Why is Britain becoming less safe for Jews?

The rise of anti-Semitism in the UK is shocking but has a clear provenance

In The Times, Juliet Samuel questions the claim that an excess of “collectivism” and a lack of “individualism” lies at the heart of Britain’s woes.

I was struck, however, by [the claim] that the main problem in politics today is a surfeit of collectivism over individualism. For one thing, conservatism has traditionally been rather keen on collective duty and common causes…In many policy areas, the present problem is the primacy of individual rights over national interests. Take housing or infrastructure. The planning system constantly prioritises the right of each homeowner to preserve the “character” of their area or their view or their peace and quiet over the collective need for a new generation to access services or buy houses at a decent price.

It is the same with migration policy. Think of the Clapham alkali attacker. How many times have our legal system and security apparatus placed his rights before our collective right to see asylum rules enforced and streets made safe? The same applies to the “right” of a male-born trans person to enter women’s spaces or the “right” of some offended party to police the speech of others.

Of course, individual liberty is also an important value. But the rights of the collective matter too and in far too many areas, they are being neglected. The route to popular political renewal, on left or right, lies in tackling this dilemma.

Also for The Times, Danny Finkelstein explains the origin of left-wing anti-Semitism as rooted in Cold War Soviet propaganda.

The right place to start, I think, is with Lenin. More precisely, with Lenin’s theory of imperialism. At around the time of the Russian revolution, the Bolshevik leader advanced his idea of the final stage of capitalism. His view was that the survival of capitalism was dependent on the profits of imperial adventure. End these profits and you could end capitalism. From this derived the left’s idea that it should ally with anti-colonial resistance movements, whatever their broader politics. These groups — in the modern era, Castro’s Cuba, Chávez’s Venezuela, Khomeini’s Iran — were at the front line of the battle against global capital. And this is the only battle that really matters, the one from which all freedoms derive.

…The Soviets said that every day brought “new reports of the Israeli military, reviving memories of Hitlerites”. The (now common on the left) comparison with the Nazis, and the use of terms such as genocide, is thus decades old and a communist invention. “Zionism,” they argued in a televised press conference, “expressed the chauvinistic views and racist ravings of the Jewish bourgeoisie.”

To this they added: “Zionists supply imperialism with cannon fodder in the struggle against the Arab people.” For in addition to the ideological reasons for their opposition to Israel, there were political and strategic ones. The Soviets wanted to recruit Arab governments and the Arab street to their side in the Cold War struggle with America. And virulent opposition to Israel helped them to do that.

On ConservativeHome, William Atkinson says Housing Secretary Michael Gove is right to say the housing shortage may break younger voters’ faith in democracy.

Modern democracies are built on an implicit promise: if you work hard, pay your taxes, and play by the rules, you will be better off than your parents. Millennials and Gen Zs look set to be the first modern generations for whom that will not be the case. It has become passe to suggest that a generation struggling to accumulate capital are unlikely to become capitalists. But it should also be obvious that those receiving little benefit from democracy will have little enthusiasm for defending it. A property-owning democracy requires voters to own some property.

Consider what life has been like for those young people reaching political consciousness post-crash. Soaring house prices and wage stagnation. Austerity and ballooning student debt. Brexit and Covid. A political system that seems fundamentally rigged to enrich the elderly at their expense. According to the IPPR, young UK adults are the least likely to say democracy serves them well, whilst over 65s are the most likely. It isn’t hard to understand why.

Britain looks like a gerontocracy. Austerity disproportionately impacted the young; the elderly were protected by the Triple Lock. 73 per cent of 18–24-year-olds voted to Remain, yet retirees took us out. Lockdowns kept the young confined against a virus that posed little threat to them. Did the Government say thank you? No – it hiked taxes on young workers so that wealthy pensioners wouldn’t have to sell their homes. All the while, NIMBYism, immigration, and loose monetary policy sent house prices surging.

In The Telegraph, Philip Johnston says successive governments have failed to plan for the housing and infrastructure needs of a rapidly rising population.

In 2010, the UK population was 62.3 million. The Office for National Statistics projects that it will grow to 70 million by 2026 and then to 74 million within 15 years, with the rise almost entirely down to immigration. The housing crisis is just one manifestation of the attendant population increase. Belated new restrictions, including a ban on most international students and care workers from bringing family members to the UK with them, should bring numbers down but far too late to make a difference. 

Indeed, all the Government’s woes can be traced to a failure to control immigration, a deliberate policy because as the latest startling labour market figures from the Office for National Statistics show, foreign workers are needed to fill the jobs that millions of inactive Brits refuse to do. 

