Baron Lebedev of Hampton (in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames) and Siberia (in the Russian Federation) is engaging in a war of (so far) words with my MP. I’m on the side of my MP, Matt Western (of Warwick and Leamington) who is the underdog in this fight - not least because he is not the son of an oligarch KGB agent, nor does he own a number of major news outlets, and nor is he a friend of Boris Johnson.

Lebedev is all these things, of course. But his prominent role in British government has not been widely acknowledged. Nor has it been investigated to any significant degree by those who claim to speak truth to power.

Identifying truth was the purpose of Matt Western’s question to the prime minister back in March. He asked Boris Johnson about his attendance at a lavish party thrown by Evgeny Lebedev and the concerns reportedly expressed by MI6.

In the Commons, his question was answered (or rather not answered) with characteristic Johnsonian bluster. The real response came the following day when the Speaker received complaints about the question from both Johnson and Lebedev. Matt was called before the Speaker. Subsequently, he received a text from Lebedev.

Now you may think that this is a storm in a tea cup, or - as Johnson put it in a culinary illiterate metaphor - ‘not a crouton of substance in a minestrone of nonsense’.

In fact, it is neither. It is more serious than the party culture in Downing Street, the wallpaper stuff, the instinctive, gut-reaction untruths for which Johnson will be remembered. Nor is it merely cronyism and corruption.

It is about the security of the country.

When a psychologically disturbed man is being charged with treason for breaking into Buckingham palace, it is appropriate to consider the potentially treasonous activities of a more prominent psychologically disturbed man who happens to be prime minister but managed to evade his minders to make a solo visit to a castle in Italy.

For months, Johnson had refused to answer questions about the trip. But, eventually, in July this year, he ‘fessed up. Yes, he “probably” did attend the occasion. But “as far as I am aware, no government business was discussed”.

Did he he report the meeting to Foreign Office officials? “I think I did mention it, yes.”

So why the concerted complaints to the Speaker after Matt Western’s question?

He has “probably” got something to hide. But he hasn’t yet mentioned it. Yet.

Keep going, Matt.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Sollima LB Files  - another great recommendation from Georgia Mann on Radio 3.

It’s taken two years or more, but it’s now available: all 138 pages of it. And unlike the majority of journalists (or the majority of those who have commented on it), I have now read it all. Someone had to do it. Despite the occasional prevarications and the lack of co-operation from many of those in the Senior Management Team, especially those who were paid off by Starmer, the Forde Inquiry is pretty clear that what happened inside the Labour Party between 2015 and 2019 was undemocratic, racist, misogynist, factional, and - frankly - very scary. We are living with the consequences to this day.

Within minutes of the announcement of his inquiry, Forde tells us, he was inundated with emails from those mentioned in the leaked report and their lawyers threatening “legal action if we examined data referred to in it”. It, of course, is the leaked report, to which Forde ascribes initial capitals, Leaked Report, but its full title is The Work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in Relation to Antisemitism 2014-2019. It is this report and its leaking which prompted the Forde Inquiry.

Many of those mentioned in the Leaked Report were less than cooperative:

Some crucial staff members had moved on, and we had no powers of compulsion; and others had sought legal advice as well as having provided statements to two other enquiries. … Some promised further documents, which were never supplied; some were accompanied by lawyers. It was concerningly difficult to gather vital minutes of meetings and to understand the rationale for decisions. Key documents were unavailable; others were not supplied and details of of meetings were not recorded.

They were, however, able to make their own submission to the EHRC. And they were also, of course, minded to contribute to the now infamous Panorama programme, Is Labour Antisemitic?.

The main narrative of the programme was that Corbyn’s office lined up to involve themselves in a number of disciplinary processes. Selected (and selective) quotes from emails were used to back up the staff members’ accounts. It was damning and convincing. But as the Forde Report makes clear, the emails were edited to reverse their meanings, and the only contributions from LOTO were by invitation - “insistent” invitation from HQ staffers. There is no evidence of any attempt by LOTO’s office to “interfere unbidden in the disciplinary processes in order to undermine the Party’s response to allegations of antisemitism”.

