Jeremy Corbyn. Image, Chatham House, some rights reserved.
The Labour leadership's problem, now verging on crisis, over anti-semitism is of course hugely relevant in and of itself. At best the leadership, or at least those in positions of ultimate control and authority, seem to have a tin ear when it comes to the persecution of a minority in their party and society who horrifyingly understand persecution better than most. But it is also the wider issues of political culture that is revealed here that matters – a culture which tends towards a rigidity and therefore a brittleness that will be the Labour leadership’s undoing unless it is transformed.
Every political venture has its strengths and its weakness. The strength of the Labour leadership’s is rooted in its outright opposition to the Blair years, its utter lack of any connection to that regime and the hope they provide of a more left wing future. This hope has revitalized the party and its electoral performance in 2017. There are holes to pick and points to be made against this analysis but they currently carry little weight. Labour is being led in a very different direction and lots of people love it, like it or prefer it to any of the other options that have been on the table.