Immigration began to take off in 1997 but was simply not talked about, which meant that there was no planning for the inevitable pressures it brings. Until the mid-1990s, the actuarial assumptions that underpinned government forecasts of future public service requirements were based on an almost steady population. The extra homes, hospitals, schools, doctors surgeries, transport links and the like that are needed for such a large number of people have not been provided in sufficient quantities, which is why there is so much pressure on those services.

In The New Statesman, Sohrab Ahmari describes the new kind of American conservatism represented by J.D. Vance.

Yet the combination of a populist demand for a fair social settlement and revulsion at individual indolence isn’t anomalous. On the contrary, that attitude was central to Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms, and why he framed social security as an earned benefit, rather than a taxpayer handout that could be taken away later. It was also the politics of Mamaw. “My grandma’s politics [was] a sort of hybrid between left-wing social democracy and right-wing personal uplift, and there is virtue to both of these world-views.”

Vance said he might draft a bill to return manufacturing to US shores, garnering support from progressives for creating higher-wage jobs. “But I do think it’s important – and this is where my social conservatism comes in – to recognise that people who grew up in broken families are likely to have some psychological issues that are completely separate from the economic facts of their lives.”

He added: “We know that a kid who grows up in a two-parent household where the family income is $60,000 [a year] is going to have a better social income than a kid who grows up in a broken home where the family income is $60,000. And so, you can simultaneously believe that you want to raise both families’ incomes to $80,000, while recognising that there is a problem” with family breakdown.

Also in The Telegraph, Tim Collins warns of the dangers of Britain’s military decline.

Ships which have just been refurbished at great expense are being decommissioned. The Navy can’t take part in Nato exercises, much less deploy effective assets to the Red Sea to protect our own and international shipping from missile and interception attacks by the Iranian backed Houthi Rebels because of a lack of sailors. It has sought to reinforce failure by redeploying marines and sailors to become diversity and inclusion officers to enhance the “lived experience” of personnel amid ongoing recruitment challenges in manning its ships, rather than actually manning the ships.  

What remains of the Army is barely workable - of the 72,000 in its workforce around half have been medically downgraded. The drive to introduce females into frontline units carrying combat loads over long distances has, not surprisingly, taken a shocking toll on their frames. The state of Army equipment is perilous, too. We effectively have no artillery systems since the AS 90s were given to the Ukrainians along with a lump of the ammo and the new system is not in service. A disastrous defence procurement programme has reportedly seen just 44 of an ordered 589 armoured fighting vehicles delivered to the MoD - a decade after bosses signed the £5.5 billion contract.  

But it is the lack of tanks that worries me. Last year it was disclosed that the UK has just 157 Challenger 2 main battle tanks (MBTs) either on or available to undertake operations within a 30-day work-up period, out of a theoretical fleet of 227 vehicles. The figure was disclosed during a UK Defence Committee session on March 8. But now it is believed to be much worse. It has been announced that the Ministry of Defence has 93 diversity networks. Today, we don’t have that many working Challengers 2s!

Finally from The Telegraph, Zoe Strimpel says Labour has proved it cannot be trusted with the safety of Britain’s Jews.

Presented in the respectable tones of serious punditry, the reality is nonetheless savage: Many of Labour’s Muslim voters say their trust in the party has been severely compromised by Starmer’s refusal to call for a ceasefire sooner, and his ongoing refusal to call Israel – rather than Hamas and its numerous affiliates in Gaza – a bastion of war criminality. They complain that Labour doesn’t care about Muslim lives – another brisk inversion of the truth, which is that it is Hamas, the many other armed Palestinian militias and their thousands of supporters, including in Britain, that want Jews harmed, gaslit and rendered powerless.

Starmer has now capitulated to pressure to call for a “sustained ceasefire”, a weaselly term, and the immediate electoral damage may now be limited – Labour thinks it could lose four seats over Gaza. But this doesn’t change the fact that the pro-Palestine electorate coalesces around some very nasty beliefs about Israel, with worrying implications for Jewish safety and freedom of politics more widely.

And this bloc is used to getting what it wants. It has been protesting against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza with relative impunity, despite the presence of Isis-style flags, pogrom-inciting anti-Semitic placards and jihadi chants. Starmer promised things would be different for Jews under his leadership. But given the endless flip-flopping of his party, even on a matter as serious as support for Israel, with which a Palestinian state is completely incompatible right now, it seems that all that was just hot air. 

Wonky thinking

Onward published Back to Basics: How Neighbourhood Policing can Make Streets and Communities safer, by Callum Newton and Adam Hawksbee. The report calls for a revolution in local community policing to restore people’s faith in local law and order. The report was endorsed by ten Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs).

Past evidence on the best way to tackle Community Crime is clear: visible, trusted neighbourhood policing. Research has repeatedly shown that regular foot patrols, targeted at crime hotspots and combined with community meetings and clear public communication, can reduce crime and increase public confidence. When paired with community-based programmes to prevent crime, an emphasis on deterrence can dramatically reduce offending. Research tallies with the preferences of voters. When asked for the best steps to deal with local crime, 38% of the public chose ‘more police on the streets’ compared to 31% for ‘tougher sentences’ and 25% for ‘improving crime prevention programmes’.

But neighbourhood policing teams are strained. Despite the Government’s successful drive to recruit 20,000 new police officers, the number of supporting officers assigned to neighbourhood policing is down. Between 2012 and 2023, the number of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) reduced by almost half (45%) and the number of Specials decreased by two thirds (66%). Many of the new police recruits came from these heavily depleted ranks of PCSOs and Special Constables.

Retention is a key challenge: the police workforce exit rate reached 9.6% in 2022/23, the highest level since 2007/08. This reduction in numbers hit some of the poorest areas hardest. Those areas with the most depleted forces, even after the Government’s recent recruitment drive, are often the most deprived - such as Lancashire, Merseyside and Cleveland.

Within this smaller pool of local police staff, Chief Constables are prioritising reactive teams and 999 responses over neighbourhood policing. While the number of officers assigned to response teams are roughly at 2012 levels, the number assigned to neighbourhood teams remains 10% lower. Again, reductions are highest in more deprived areas: the number of officers assigned to neighbourhood teams has decreased by 77% in Cumbria, 76% in West Yorkshire and 71% in Lincolnshire.

Local officers are also often abstracted from neighbourhood teams to deal with national incidents, like protests or sporting events. And the closure of police stations across the country adds to this palpable sense that the police are withdrawing from public spaces.

All together, these trends have dramatically reduced police visibility. Around 11% of the public said they saw a foot patrol once a week in 2022, compared to 26% in 2011. PCSOs, in particular, struggle to perform their roles as “junior enforcers” - tackling low level crime - or “bridge builders” - gathering insight from the community and increasing trust. Investments in specialist and response teams have clearly had an impact on overall crime levels. But to restore confidence, police forces need to get back to basics: making neighbourhood policing a priority and tackling Community Crime.

The first step is increasing the number of local officers. The Government should launch a new Neighbourhood Police Uplift Programme, building on their success in recruiting 20,000 police officers. The focus in this next wave should be on the supporting roles that are most visible to the public: recruiting 10,000 PCSOs and 6,000 Special Constables, alongside 3,000 new police officers. The £2.9 billion cost over the next Parliament should come partly from Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), enabled by scrapping the £13 cap on their council tax precept, and from a ring-fenced Home Office neighbourhood policing grant. The average household would face an annual tax rise of approximately 45 pence per week. The review of the Police Allocation Formula should be expedited to ensure forces are financially sustainable – a position shared by ten PCCs. A new financial incentive should be introduced to aid PCSO recruitment - modelled on similar incentives used by the Ministry of Defence for army reservists. And a new commitment should be made by Chief Constables to limit abstractions from neighbourhood teams to no more than 20% of officer time.

But numbers alone will not address the concerns of the public - we have to focus on outputs and outcomes, not just inputs. So, the second step is improving the visibility and effectiveness of local policing. Dedicated training should be delivered by the College of Policing to all officers outlining the fundamental principles of neighbourhood policing. Police stations should be opened in disused high street premises, providing both live desks and sites for officers to work remotely when answering non-emergency calls and processing online crime surveys.

Facial recognition technology and joint teams with retail businesses should be rolled out to tackle shoplifting and drug offences on high streets. The Community Safety Accreditation Scheme should be used to recruit and train a new wave of neighbourhood wardens, targeted at town centres and working alongside local councils and community groups. And the baseline powers of PCSOs should be expanded across all forces so they can perform a broader role in supporting enforcement and investigations. The third step is a renewed partnership between the police and the public. A Neighbourhood Policing Pledge, endorsed by PCCs across the country, should ensure every neighbourhood will know who their officers are, where they can meet them, and their top priorities. The Pledge should be incorporated into the regular assessments of police force capability and performance.

To rebuild a sense of public safety and security, particularly in the most disadvantaged communities, police forces need to go back to basics. Neighbourhood policing works. It should, once again, be a priority.

Book of the week

We recommend Trade Wars are Class Wars by Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis. The authors argue that what seem to be economic conflicts between nations are actually internal conflicts between rich and poor.

Almost everyone in the world is connected by the global trade and financial systems. Whenever we buy something, go to work, save, our actions affect billions of people thousands of miles away - just as people on the other side of the world unknowingly affect us every day with their mundane decisions.

Although these economic linkages have many benefits, they can also transmit problems from one society to another. People in one country are often responsible for unaffordable housing, debt crises, job losses, and pollution elsewhere. The Chinese government persecutes labor organizers and offers cheap bank loans to real estate developers, and American manufacturing workers lose their jobs. German companies slash wages as the German government cuts welfare spending, and Spaniards get a housing bubble.

The thesis of this book is that rising inequality within countries heightens trade conflicts between them. This is ultimately an optimistic argument: we do not believe that the world is destined to endure a zero-sum conflict between nations or economic blocs. Chinese and Germans are not evil, nor do we live in a world where countries can only prosper at others’ expense. The problems of the past few decades do not have their roots in geopolitical conflict or incompatible national characters. Rather, they caused by massive transfers of income to the rich and the companies they control.

Regular people everywhere are being deprived of purchasing power - and tricked by chauvinists and opportunists into believing that their interests are fundamentally at odds. A global conflict between economic classes within countries is being misinterpreted as a series of conflicts between countries with competing interests. The danger is a repetition of the 1930s, when a breakdown of the international economic and financial order undermined democracy and encouraged virulent nationalism. Back then, the consequences were war, revolution, and genocide. Fortunately, things are not yet nearly as dire now as they were then. But that is no excuse for complacency.

The escalating trade dispute between the governments of China and the United States is the most obvious demonstration of the risks. Between 2002 and 2010, voters in congressional districts where many businesses made goods that competed with imports from China elected increasingly extreme representatives - from both the left and the right. Donald Trump, who distinguished himself from other Republicans in part by his hostility to trade and to China in particular, won eighty-nine of the hundred counties most affected by Chinese import competition during the 2016 Republican primaries. Some estimates show that he would have lost the general election had it not been for the trade-induced radicalization of voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

As president, Trump has followed through by levying punitive tariffs on most Chinese imports, by officially designating the country a “currency manipulator”, and by blocking Chinese investments into US companies. Unlike most of Trump’s other policies, confronting China over trade has been popular across the American political spectrum. Charles Schumer, the lead Democrat in the Senate, praised the punitive tariffs in 2018 because “China is our real trade enemy” and “threatens millions of American jobs”.

This political consensus is based on an important truth: Chinese government policies before 2008 destroyed millions of US jobs and inflated the housing debt bubble. Things have improved somewhat since then, but the durability of this improvement is tenuous, at best, and the country remains a major drag on the global economy.

Yet there is no economic conflict between America and China as countries. The Chinese people are not the enemy. Rather, there is a conflict between economic classes within China that has spilled over into the United States. Systematic transfers of wealth from Chinese workers to Chinese elites distort the Chinese economy by strangling purchasing power and subsidizing production at the expense of consumption. That, in turn, distorts the global economy by creating gluts, of manufactured goods and by bidding up the prices of stocks, bonds, and real estate. Chinese underconsumption destroys jobs elsewhere, while inflated asset values lead to devastating cycles of booms, busts, and debt crises.

Quick links

The UK is in recession after recording two quarters of negative growth…

…and GDP per capita has been falling for almost two years.

The economy is 27% smaller than it would have been if the pre-2008 crisis trend had continued.

The Chancellor now has less headroom for mooted tax cuts.

Falling inflation means workers are receiving real terms wage rises.

Retail sales rebounded 3.4% in January after a record fall of 3.3% in December.

Economic inactivity due to long-term sickness has hit a record high of 2.8 million.

Labour won two by-election victories in Wellingborough and Kingswood with a swing greater than the 12.5% needed for a general election victory.

Labour’s overall poll lead fell to 12 percentage points, the lowest since last June.

Four boys aged 12-14 were arrested in Rochdale after a “young female” reported being raped.

The Labour Party withdrew support for its parliamentary candidate in Rochdale, Azhar Ali, after pressure following his suggestion that Israel allowed the October 7 attacks as a pretext to invade Gaza.

The Jewish chaplain at Leeds University was forced into hiding after receiving death threats.

Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, has died in prison aged 47.

Chip designer Arm, which was sold in to the Japanese firm Softbank in 2016, overtook HSBC and Unilever to become the fourth most valuable UK-headquartered company.

Home ownership rates for under-30s are at their lowest rate since 1960.

Former Immigration minister Robert Jenrick called for asylum seekers to be blocked from working to make Britain a less attractive place to come illegally.

The MoD has 93 diversity networks, including 7 LGBT groups, 14 for race and 10 for gender.