In other words, the programme was bullshit.

Which did not prevent Ofcom rejecting 28 detailed complaints. But which probably explains the recent withdrawal of John Ware’s libel suit against Jeremy.

But it is evidence of the ‘group-think’ which prevailed in the political and media elites.

They refused to publish the fact that HQ staff based in Ergon House secretly transferred funds in support of right wing MPs. Forde says they did and it was “wrong”.

They failed to report the evidence of misogyny, racism and sexism within the HQ senior management team. Forde makes it clear that there is such evidence and recounts it.

They failed to point out that the suspensions and expulsions which they glorified were the result of specialist software and thousands of hours of internet scouring, which justified disciplinary action. The compliance team would ring bells to celebrate a suspension or expulsion.

You didn’t read that in The Guardian. I read it in the Forde Report.

I recommend that you do also. We need to understand what has happened to our party in the last half dozen years.

Without the factional, racist and sexist of activity of senior management, we may have won the election in 2017.

Without it, Starmer would not have been leader.

Without it, the UK would be a better place.

But it did happen. All of the above. And more. And we must face the consequences.

Today from the everysmith vaults: At the funeral of my friend Peter Nelson last Monday, the service scheduled a time for reflection, during which was played Blue in Green from Kind of Blue​ by Miles Davis. Still reflecting, still playing.

I had my data stolen a month ago. I had not given any information to the company from which it was stolen, a so-called ‘third party’, and I don’t even know who the third party is. Nor do I know the extent of the theft, except that it is ‘significant’ and serious enough to involve the National Crime Agency (NCA), National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Which sounds pretty serious to me.

If you are one of the (hundreds of) thousands who received the email from the Labour Party about this ‘incident’, and asked to keep it ‘confidential’, you are not necessarily a member of the Labour Party. You could have resigned, been suspended or expelled. Or - and this is very concerning - you could never have been a member of the party at all.

The fact is your data was stolen because the Labour Party was holding it; not only holding it but also sharing it with ‘third parties’. (I use the plural here because the email referred not to the the third party but a third party, from which I infer that there are more than one.)

It would appear that Labour is in clear breach of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a breach which could justify compensation.

The issue, and this is why the chances of us ever hearing the full story are minimal, is not the breach itself but Labour’s privacy policies. Actually, not the policies but a succession of actions which do not accord with the policy statement. The ICO has already found against Labour innumerable times for its actions or lack of them, notably for its failures to respond to SARs requests. (SARs are Subject Access Requests which, under GDPR Article 15, makes it compulsory for an organisation to reveal the data it holds on an individual.)

It is, I regret to conclude, yet another example of the contempt with which David Evans et al treat the membership at large. We know that the database is used primarily to troll and monitor the activities of members. We even have an ex-Israeli intelligence agent in charge of this.

The email promised to update us. Don’t hold your breath. Like the Forde Report, the issues have been kicked into touch because,  I suspect, behind the hacking ‘incident’ is a plethora of illegalities and witch-hunting which, I am afraid, is the modus operandi of the current secretariat.

Today from the everysmith vaults: As Bob moves from town to town on the current leg of the never ending tour, I am grateful for the recordings that our American bobcats and Dylanologists are sharing with the rest of us, especially the remastered shows from Bennyboy. I'm currently loving Bloomington.

The received wisdom is clear: disunited parties do not win elections. Which effectively rules out both our ‘major’ political movements. Both are undergoing a struggle for the ‘soul’ of their movements: not only the policies and ideologies, but also the emotional and cultural approaches to the development and communication of those policies. For many, this is more crucial and voteworthy than specific plans and programmes.
 
It is significant that Starmer is following the example of Johnson a year ago when he (Johnson) expelled the likes of Dominic Grieve, Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke. Subsequently, he enforced a compulsory commitment to his Brexit plans from every Tory candidate. Not one refused.
 
