I doubt that we're going to see any change in Corbyn's thinking after the current antisemitism furore. His main supporters in the Labour movement, Momentum and Unite under Len McCluskey, don't see a problem. And anyway, he's just not intellectually capable of the kind of re-appraisal that's being asked of him. As Robert Philpot notes in the Times of Israel, "It is difficult to think of a single issue — not least his vociferous and long-standing antagonism towards Israel — on which Corbyn has shown any signs of new or fresh thinking since he entered parliament 35 years ago.".
Corbyn’s power rests instead with his ongoing popularity among Labour party members (many of whom joined to support his leadership bid in 2015) and the support of the trade unions, principally the staunchly anti-Israel Unite union.
Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, has repeatedly made clear that, in his view, allegations of anti-Semitism within the party are simply “mood music that was created by people trying to undermine Jeremy Corbyn.”
Last week, one of Unite’s senior officers, Jennie Formby, was elected Labour’s general secretary, giving the hard left control of the party’s machine and London headquarters for the first time.
The notion that charges of anti-Semitism have been “weaponized” by Corbyn’s “Blairite” opponents in the party — an epithet that has long lost any meaning and is applied to anyone who shows a scintilla of doubt about the Labour leader — is widespread. So, too, is the idea that Corbyn’s Labour critics are working hand in glove with right-wing newspapers to dislodge him. [...]
The core test of Corbyn’s commitment to be a “militant opponent of anti-Semitism” will be his willingness to emphatically call out, and take robust action against, those among his supporters who are guilty of it, as well as those who suggest that the whole crisis has been somehow manufactured.
The fact that the tiny pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice for Labour — a group which has derided the “myth of anti-Semitism in the Labour party” and the “anti-Semitic smear campaign” supposedly waged against the Labour leader — chose to hold an ill-tempered counter-demonstration in Parliament Square was telling. So, too, was Corbyn’s unwillingness to ask them to call it off.
In the choice between his supporters and being the ally of the Jewish community he on Monday promised to be, Corbyn seemed to fall at the first hurdle.
Corbyn's anti-Israel beliefs are written through him like writing through a stick of rock. He's spent his whole political career supporting Israel's enemies - many of them notable antisemites. If the Labour Party really wants to change, it's going to have to get rid of him as their leader. That, at the moment, seems very unlikely.
Indeed
Posted by: Flg | March 28, 2018 at 06:49 PM