We all know who is to blame for the rise in anti-Semitism – and it is not Israel

Only the Right will do what is required to lance the boil of Islamic extremism Daily Telegraph 05/05/26 We can’t go on like this. That’s what everyone I speak to says. But why bother voting when things are so bad and there are another three years of this grotesque incompetence and barefaced lying to go? If you think you may have better things to do than popping to the polling station – refilling the bird feeder, say, or power-washing the patio – I beg you to make the effort.

On Thursday, we have the chance to register our dismay at this appalling Labour Government and our complete and utter rejection of the sanctimonious, anti-British lawyer who leads it (or tries and fails to). The Prime Minister’s presence was not wanted on the campaign trail by Labour councillors who have twigged that Sir Keir is to voters what hantavirus is to cruises. Both are poisonous. Instead, the PM was in Armenia doing his favourite thing, pledging to give away money we don’t have to the EU. My, how he lights up in the presence of Ursula von der Leyen, squirmy as a contented cat on its back in the sun. And how generous of Ursula to say that Britain can make annual payments of £1bn into European budgets as part of the PM’s Brexit “reset”. “Starmer negotiated with the EU and got it up to £2bn”, as one wag on X put it. Sums it up nicely, doesn’t it? The UK imports far more goods than it exports, running a stonking £89bn trade deficit with the EU last year, but somehow it is we who must go cap in hand to a bloc rejected by the largest vote in our history. Apparently, no price is too high to salvage Starmer’s premiership or to distract from Labour being on the point of a historic wipeout in Wales, Scotland and other former Leftist strongholds. If they get away with losing only 1,800 seats, they’ll be lucky. It is a mark of how low Starmer and his party have sunk in the 22 months since their loveless landslide that making Peter Mandelson our ambassador to Washington scarcely scrapes into the top 10 of unforced errors. This may just be me, but increasingly it feels as if we are under enemy occupation. Our basic freedoms and values are under threat: sinister moves to restrict trial by jury, a blasphemy law by the back door, aborting babies up till birth. Our borders are a joke, unworthy of a serious country. Our energy security is non-existent thanks to Ed Miliband’s deranged and indefensible pursuit of net zero. Thetford Grammar, a school dating back 1,400 years, says it will soon close due to socialist spite, which hasn’t done a thing to improve the chances of children in state schools but has blighted the happiness of thousands of youngsters whose parents can no longer afford private education. In Shirkers Not Workers Britain, over 600,000 people get more in benefits than hard-working men and women earning the national average wage – both obscene and demoralising. A Telegraph investigation found our veterans have been pursued by the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, for split-second actions taken 40 years ago, although Hermer conceded there had to be “wiggle room” if, by any misfortune, things didn’t go his way and the accused men turned out to be innocent after all. Human rights lawyers have done more good than soldiers, the bounder added. Off to the Tower with him, I say! What else? Oh yes, don’t forget the Government tried to stop 30 local elections going ahead because democracy is such a nuisance when voters think you’re useless. Only the threat of legal action by Reform UK saw them reinstated. Meanwhile, Angela Rayner, scheming to become the single most ignorant person ever to hold the office of prime minister, posts a video of herself with a group of schoolboys. When one lad dares to suggest that “Nigel Farage would be better than Keir Starmer”, Ange unleashes a volley of misinformation, saying that Reform wants a more insurance-based health system, one that is “not free at the point of use”. Furthermore, she berates the blushing boy, who can’t be much more than 15, saying her (premature) son “would probably not have survived” in such a health system. (She seems to have forgotten she sued the NHS for a large amount of money over mistakes made at his birth.) To all of the above, you can add Labour’s jaw-dropping hypocrisy over anti-Semitism. Sir Keir was booed when he visited Golders Green, the blameless heart of British Jewish life, after two men were stabbed by a Somali with the obligatory “mental health issues”. (Please can the media stop referring to Islamists who should never have been given leave to remain as “a British national”? We know exactly what they are and, in no meaningful sense, are they British.) It has been perfectly clear to many of us that, since pro-Palestinian groups applied on October 7, 2023, the very day of the Hamas massacres in Israel, for permission to march through London, an epidemic of Jew-hatred was likely to be the result. Labour, though, found itself in a tricky position. Dependent on votes from the Muslim community, some of whose members are steeped in anti-Semitism by hate-preaching imams in mosques no one is brave enough to shut down, it was reluctant to rock the multicultural boat. Instead, Starmer mouthed platitudes like “to be British is to be diverse”, while that same diversity was leading to Jewish people becoming increasingly scared and even making plans to leave their home, this country. Starmer can no longer ignore the problem, as was his instinct, because the situation is raging out of control. The UK National Terrorism Threat Level has been raised to “Severe”. A putrid Green Party is contesting Thursday’s council elections not on bins and potholes but Gaza and “genocide”. One Green candidate suggested, outrageously, that Israel was behind the Hamas atrocities. Until a hasty U-turn, the party’s leader, Zack Polanski, a Jew himself, was wondering whether the threat Jewish people were feeling was real or just a “perception”. A report released on Monday, May 4 by think tank Policy Exchange, Understanding Islamopopulism: Views of Concern, says British Muslims are on course to further distance themselves from the Labour Party in key election battlegrounds, as well as having “widely differing views from the general population on Gaza, blasphemy and cultural issues such as gender segregation and the presence of dogs in public spaces”. In other words, unlike our Jewish community, too many are poorly integrated and hold un-British values. On Monday, at a hastily convened meeting of police, university and health leaders and unions in Number 10, the Prime Minister said Britain must have a “whole-of-society response to eradicating anti-Semitism. Everyone has a responsibility to stand with Jewish communities”. Many of us have been doing exactly that, Prime Minister, for two years and seven months since the worst slaughter of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust. And no, you do not get to deflect the blame for anti-Semitism onto the British people in general. We know who the culprits are. Criticising the Arts Council for funding organisations that promote the work of artists accused of anti-Semitism, and calling on the council to withdraw or claw back money from organisations that “provide a platform for anti-Jewish hate”, is welcome. It’s a start. But what is urgently needed is the abolition of a two-tier system that sees police and other groups protecting Islamists at the expense of Jewish safety. Absolutely no to an “anti-Muslim hostility” definition, which will only serve to silence the fears that need to be heard. Yes to a ban on incendiary marches, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose vile members, quite unbelievably, are allowed to move freely in this country when they are banned in Arab countries. And let us see no more purity tests for British Jews, like the one posed by Sir Tony Brenton, former British ambassador to Russia. In The Times, Sir Tony suggested that if Jews here were more critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, they might improve their chances of not being stabbed. Shocking victim-shaming. What other ethnic group is held to that standard? It was great to see Kemi Badenoch giving a fiery riposte to a pro-Palestine sympathiser who asked, “What about the rise in attacks on Muslim people?” “Let’s stop pretending something else is happening,” the Tory leader shot back, declaring that she would always stand with British Jews. That is one of the stark choices on the ballot paper on Thursday. Vote for the Right, either Reform or Conservative, who will take a stand against anti-Semitism, or vote for the lunatics who indulge the Jew-haters and will end up destroying our way of life. Please vote. Your country needs you, now more than ever.