It would appear that Starmer is pursuing a similar course. He has sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey. He has introduced the politics of abstention. And he (or, as he has argued, his unelected General Secretary) has suspended Jeremy Corbyn.
 
What’s more, he (or, as he has argued, his unelected General Secretary) has forbidden Labour members to discuss these issues. And he (or, as he has argued, his unelected General Secretary) has suspended members and officials who have gone ahead and discussed the implications of his actions.
 
Further, peevishly, he has now withdrawn the whip from the newly reinstated former leader. And posted on Twitter a crass and lengthy thread which is ill-written, inaccurate and self-serving.
 
I cannot judge whether this attack on the left and campaign of self-aggrandisement has reached its climax. If not, it must be pretty close.
 
I am, however, unconvinced that his determination to purge the party of those who are not of his persuasion (you may think as I do that this is a form of the factionalism of which he accuses the left) has come to an end. Despite the huge numbers of resignations and the even greater numbers of subscription cancellations, there are still many of us remaining. And we will not go quietly.
 
He has a name which is revered in the party. (Had I had a son, he would have been called Keir also.) He was a human rights lawyer. He was elected on a series of pledges, all of which have been forgotten or contradicted since the election itself.
 
It is clear that his agenda is and has been to take back control of the Labour party.

His machinations during the General Election campaign leave no doubt that his plan was to undermine the party and its leader and seize the opportunity. And it came to fruition.
 
As leader, he has abstained a great deal and whipped his MPs to do the same. He has, in his words, exercised supportive opposition. Only after months when the conversation amongst members centred on the growing evidence of cronyism and corruption has he mentioned it in Parliament.
 
His actions, rather than his words, have been exclusively against the left. Just as Johnson’s were against the Remainer Tories.
 
But the events of last weekend have shown that Johnson has seen the error of this approach. Cummings is going. Cain is no longer enabled. The spin is now of a new, more mellow leadership from Johnson, a new, more compassionate conservatism. Yeh, right!
 
Perhaps Johnson or Carrie sense that, despite the propaganda of the mainstream press, the Cummings strategy is fatally flawed in the long term. You cannot govern when your party is “like rats in a sack”.
 
And Starmer should watch, listen and learn. Because Labour is not his party. It is ours.

Today from the everysmith vaults: ​A friend sends me a link to a magazine article which lists the  best Ry Cooder albums in order of merit. I didn't agree with any of the placings. But it did remind me of one album which was placed somewhere in the mid-30s out of 50. The soundtrack to Performance, with jagger and Anita Pallenberg, directed by Nick Roeg. I had not listened for decades, but I should have done.

“We should treat the 2017 manifesto as our foundational document; the radicalism and the hope that inspired across the country was real.” These are my thoughts exactly; but they are not my words. The words are Keir Starmer’s, during his leadership campaign, and he went on to commit himself and the Labour Party to ten pledges. These included raising taxes on big business and the rich, increasing public investment and public ownership, scrapping tuition fees, abolishing and replacing Universal Credit, and defending the rights of migrants.
 
I was passionately involved in the events which Owen Jones describes in his new book, This Land: The Story of a Movement. But it turns out I didn’t know the half of it.
 
I knew, of course, of the McNichol groupuscule and its determination to undermine the new leadership at any cost. I knew that Mandelson had claimed that each day was an opportunity to bring down Corbyn. And I knew of the chicken coup, the machinations of Tom Watson, the claims of anti-semitism, the frustrating policy changes over Brexit.
 
What I didn’t realize was what a contrary old bugger was Corbyn himself. What made him an inspirational leader made him a shit CEO.
 
Owen tells of his sulking fits, his refusal to speak to McDonnell for weeks, his tardiness, his dislike of conflict, is going AWOL for hours and days.
 
And he also tells us of the incompetence of his hand-picked staff.
 
