What kind of country has Britain become?

And crucially, this poison has been rebranded. It drapes itself in the language of virtue. Anti-Zionism is its fig leaf, social justice its disguise. But make no mistake: this is not “criticism of Israel”. It is a denial of Jewish legitimacy – of Jewish normalcy – in public life.

What does it say about the state of a nation when Jewish doctors feel they must hide their identity in NHS hospitals? When Jewish academics and students no longer feel safe on campus? When lifelong Jewish union members are forced to leave the very organisations they helped to build and loyally supported? What it says is that the institutions that are the pillars of our national life – medicine, education, unions, the arts – have been quietly corrupted by a moral rot.

This is not merely a threat to Jews. This is a threat to the British way of life.

The values under assault – liberty, justice, equal rights – are the modern heirs of Britain’s long constitutional tradition. They build on foundations laid by Magna Carta, the rise of parliament, and the common law, principles that shaped Britain over centuries into a global model of liberal democracy, and for which our soldiers gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy and in the skies above Britain.

If those values no longer extend to one minority, they will eventually fail all others. Indeed, history teaches us that when Jews are vilified, expelled, or scapegoated, it is a harbinger of deeper national decline. A culture that tolerates antisemitism rarely limits itself to that one indulgence. It begins there and ends in the erosion of reason, liberty, and law.

What makes antisemitism uniquely dangerous is that it rarely presents as ordinary prejudice. It comes instead in the form of conspiracy theory – the belief that Jews, now “cleverly” rebranded as “Zionists”, are not merely guilty of specific wrongs, but are the hidden engine behind all that is wrong with the world. This turns a political disagreement into a cosmic battle. Hence the obsession: not the occasional outburst, but a fixation that bleeds into unions, medical associations, arts bodies, and schools – institutions with no real link to the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The idea is totalising. Every sector, every profession, every platform must be mobilised to confront the imagined evil – and in the process, those institutions themselves are corrupted.

This, then, is no longer a wake-up call just for British Jews. It is an alarm bell for the entire country. Because when anti-Jewish bigotry becomes so routine that it passes without institutional rebuke, when the police stand by as hate marches pass by synagogues, and broadcasters air rap songs calling for the deaths of Jewish soldiers, it means the safeguards of our democracy are no longer intact.

Mann and Mordaunt are not Jewish. They come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. But they grasp what too many still refuse to see: that antisemitism is a bellwether of national health. It measures the strength of a country’s conscience.

That conscience is now being tested. If Britain truly wishes to remain what it has long been – a decent society, a safe haven for minorities, and a global champion of democratic norms – it must root out this resurgent antisemitism with the urgency it demands.

This is no longer just about protecting a small, visible and deeply British community. It is about protecting Britain itself.