The very first subject Sir Keir Starmer chose to address in his resignation speech on Monday was his campaign against antisemitism in his own party. The prominence he gave the issue was both noteworthy and welcome.
“Six years ago, I inherited a Labour Party that was politically, financially and morally bankrupt,” he said. Among his policies he was proudest of was “ripping out the poison of antisemitism”.
It was an acknowledgement not only of the scale of the crisis he inherited but of the importance he attached to confronting it. And he deserves genuine credit for what he did.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission had found the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination, and many Jewish members were driven out of the party. As new party leader, Starmer moved quickly to address the problem. He apologised for what he described as the party’s “disgusting” antisemitism, expelled antisemitic members, tightened candidate vetting and introduced antisemitism training from the Jewish Labour Movement.
A party that had become estranged from much of the Jewish community was brought back within the bounds of democratic respectability. That was no small achievement.
Yet the fight against antisemitism did not end with Labour’s internal reforms. If anything, the events of October 7 and their aftermath presented an even greater test of political leadership as Britain experienced an alarming rise in antisemitism across society. Jewish communities faced relentless demonstrations, intimidation, attacks on places of worship and a wider climate of hostility fuelled by the increasingly extreme demonisation of Israel. Having resolutely fought antisemitism within Labour, Starmer was much more hesitant to recognise and confront it beyond his party ranks.
Too often, the prime minister seemed to follow events rather than shape them, responding only after public pressure or escalating incidents made action unavoidable. He eventually recognised the antisemitic character of supposedly “political” slogans and rhetoric that others continued to excuse, but only after the terrorist attack on Heaton Park Synagogue on Yom Kippur that claimed the lives of two Jews. His government convened a forum to tackle antisemitism and promised further action, but only after a series of arson attacks on Hatzola ambulances and stabbing attacks in Golders Green had added to an already alarming pattern of anti-Jewish violence.
The practical impact of many of those initiatives, beyond additional funding for the CST, remains unclear. And two years on, Labour is only now preparing finally to ban Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, despite the threat the IRGC pose to Britain’s Jews and national security.
Moreover, Sir Keir has done too little to challenge the broader culture of Israel demonisation that has become embedded across parts of public life. The vilification of Israel does not remain confined to foreign policy debates but inevitably shapes attitudes towards Jews themselves. In some cases, his own government, through action and rhetoric, has reinforced rather than resisted that trend.
With a series of decisions, the government has lent legitimacy to an increasingly one-sided narrative about Israel. One of its first foreign policy acts was to drop Britain’s opposition to the International Criminal Court’s pursuit of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. Starmer later recognised a Palestinian state despite appeals from hostage families that any such move should at least be conditioned on the release of their loved ones still being held by Hamas. At the time, dozens of hostages remained still in captivity and we now know that many endured appalling abuse, including sexual violence, in Hamas’s tunnels.
None of this diminishes Sir Keir’s achievement in confronting antisemitism in his own party. The question for his successor now is whether that work will be taken further. British Jews need a government willing to confront not only antisemitism in its explicit forms but also the climate of intimidation, demonisation and hostility that has flourished since October 7. They need a government prepared to repair Britain’s damaged relationship with its democratic ally Israel and to challenge those who demonise the Jewish state and seek to turn anti-Israel activism into a vehicle for anti-Jewish prejudice.
Sir Keir restored Labour’s credibility on antisemitism. His successor’s task will be to restore Britain’s.
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