One of the key criticisms we make of Johnson and Gove is that their background as newspaper columnists makes them ill-equipped to run a country. There is a great divide between banging out a thousand words once a week and mastering the detail required to conceive and implement policy. The latter matters.
 
Owen of course is also a newspaper columnist, and in my judgement, a good one. He writes well and fluently in his columns, on Twitter and in this book. But he knows his limitations. He rejected a role in the inner circle.
 
Seamus Milne, the so-called posh-boy Stalinist, did not. He accepted with alacrity. And although he and Owen were both Guardian contributors, it is clear that Owen made the right choice and Milne the wrong one. Milne was more than capable of over-ruling the decisions of others, but barely able to make one himself.
 
He was, however, responsible for Labour’s strapline in 2017. “For the many, not the few” was not a new phrase by any means – it goes back to at least to Shelley - but it resonated as strongly as “Take back control” and “Get Brexit done”.
 
Newspaper people should stick to the knitting. And the essence of leadership is to surround oneself with people with specific and complementary skills. One such is John McDonnell who emerges from this story, unsurprisingly, as one of the few grown-ups in the room. He had – he has - the experience and expertise, the total commitment and work ethic to run an economy and a leader’s office.
 
Which makes reading of Corbyn’s sulky disagreement with him all the more difficult to take. And it is not made easier by Owen’s final chapter, entitled “The centre cannot hold”.
 
It is, as Owen says, important that we learn the lessons of the last five years, that Labour integrates its radicalism with organisation and competence. I suspect that those who voted for Starmer had something like this in their minds as they did so.
 
So far, I have seen and heard very little competence and no radicalism at all.
 
Let’s hope I am wrong.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: A lovely studio session from Mike Bloomfield and Janis Joplin. Not sure where I got this. It’s marked Unknown Studio, San Francisco, December 1969. But it’s brilliant. Listen to Janis singing Had To Get Out Of Texas. So glad she did.

"PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER".
 
Thus the telegram sent by Groucho Marx to a Los Angeles club.

Nobody likes a quitter. Unless you are the MSM or the BBC and the quitters in question are walking out on a party with a manifesto which has inspired thousands of members and millions of voters. Their increased majorities in the last election were not, as Len McCluskey observed, down to their “personal charisma”; it was down to a Labour manifesto, a Labour campaign, and Labour activists.
 
As for me, I’m not angry. I’m disappointed. Seven individuals, each elected as a Labour candidate on a Labour manifesto, have declared that they number themselves amongst the few, the very few.
 
The good news is that the many remain. And remain the best hope for those, like me, who favour Remain.
 
I have issues with the incremental approach adopted by the Labour leadership in Parliament. But I understand that the bizarre public school debating society conventions of Parliament require some less-than-transparent manoeuvring in order to arrive at a result.
 
Despite this need, Labour – the many, not the few – has been on the right side of every vote relating to Brexit. And none of the seven has indicated that they would have voted otherwise in any of them. Nor have they put forward any different policy proposals, apart from Angela Smith’s commitment to the continuing privatization of the water industry which she shares with 1% of the population.
 
However you look at it, that’s not a vote for the many. That’s pretty much the definition of the few, the very few. And it will not include, obviously, those voters of a “funny tinge”, a statement which is the first genuinely racist comment I have heard from the Labour ranks in many years. (Sorry, ex-Labour – which is presumably why the BBC failed to report it, despite their daily accusations of Labour racism.) Another quitter, Chris Leslie, subsequently dismissed this phrase as “a slip”. Freudian, presumably.
 
I cannot tell you unequivocally that there is no anti-semitism in the Labour party. I can tell you that I have never heard a single anti-semitic remark and nor do I know anyone who has. Not even Chuka Umunna claims to have done so: “Some have suggested that there is institutional anti-Semitism across the whole of the Labour party – this is not a view I share, not least because I have not seen one incident of anti-Semitism in almost 20 years of activism within my local Labour party”. And yet hundreds of thousands of Labour members are being characterized as anti-semitic, and are being accused of a creating a culture of “bigotry, bullying and intimidation”.
 
