the brilliantly leaping gazelle

My heart sank just now when I saw this headline in The Guardian,

Jewish Labour Movement no longer backs own party

Members ‘down tools’ in election campaign over party’s failure to quell antisemitism

and I’d been in such a good mood too, having just got up and feeling virtuous because I’d ordered things on my Christmas wish list from Amazon. Well not that virtuous as they don’t pay their tax, but you get the point. Anyway,

Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn on the campaign trail in Carmarthen on Saturday. The Jewish Labour group says he is ‘not fit’ to be prime minister. 

Well that helps. That won’t be dominating the news agenda at all,that won’t let the Tories off the hook for all manner of ills. My list of them possibly differs from yours.

The Jewish Labour Movement has “downed tools” in the election campaign and declined to back the party it has supported for almost a century, because of Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to stamp out antisemitism, the organisation’s chairman says.

With days to go before Thursday’s general election, Mike Katz, JLM’s chairman, says its members concluded “a while ago that Jeremy Corbyn is not fit to be prime minister” because his party was “failing its Jewish members and tolerating antisemitism”. Writing for the Observer, Katz adds: “The Jewish Labour Movement – a founding affiliate of the party, nearly a century ago – has for the first time effectively downed tools for the election, campaigning only for exceptional candidates who have been the best of allies to us in our fight against the party’s anti- Jewish racism.”

I mean they are aware, are they not, that there are bigger evils roaming this country, one’s that affect everyone regardless of religion? Wouldn’t they be wiser to focus instead on the radical programme of social justice that a Corbinned government will usher in and its transformative benefits for this country instead? And if they still felt that they could not support Corbinned could they not have have done so quietly? Instead of making an announcement timed, as far as I can see, to do as much harm to Labour so close to polling day, to give the right wing press yet more ammunition for anti-Corbin stories, but most of all, possibly help usher in a Tory government? In what universe is that a good thing?