The battle for Britain

WHEN I left the UK just five months ago, the future of British politics seemed fairly certain. In the midst of a flailing economy, and after 13 years of Blairite spin, a dubious war and an ideologically bankrupt government, headed by the dour-faced Gordon Brown, as apparently ineffectual as he was unpopular, the country had long since tired of the Labour Party.

Change was in the air and when the election came a’knocking in 2010, you didn’t have to be a soothsayer to know that Conservative (Tory) leader David Cameron would be the next resident of 10 Downing Street.

What did he and the Tories stand for? No-one really knew and it didn’t really matter. Labour was a spent force and the Conservatives were the only alternative. Three weeks ago, however, Cameron’s star had started to fade, and Brown — staunch and reliable — was apparently back in the race, with pollsters predicting the greatest comeback since John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.

That though was then. A fortnight ago, Cameron and Brown faced off in a live TV debate and ‚Ķ well, there was a third fellow there who swept the boards with both of them — the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg.

Suddenly, Britain’s third party, sitting on the sidelines for the best part of a century, was being touted as the kingmaker in the increasingly likely event of a hung parliament. A week, they say, is a long time in politics. Five months, it transpires, is an eternity.

Whether mainstream Jewish voters would find themselves in Clegg’s corner is another matter. Yes, like all three leaders, Clegg describes himself as a friend of Israel. But of all three parties, his is the most discredited when it comes to supporting the Jewish State.

Home to the likes of Jenny Tonge and Chris Davies, whose rants regarding the unchecked power of the pro-Israel lobby teeter on the edge of anti-Semitism, the Lib Dems as a whole were also the most critical of the country during the war in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-09.

Clegg himself called for a suspension of the arms trade with Israel during Operation Cast Lead, and urged the government to “condemn unambiguously Israel’s tactics”, while shadow foreign secretary Ed Davey has thrown his weight behind the Goldstone report. In short, while pledged to the security of the state, the Lib Dems are the most overt in their condemnation of Israel and the most outspoken in expressing sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

Clegg did earn some Brownie points this February when he sacked Baroness Tonge as party health spokesperson in the House of Lords over her calls for an investigation into claims that Israeli medics were harvesting organs in Haiti.

But many would have liked him to have used the ultimate sanction and withdraw the whip from his outspoken peer, who, as well as decrying the influence of Zionists over western governments, also once said she may well have become a suicide bomber if she had been a Palestinian.

And so to the incumbents — a prime minister who never tires of telling Jewish audiences that his father was chairman of the Church of Scotland’s Israel Committee and that he grew up looking at slides of the Holy Land, alongside a foreign minister, David Miliband, who is himself Jewish and throws an annual Chanukah party in his official residence.

For all their credentials, however, the party’s relationship with the community has been checkered. Most recently, we witnessed the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat over the alleged misuse of passports by the Mossad. And time and again, we’ve heard the Government promise to take immediate action to ensure senior Israeli officials could visit the country without fear of arrest — a promise that has yet to be fulfilled. Miliband, meanwhile, denounced Israel’s disproportionate response during Operation Cast Lead and has labelled settlements as illegal.

Further, the Government dragged its heels over Durban II, abstained on the Goldstone report, and has had some run-ins with the community over faith education. That’s not to say they are against Jewish schools — far from it. In recent years, the establishment of Jewish schools has flourished with the Government’s blessing. However, two years ago, Education Minister Ed Balls claimed that a number of state-funded faith schools were in breach of new admissions regulations by demanding voluntary contributions from parents.

His tone was particularly harsh, given that the institutions in question were attempting to get to grips with the new rules. But crucially, many of the schools he attacked were Jewish and they were the ones that made the headlines.

However, in one other school sphere, Labour — and Gordon Brown in particular — have certainly won plaudits for the community, and that is their commitment to Holocaust education. A fixture in the national curriculum, Brown pledged millions to ensure that at least two pupils from every school in the country could visit Auschwitz.

The issue became a political football when it was included by the Conservative Party in a list of Labour “gimmicks”. The Tories claimed the Government was not providing all the funding it had promised and that schools would be forced to cough up some of the cash themselves. True or not, the labelling of Auschwitz trips as a “gimmick” was seen as rather distasteful and caused something of an outcry from all quarters.

Of course, their choice of language aside, it’s the prerogative of the Opposition to attack the Government at every opportunity. As such, the Tories have had the luxury of presenting a positive image of themselves to the community, without having the power to prove themselves. Case in point, shadow foreign minister William Hague criticised the Government for not voting against the Goldstone report and for using the phrase “disproportionate” during Operation Cast Lead. He did, however, incur communal wrath when he used it during the Second Lebanon War.

Of greater concern in recent months has been the Tories’ alliances within the European Parliament, which not only hit the national headlines, but also fuelled a kerfuffle that divided the community. Allegations that the European Conservatives and Reform Group housed some rather unsavoury right-wingers with some questionable attitudes towards Jews and the Holocaust prompted the UK’s Board of Deputies to write to David Cameron expressing their concerns.

Britain’s Jewish Chronicle , meanwhile, weighed into the fray, attacking the Board of Deputies for taking the Tories to task and defending the main man at the centre of the rumours, Polish MEP Michal Kaminski of the Law and Justice Party. Kaminski denies he is anti-Semitic, but he has nonetheless courted controversy for opposing a Polish apology for the 1941 massacre of Jews at Jedwabne. With the election fast approaching, the row over the EU bloc continues to dog the Tories.

Of greater concern, perhaps, is the the far right on the home front. The success of the British National Party (BNP) in last year’s European elections saw them win two seats. Next week, they are fielding a record number of candidates and fears have been expressed that in the current economic climate, one or two constituencies may be taken in by their rhetoric.

One must also consider how the BNP might fare in future polls in the event that a form of proportional representation is introduced — the price the Liberal Democrats will exact for helping to form a government should there be a hung parliament. For those unsure what the BNP stands for, suffice to say that alongside the usual anti-immigrant, anti-minority slurs, leader Nick Griffin has claimed Jews control the media and coined the phrase “Holohoax” to describe the Shoah.

So what will the final result be, who will form the government and what impact will it have on the Jewish community? Of course, until the ballots are counted this week, we won’t know. But chances are not much will change. Whoever is in power, they’ll describe themselves as friends of Israel, and they’ll commit to the country’s security.

But nonetheless, when Israel seeks to defend itself, Britain will condemn its actions, simply because that’s what Britain does.

In short, as they say across the Channel, “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”.

ZEDDY LAWRENCE