Honestly, I resent this. At best, it is disingenuous. At worst, it is the kind of smear they claim to be opposing.
 
I have written before, on the occasion of Frank Field’s resignation, that I respect and honour the tradition within the Labour party represented by Field and Umunna. It is part of the movement in which I have supported for half a century. And I reiterate now my concern at the time:
 
With their actions and slurs, the splitters are undermining their own tradition and their relevance to the many, not the few.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: My nephew, Gareth Brynmore John, has recently released a recording of Mahler’s Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen with Trevor Pinnock. It is quite beautiful and I commend it to you.

Anyone who has penned a single word about sport will be in awe of Hugh McIlvanney, who died last week. We will miss his insights into and understanding of his subject; but most of all, we will miss his prose. Few writers have managed to articulate so beautifully the cathartic power of, in particular, football and boxing. Fewer still have been able to communicate the exhilaration and despair of those spots of time – memorable moments of triumph or despair which occur in almost every sporting contest.
 
The author Rick Gekoski, no mean sportswriter himself, once wrote that “Sport makes you write, and think, and feel, in exclamation marks”. Which is true for even the most seasoned of us. In 2004, the Boston Globe headlined the Sox World Series victory, their first since 1918, in this way: YES!!! Nothing nuanced: just one word, one syllable, in capitals, with no less than three exclamation marks (or screamers as they are known).
 
I doubt whether McIlvanney would have done this. However tight the deadline, his judgements were as measured as his prose. The emotional sub-text was implicit rather than overt.
 
It is because I lean towards Rick and the Globe in my response to great sporting events that I admired McIlvanney so much. Although he insisted on being known as a ‘reporter’, he was not. One did not turn to his piece to find a blow by blow account of a bout or a goal by goal record of a football match. We valued his writing because it concerned itself with what it meant: to the players, to the coaches, to those who were present as spectators. It is significant that he numbered amongst his closest friends those who were involved totally in the sports about which he wrote. They – Jock Stein, Bill Shankly, Alex Ferguson, Angelo Dundee – knew that he knew and understood as much about their game as they did.
 
In a few weeks, I will be taking part in a round table at the History Department of Warwick University which concerns itself with sportswriting. My fellow panellists – Dave Sternburg, Simon Hart – are stars in the firmament. I am not.
 
Although I am on record with my views about Coventry City Football Club and Warwickshire County Cricket Club, my prime focus is on my beloved Boston Red Sox and the life of a fan based in the baseball desert which is the United Kingdom. (Although judging by the demand for tickets for the Yankees games at the London Stadium this summer, there are more of us in this country than we imagine.)
 
I tend not to engage in a recitation of baseball stats – when I did I was mildly chastised for doing so. Rather, my subject is my very personal and particular experiences of being a fan of a team which plays 3,000 miles away from my home.
 
In many ways, and certainly in the great order of things, it is a trivial pursuit. But almost every night, as I tune in to mlb.tv, I know that I will almost certainly witness something that only sport can provide:
 
In the words of Hugh McIlvanney, “a magnificent triviality”.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: After the fine performance of the Shostakovich String Quartet #2 in A major (actually mostly in A minor) by the Carducci Quartet on Friday evening, I am working my way through their Shostakovich cycle, including an advance copy of their new recordings of #1, #2 and #7. Magnificent and not trivial.

​

Sorry about this, but it’s Brexit again. This post could have been about the failures of Universal Credit. It could have been about the decline of Britain’s high streets, with specific reference to the plans of Warwick District Council for the destruction of Leamington Spa. It could have been about the proposed redundancies at Jaguar LandRover, a move which is going to have a major impact on our town as well as the country. It could have been about Andrew Neil’s extraordinary attack on Owen Jones or the last two columns by Nick Cohen – the one in The Observer demonstrating a disturbing familiarity with spanking literature, and the second, in The Spectator, the magazine for which Andrew Neil bears no responsibility, concluding that Corbyn and Trump are identical. Or it could have been about my plans to set up a shipping company and bid for a government contract. I reckon I could do it for less than £13.8 million, especially if I don’t buy any ships.
 
