UK: Jewish leaders says most people in the Jewish community can’t trust Labour

Via Evening Standard:

Jeremy Corbyn suffered a major blow today as one of Britain’s most senior Jewish figures warned that the country’s Jews “can’t trust Labour”.

President of the Board of Deputies Jonathan Arkush said the party’s growing anti-Semitism scandal is poisoning relations and now damaging Sadiq Khan’s hopes of winning support from London’s 180,000 Jews in his fight to be Mayor.

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Mr Arkush said: “It confirms the belief we have had for a long time that there is a real problem of anti-semitism on the far left, which now eclipses the anti-semitism that we have always seen coming from the far-right.”

He pointed out that the relationship between the Jewish community and Labour was once very strong, and that “Jews overwhelmingly voted Labour for many, many years.”

But he said since Mr Corbyn’s leadership it had been under “deep strain”, in part because of the “excess” of the leadership.

He told the Standard: “Frankly most people in the Jewish community can’t trust Labour.

“I think it is inevitable that that will have an impact on the mayoral election despite the fact that Saidq Khan, I say straight away, is a good candidate, who has done everything he could to distance himself from the far Left, which includes distancing himself from the Leader of the Labour Party.

“Even if you really like a candidate and you believe that he rejects some of the excess of the leadership, in the end, no candidate can entirely free himself or herself from what the party is saying at the top level.

“That must hamper Sadiq Khan’s votes among sections of the Jewish community. Even though I repeat, he is clearly a decent candidate, but he’s stuck with his leader [and] stuck with the stories of anti-Semitism in Labour circles.

“However much he tries to disavow them and criticise them, he is stuck with them.”

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