Daniel Finkelstein in the Times makes some important points about the toxic intervention of George Galloway in the Batley and Spen by-election. Galloway, as ever, is stirring up trouble by appealing to the worst instincts of the large local Muslim population: the supposed "Islamophobia" they have to deal with; the Mohammed cartoon issue at the local Batley Grammar; and of course, Palestine. The temptation for Labour must be to try and neutralise Galloway by copying his policies there, but that would be a big mistake - especially coming so soon after the whole Corbyn/antisemitism debacle. Galloway wants the destruction of Israel. It's a policy which, unfortunately, resonates with many Muslims. But it's not now and never should be a policy which the Labour Party could contemplate.
As Keir Starmer attempts to reset Labour’s policy after Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, he faces a challenge from George Galloway in Thursday’s Batley & Spen by-election. Galloway appears unlikely to win, but if he can attract enough support from the seat’s large Muslim population, he may help defeat Labour. And prominent among the issues he is using to win that support, and cause a crisis for Starmer, is Palestine.
That this has become a central issue in the by-election has visibly frustrated the Labour candidate Kim Leadbeater. She has shown considerable physical and emotional courage, running in the seat where her sister Jo Cox was murdered. She is articulate and passionate. But when she tries addressing issues she believes matter to the inhabitants of Batley & Spen, she encounters the not unreasonable response that it is the voters and not the candidates who decide what matters to them.
As the salience of the Palestinian issue struck Labour, the party has scrambled to show how much it cares. Starmer raised Palestine, all of a sudden, at prime minister’s questions. Leadbeater tossed in a mention in a discussion of local concerns. She has promised to be “a passionate supporter for the rights of the Palestinian people”.
When Galloway said he had googled his opponent and that she had never before mentioned Palestine, the Labour candidate acknowledged that Galloway “had been a loud voice on Palestine, absolutely”. However, he wouldn’t be able to achieve anything because he couldn’t win, she said. A vote for him would simply let in the Tories.
Leadbeater has bemoaned the fact that Starmer’s views on Palestine “haven’t cut through”. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that the problem is the reverse — they have cut through and aren’t what Galloway’s audience wants to hear.
The difference between Galloway and Starmer on Israel and Palestine is not that one of them has been passionate while the other has been lawyerly. It is that they hold fundamentally different views. And Leadbeater simply can’t compete with what Galloway is willing to say and do. Thankfully.
The policy of Starmer and the Labour Party is the one they settled upon not long after the creation of the state of Israel. The one crafted by leaders like Harold Wilson and supported by his successors. There must be two nations, living in peace alongside each other. To this, in the 1980s, was added opposition to Israel retaining any sort of control of the territories it conquered when its neighbours tried to destroy it in successive wars.
When Starmer and Leadbeater talk of Palestinian rights, it is this that they mean: the right of the Palestinians to their own state, Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza, a restrained Israeli military response when attacked, greater care over Palestinian civil rights and an end to the building of settlements. All alongside a sovereign Israel.
This is not at all what Galloway means. It is not what the slogan “Free Palestine from the river to the sea” means. It is not what his fellow critics of “zionism” mean. When Galloway is a “loud voice on Palestine” he is a loud voice for the entire destruction of the state of Israel and its replacement with a single Palestinian state.
There has been so much discussion about whether or not this position or its advocates are antisemitic that a central point has been missed. Never mind for the moment whether it is antisemitic, it’s a really stupid, bad policy that would leave six million Jews defenceless, forcing many to flee as homeless refugees and leaving others to a violent death. It is a policy that fails to learn from the Jewish experience of the 20th century, that in the absence of Israel there was nowhere for the bedraggled survivors of pogrom and genocide to go.
If Starmer were to choose such a policy, he would be turning his back on Britain and Labour’s position since the Second World War, separating himself from the Atlantic alliance and preferring ideology to practicality. It would be endorsing the creation of a highly unstable, fundamentalist, Iranian-backed militant state in the Middle East, clinging to the obviously ridiculous notion that Jews could live in such a state safely. If Labour loses in Batley & Spen, one of its conclusions might be that it needs to talk about Palestine more. It is welcome to do so if it wishes, but it won’t help electorally. The party’s decision to issue a leaflet this week stigmatising the prime minister of India certainly indicates Labour may be willing to attempt to propitiate Galloway and his audience.
For most people Palestine will appear a very odd preoccupation, since relatively few voters have more than a passing interest in the matter. And Starmer will only be able to meet the demands of people like Galloway and his supporters if he commits himself to a policy that is highly irresponsible. He will know it and voters will sense it. It will therefore do him more electoral harm than good.
Calling for a Palestinian state and defending Palestinian rights is not the same demand as Freeing Palestine “from the River (Jordan) to the (Mediterranean) Sea”. Starmer should be resolutely for the first and equally resolutely against the second. And he should show that he knows the difference. Being thwarted by George Galloway would be a setback, a frustration, a disappointment. Becoming George Galloway would be a disaster.
Labour may have to bite the bullet on this one. Better to lose this by-election without compromising whatever integrity they have left, than compromise with Galloway - sink to his level - and lose far more country-wide. Batley and Spen is not the UK.
Yeah, but there are probably 30-40 Labour safe seats & councils that are Batley & Spen.
Posted by: Martin Adamson | July 01, 2021 at 07:46 AM