All these subjects have exercised me during the last couple of weeks. But they all come down to Brexit in the end, right? And with a mere two days of debate in the Commons remaining before the ‘meaningful’ vote on Tuesday, the media is full of it – and, to add an unvoiced fricative, full of shit too.
 
So here’s my two penn’orth.

​I am a Remainer and a Labour voter. As such, I am against even a soft Brexit. ‘Remain and reform’ was and remains my preferred policy. While I respect the result of the referendum, which does not mean that I either agree with it or believe it should be implemented, I do not respect the referendum itself, which was a crass proposal in the first instance and won with a combination of lies, illegal funding and dubious digital media.
 
What did impress me during the referendum was the Leave slogan. “Take Back Control” was and is a good line, and watching Cumberbatch in The Uncivil War the other night, one was surprised at the length of time it took for Dominic Cummings to arrive at it. It’s a nonsense of course, but it means all things to all men and thus appealed, if not to all men and women, at least to 52% of them. It appealed to nostalgic Little Englander Tories in Surrey and austerity-hit working class voters in the north, who had been told by successive governments – from Thatcher onwards – that the EU was the problem.
 
The irony of course is that parliament is now taking back control over the executive, and this is, in no small measure, the result of a precedent-breaking decision by Speaker Bercow.
 
He’s growing on me, is John Bercow. Preening popinjay perhaps, but he is showing himself to be a man who respects parliamentary democracy both in principle and in practice. In the face of the growing power of government, there is not a huge amount he can do, but what he can, he does.
 
One of the revelations of the recent shenanigans in the Commons has been the fact that many parliamentary votes are meaningless, having no force in law. They are, at best, “advisory”, nothing more than a demonstration of feeling.
 
Which is of course exactly what the referendum was. True, promises were made during the course of the campaign. But primarily by those who promptly resigned from positions which might give them any power over such a decision. Where are you now, Dave? 
 
So what will happen on Tuesday and on the 29th of March?

My prediction is that we will find ourselves in, to coin a meme, an existential crisis.

The phrase is widely used, and almost always misused. But it means one thing:

We're fucked.

Today from the everysmith vaults: In these strange times, it's time to dig deep into the depths of the vaults. Today's esoterica is the Captain's Bat Chain Puller.
 

​The discussion about anti-semitism in the Labour Party has disappointed me and frightened me. But most of all, it has surprised me. As a long-standing member of the Labour Party, I can honestly say that I have never heard an anti-semitic remark or seen evidence of anti-semitic prejudice in the party (or outside it actually) in several decades of leftist activity.

Or have I?

Much of the current debate is centred on different definitions of anti-semitism, pitching Jews against Jews, right against left, member against member, MPs against the NEC. When Corbyn, who has devoted his life to the fight against racism is called by Margaret Hodge “a fucking anti-semite and racist”, I find myself in a state of total confusion.

So I followed a link on social media to the following article with hope. Published by Open Democracy, and written by Brian Klug, who delivered the Holocaust Memorial Day Lecture at Cambridge this year, it is by some measure the best exegesis of the arguments in the dispute that I have read, and it deserves as large an audience as possible.
​
This is the full text. It’s a great deal longer than my normal postings, but a hell of a lot more interesting, instructive and rewarding.


The Code of Conduct for Anti-Semitism:
a tale of two texts 
 
How to deal with antisemitism while at the same time protecting free speech in the political debate over Israel and Palestine? This conundrum lies at the heart of the argument (to use a polite word) in the public square over a new Code of Conduct for Antisemitism proposed by the Equalities Committee, a sub-committee of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party. The proposal is due to be formally endorsed by the NEC on 17 July. I shall refer to it as ‘the NEC Code’.

The argument revolves around the relationship between the NEC Code and a document that was issued in May 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental body to which thirty-one countries, including the UK, belong. One edition of the document on the IHRA website has the title ‘The Working Definition of Antisemitism’ and this is the name by which it is widely cited. (Another edition does not.) This title, as we shall see, has given rise to confusion, so I shall refer to the text as ‘the IHRA document’. The IHRA working definition has been widely adopted by national governments (UK included) and other public authorities.

According to Jennie Formby, General Secretary of the Labour Party, the NEC Code takes the IHRA Working Definition and supplements it “with additional examples and guidance”, thus creating “the most thorough and expansive Code of Conduct on anti-Semitism introduced by any political party in the UK”. Similarly, Jon Lansman, a fellow member of the NEC, calls the Code “the new gold standard” for political parties, “stronger than anything of its kind adopted by any political party in this country”. The Code, he says, “fully adopts the IHRA definition, and covers the same ground as the IHRA examples” but goes further, making it more workable. That is the view from the inside.

Wholesale indictment
Those who oppose this view tend to dismiss the NEC Code out of hand rather than seeking to amend it. This itself tells you something about the nature of the ‘argument’ in the public square: it is not exactly amenable to nuance. While there are specific points of criticism, critics typically take the position that Labour should simply adopt the IHRA document in its entirety. This is usually accompanied by a wholesale indictment of the NEC’s initiative or of the entire Labour Party or of the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, as this sample of comments from the week following the Code’s appearance illustrates:
“Labour’s new guidelines show it is institutionally antisemitic”. The NEC Code is a “toothless document that will only encourage Jew-hate in the Labour Party to flourish further, unchallenged and unpunished”. “It seems Labour found [the IHRA] definition too stringent – it prohibited anti-Jewish expression that Labour wants to allow.” This is an “attempt to weaken the guidelines around how and when criticism of Israel can stray into territory that is obviously antisemitic”. Labour’s “IHRA rejection … represents and repeats the same far left ideological, emotional and systematic rejection of our concerns that we have faced for decades.”

These comments were all made by people who, either in their own right or in the context of Labour’s approach to dealing with antisemitism, are prominent figures. Their comments might strike some readers the same way as they strike me: over the top. But in two cases – no purpose is served in identifying them by name here – the person is someone I have known and respected for many years. I cannot simply dismiss what they say as false or wrongheaded, even though I believe it is.

There is a complex historical and political background to the current debate. In part, this lies in conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism. Partly it consists in hostility to Labour from the outside or opposition to its left wing from within. But there is another piece: the sense that some of us have who are Jewish (I include myself) that something has been awry in the discourse about Zionism – and even about Jews in general – in certain sections of the left for many years (as I argued last year). This grievance has festered, as grievances do when they go unheeded. I detect the effects of this unheeded grievance under the surface of some (though by no means all) of the cynicism about Labour and the NEC Code. Which is why I cannot simply dismiss it.

By the same token, cynicism, even when it is well-founded, can become a habit. It is liable to impair our ability to make rational, measured judgments and to recognise when the very thing we want comes about. How ironic if, just at the moment when Labour wakes up to the need to deal with antisemitism in its midst, it is shouted down because of its failure to deal with it in the past! This is, I believe, part of the explanation for the hostility to the NEC Code. A legitimate grievance has sunk in so deep that it is impossible to accept that possibly – just possibly – this grievance has at last been taken on board by the party and that it is being dealt with responsibly. For those readers of this article for whom the cap fits, I urge you to try to keep an open mind about this possibility – which I believe is the reality – as you read on.

‘People of goodwill’
I shall come to specific objections to the NEC Code in due course. I think these objections are largely (if not wholly) misplaced. In a short piece, however, it is not possible to take up each and every criticism and to give a point-by-point refutation. My concern in this article is not primarily with the validity of particular criticisms but with the general stance taken by critics who, on the one hand, reject outright the NEC Code and, on the other hand, embrace unconditionally the IHRA document – as if the one were anathema and the other sacred. I shall seek to show that this stance is an impediment to what people of goodwill want to achieve. By ‘people of goodwill’ I mean people who are sincere in wanting to solve the conundrum I mentioned at the outset: how to deal with antisemitism while at the same time protecting free speech in the political debate over Israel and Palestine. These people are my intended audience. I have nothing to say to those who pretend to be concerned about both desiderata but actually are interested only in grinding a political axe.

