Jeremy Corbyn's proximity to power is opening voters' eyes to the extremists he associates with

A sign reading: No place for anti-Semites in Labour
Suddenly people are noticing the extremists who have been admitted to the Labour Party Credit: JULIAN SIMMONDS

The exposure of anti-Semitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party disproves the claim, made by many despairing Tories after the last election, that Mr Corbyn’s extremist associations can do him no harm.

I had numerous arguments with such people who told me that “young people” don’t care about his links with Islamist anti-Semites and terrorists, and had never heard of the IRA.

It was true that such attacks against Mr Corbyn got nowhere in 2017. But the key electoral point I tried to make in reply was that voters of all ages in that election did not trouble much with these questions because hardly any of them thought Mr Corbyn’s Labour would win. (They were right, just.) This meant, confusingly, that many were more likely to vote for him. It seemed a cost-free way of punishing Theresa May for taking them for granted.

People now do think Mr Corbyn might become prime minister. So they start to notice who he spends time with

Since then, the situation has profoundly altered. People now do think Mr Corbyn might become prime minister. So they start to notice who he spends time with. They observe that virtually all Labour’s anti-Semitic opinions recently uncovered come from Corbyn-supporters. Attached to these opinions is a long tail of other extremism – foul language, sexual insults, incitements to violence. Voters start to worry.

This is only the start of a long process. Mr Corbyn, you see, is the political equivalent of someone who is hauled in for a couple of recent misdemeanours and then turns out to have a record as long as your arm. It now seems that a number of his associates all those years ago in the London local politics of the 1970s and 1980s held these terrible views then; but, in pre-internet days, they could circulate them only in grottily printed, obscure newspapers that hardly anyone read. His words and his friends over the past 40 years need to be minutely studied.


 The other interesting lesson of the recent exposure lies in the fact that it happened at all. In the past, no ethnic/religious lobby in this country has been more respectful towards mainstream politicians than the principal Jewish organisations. Until now, they have worked on the largely correct assumption that the three main parties are friendly to Jews, and therefore need to be politely handled.

The decision to denounce and demonstrate against the Leader of the Opposition was therefore a big and painful one for British Jews. It was made only because there seemed to be no other way. Unless Mr Corbyn completely backs down and recants, the logic of the present situation is that his party will become – to use a grim phrase well-known in the 1930s – “judenrein”, Jew-free. Traditionally, Labour had more Jewish supporters than any other British party. The change is a trauma and a tragedy.

Magnificence is no longer a virtue for monarchs

One of the Van Dyck paintings on show at the Royal Academy's Charles I exhibition Credit: Royal Collection Trust

You only have until April 15 to see the exhibition Charles I: King and Collector at the Royal Academy. Go if you can. It re-creates the world of a cultured court, and it is extraordinarily beautiful. It shows how gracefully the pan-European idea of the Renaissance was fitted into an English setting. And although many of the paintings are very grand, the overall feeling is not of cold, desolate luxury like Louis XIV’s Versailles, but of family warmth, bosky landscape and temperate weather.

It is hard not to like Charles I better after seeing the show, yet one can also understand why his behaviour led to the Civil War

Many of the King’s pictures were sold off by his executioners, in the “Commonwealth Sale”. In the show, their prices are noted beside each work sold. How I would have grabbed the chance to snap up Van Dyck’s portrait of the five oldest children of the King for the £120 paid (about £7,000 today). In the current market, it would sell for many millions.

It is hard not to like Charles I better after seeing the show, yet one can also understand why his behaviour led to the Civil War. The traditional monarchical virtue of “magnificence”, which he upheld, is incompatible with a constitutional monarchy. It made puritans itch to cut his head off. If you are King, and have an artistic bent, better to steer it into less visible channels, as George V wisely did with his obsession with postage stamps.

The foreword to the exhibition’s catalogue is written by the Prince of Wales. He celebrates the “glorious reunion” of the collection. He is quite right to do so, but he should purge himself of any demonstrative artistic leanings if he wishes to be secure as King Charles III, and not have his lovely works of art flogged off by the Corbynista equivalent of Sotheby’s.

The Pope and Hell

Pope Francis arriving to celebrate Easter mass Credit: Andrew Medichini/AP

Some might criticise Pope Francis for chatting away to the founder of the newspaper, La Repubblica, Eugenio Scalfari, in unnoted, unrecorded conversations. Mr Scalfari then wrote up what he could remember, producing the sensational headline that the Pope thinks Hell does not exist.

Let us look at the matter more charitably. Mr Scalfari is 93 years old, and an atheist. He may be getting a little nervous as he approaches his end, and wanting some tips about what happens next from the man who is supposed to know. Obviously the kindly Pope Francis is not going to tell him that eternal torments await him, if he can find a gentler way of getting him to repent. Remember the saying “Betwixt the stirrup and the ground,/Mercy I asked, mercy I found.”

All the same, perhaps the next time these two elderly gentlemen discuss the afterlife, a Vatican spin-doctor should be in attendance, armed with a tape recorder.