protect property or people.
One need not be an Israel supporter to ask whether this is still a country that acts rationally and takes law and order seriously, when financial institutions need to worry about the safety of their staff and customers, who face intimidation and threats while feeling conspicuously unprotected by the state. These legitimate fears, as our reporting reveals, are particularly acute among firms underwriting the defence industry – the very sector this government insists it wants to champion as a driver of Britain’s future growth. A country that cannot guarantee basic security for lawful businesses cannot credibly present itself as a safe destination for capital – let alone build the defense industry it needs for its own national security.
When anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are allowed to metastasise, they hollow out institutions, corrode democratic norms and ultimately make a society poorer – morally and materially. Britain is not immune, and pretending otherwise is not cost-free.
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