February 18, 2005
IT'LL ONLY GET WORSE:
Why Labour does not need the Jews (Rod Liddle, 2/19/05, The Spectator)
There is no ‘Jewish’ vote in Great Britain any more. There used to be, back in the time of Cable Street and Mosley and even up to 20 or so years ago. Jews used to vote, en masse, for Labour. But not now. At the last general election, the Jewish vote was split exactly 50–50 between Labour and Conservative.Further, there aren’t that many of them left, the Jews. Their number has shrunk by one third since 1945, largely as a result of their propensity to integrate and their readiness to become assimilated: they marry outside of their communities, much to the consternation of the Chief Rabbi. They have always been happy to identify with British values.
And finally, the 300,000 Jewish people who remain are widely dispersed. There are still some famous Jewish enclaves, of course — Stamford Hill and Golders Green in London, parts of Manchester, Leeds and Bradford and so on. But a large proportion of that 300,000 are scattered to the wind, apparently happily so, from Truro to Thurso.
All of which means that, electorally, there is no point in courting the Jewish vote, because there isn’t one as such. The Jews have become an electoral insignificance and so will not be an issue in the forthcoming general election. Except, however, indirectly. Because it follows that if there’s no point in courting the Jewish vote, then equally there is no harm in offending Jewish people if electoral advantage can be gained among another section of the population by so doing.
Combined with rising Muslim populations it will make them even more hostile to Israel. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 18, 2005 12:00 AM
Jews are a swing vote in the UK because neither party has decided to appeal to them. There is no lack of both philo-Semites and anti-Semites in either party.
Some of the 'nationalist' parties, notably the Plaid Cymru and the Sinn Fein, are very anti-Jewish. By contrast, the DUP and the UUP are very pro-Jewish.
What is happening in Britain is that the Jewish community is changing. The more secular Jews are assimilating rapidly, the less are not. As the community becomes more observant, 'Jewish issues' will matter to them more. Even the more observant Jews tend to be educated and affluent, so the economic and social concerns that activated Jewish interest in politics will no longer exist. The phenomenon has been occuring in Australia for about 70 years and is now occuring in the US, I would expect Britain is about a generation behind.
Posted by: Bart at February 18, 2005 9:17 AM