Jeremy Corbyn's proximity to power is opening voters' eyes to the extremists he associates with

The exposure of anti-Semitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party disproves the claim, made by many despairing Tories after the last election, that Mr Corbyn’s extremist associations can do him no harm.

I had numerous arguments with such people who told me that “young people” don’t care about his links with Islamist anti-Semites and terrorists, and had never heard of the IRA.

It was true that such attacks against Mr Corbyn got nowhere in 2017. But the key electoral point I tried to make in reply was that voters of all ages in that election did not trouble much with these questions because hardly any of them thought Mr Corbyn’s Labour would win. (They were right, just.) This meant, confusingly, that many were more likely to vote for him. It seemed a cost-free way of punishing Theresa May for taking them for granted.

Since then, the situation has profoundly altered. People now do think Mr Corbyn might become prime minister. So they start to notice who he spends time with. They observe that virtually all Labour’s anti-Semitic opinions recently uncovered come from Corbyn-supporters. Attached to these opinions is a long tail of other extremism – foul language, sexual insults, incitements to violence. Voters start to worry.

This is only the start of a long process. Mr Corbyn, you see, is the political equivalent of someone who is hauled in for a couple of recent misdemeanours and then turns out to have a record as long as your arm. It now seems that a number of his associates all those years ago in the London local politics of the 1970s and 1980s held these terrible views then; but, in pre-internet days, they could circulate them only in grottily printed, obscure newspapers that hardly anyone read. His words and his friends over the past 40 years need to be minutely studied.

The other interesting lesson of the recent exposure lies in the fact that it happened at all. In the past, no ethnic/religious lobby in this country has been more respectful towards mainstream politicians than the principal Jewish organisations. Until now, they have worked on the largely correct assumption that the three main parties are friendly to Jews, and therefore need to be politely handled.

The decision to denounce and demonstrate against the Leader of the Opposition was therefore a big and painful one for British Jews. It was made only because there seemed to be no other way. Unless Mr Corbyn completely backs down and recants, the logic of the present situation is that his party will become – to use a grim phrase well-known in the 1930s – “judenrein”, Jew-free. Traditionally, Labour had more Jewish supporters than any other British party. The change is a trauma and a tragedy.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/04/01/jeremy-corbyns-proximity-power-opening-voters-eyes-extremists/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget