Well the recent bad news dogging Labour hasn't stopped them winning the Kingswood by-election. The Wellingborough result hasn't been declared yet, but sources are confident of a Labour win here too at time of writing:
Labour 11,176
Combined number for Tory/Reform 11,253
Although if Reform wasn't there how many would have switched to UKIP is unknown.
None the less Labour must be liking the fact that it's no longer the centre and left parties which have a split in people voting for them...
Sure, but the Mail and the right wing press do drive a lot of our political conversation. Their headlines and articles get covered by the likes of the BBC and Sky News on their nightly "Tomorrow's front pages" discussion shows. They get tweeted and retweeted by all sorts of people. And so on and so on. Whilst the influence of the media can be overstated it would be unwise to suggest that it will have no impact because a "prospective Labour voter won't by them".
Back to today's Mail if you go a bit further you come across the opening to today's Stephen Glover column:
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That last paragraph in particularly is instructive I think. It seems clear that the Mail and similar are going to do everything that they can to paint a "same old Corbynite Labour" type narrative (see also the attacks along the lines of "Starmer served in Corbyn's shadow cabinet and campaigned for him in 2019") which is, obviously, rubbish as the Corbynite wing of the party is furious with Starmer's response to the present Israel - Hamas war. But for those that are less politically switched on? That don't pay as much attention? Will they know that that's the case? Or will they see a general trend of stories saying that Labour is enamoured in yet another antisemitism scandal and draw their own conclusions?
Arguably Beergate was a creation of the Daily Mail's relentless campaign of front pages to suggest that something criminal had happened. Compare and contrast with its relentless campaign of frontpages that Partygate, meanwhile, was a nothing burger.
With that in mind it's hardly surprising that Starmer and Labour are doing everything in their power to deflect any accusation of antisemitism.
Of course it's entirely possible that other parties have links to other potentially hostile forces - for example there's quite a few questions over Russian involvement with the Tory party.
As with all things the issues with Israel/Palestine are complex. For example it's entirely reasonable that Israel responded to the attack on them, however it's also reasonable for people to question if they have been heavy handed in that response.
There will certainly be some, who are anti-Semitic who will say that the response has been heavy handed, although that certainly isn't the case for everyone who say it. The difficulty is trying to work out what their overall views are from just what they say about the current situation.
Whilst it doesn't have the same historical sensitivities, some are too strong in their support for Israel even though the international court has required them to ensure that they are not carrying out genocide against Palestine.
Some of that support will start from a reasonable assumption - that because of the persecution of the Jews in Europe during the second world war (and whilst Germany went far far further than anywhere else there was quite a lot of ill feeling towards them across Europe at the time) that they should be able to have their own state (even if there's an argument that by doing so it resolves the issue by not having to deal with the underlying issue in that by moving Jews away from those who dislike them those who dislike them don't actually have to change what they think).
Likewise, it's not unreasonable for people to be concerned that the attack by Hamas was aided by other parties (for example it's massively helped the Russians, in that there's less support within the US for Ukraine whilst the spotlight is elsewhere - whether there was direct aid from Russia it's been said that was unlikely, but add the links from both to Iran and it's not impossible that there could be some linked help, even if that was as simple as Russian money buying Iranian weapons which gives Iran more money to fund the likes of Hamas - of course it's easy to end up down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories if you go looking) and so wish to bring down the Axis of Evil (which was a phase used after 911, and whilst not directly used there's the potential for it to be implied).
Therefore, it's reasonable to understand why America is a natural ally with Israel, in that the US was attacked by an Islamic group (as well as losing a lot of "brave Americans" in Afghanistan) and Hamas are also Islamic (given that many won't go beyond the basics in their day to day thinking, for example not knowing that there's quite a few Christians on both sides of the divide, it can have an impact on the national response even if those at the top have a broader understanding).