Since the current argument revolves around the relationship between the NEC Code and the IHRA document, the first hurdle that critics have to clear is knowing what each text says. I am not convinced that everyone who takes the stance that I am critiquing – treating the IHRA text as sacred and the NEC Code as anathema – has cleared that hurdle. The analysis that I am about to give is based on comparing the texts in relevant respects. My comparison will not be exhaustive. I urge readers to go back to the two primary sources so as to check my analysis and to judge for themselves whether the NEC Code is an advance on the IHRA document in solving the conundrum or not.
A word about the structure of the two documents. There are three parts to the IHRA text: a preamble, a “working definition of antisemitism”, and a discursive explanation that includes, inter alia, a bullet list of eleven “examples”. The NEC Code comprises sixteen numbered paragraphs divided into three sections: Introduction (pars. 1 to 4), principles (par. 5 to 8), and guidelines (par. 9 to 16). Par. 9 contains a list of seven “examples”, (a) to (g).

Perhaps the most insistent criticism of the NEC Code is that Labour has rejected the IHRA definition, replacing it with something new. So, for example: “The IHRA definition of anti-semitism is the only globally accepted one, and it truly beggars belief that the Labour Party thinks it can or should try to cook up its own. What the hell is going on?” Sometimes the words “in full” are added after “definition”, which, as we shall see, is a clue to the confusion underlying this criticism.

The “working definition”
Has Labour tried to “cook up its own” definition? Here is an extract from par. 5 of the NEC Code: “To assist in understanding what constitutes antisemitism, the NEC has endorsed the definition produced by the [IHRA] in 2016”. There follows the definition, reproduced from the IHRA document: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” In the IHRA document, this form of words, described as  a “non-legally binding working definition”, is set off from the rest of the text by appearing in bold and being placed in a box – thus leaving no doubt that this – these two sentences – constitutes the “working definition”. Likewise, in the NEC Code the (identical) definition is set apart by appearing in bold, though indented rather than boxed. No cooking of the books here. The NEC takes the IHRA “working definition”, in its entirety and without altering it one iota, using it as the foundation on which the Code is built: that is “what the hell is going on”.

As definitions go, this one is, to say the least, somewhat vague. Accordingly, the drafters of the IHRA text provide “examples” which, they say, “may serve as illustrations” to “guide” IHRA in its work. Similarly, the NEC Code includes “guidelines” to assist Labour in its work, including a set of seven “examples”. Here is where there is a degree of variation from the IHRA text; and this is where the confusion arises. For, when critics say that the NEC has not adopted the IHRA definition (“in full”), they allude to these variations.

They thus confuse the definition and the examples that are meant as illustrations only. The examples are precisely not intended to be definitive. The definition itself might be vague, but nothing could be clearer than this distinction – between the definition proper and ancillary examples – in the body of the IHRA text.

This confusion is compounded by the fact that (as I mentioned earlier) the IHRA document as a whole is often referred as ‘The Working Definition of Antisemitism’. It is not unusual for the title of an article or a position paper (which effectively this is) to be taken from a part of the text that it names. In this case, however, the title helps sow confusion. Nonetheless, no title has the magical power to obliterate an analytical distinction. To repeat: the definition is one thing, the examples another.

To sum up so far: it is not true to say that the NEC rejects the IHRA “working definition”. On the contrary, it endorses it and incorporates it – prominently – in its Code. It does, however, depart from the IHRA document in certain other respects, including the “examples” it gives. In order to evaluate the Code, we need to take stock of these differences.

Two sets of examples
Let us begin with the two sets of examples. Five of the eleven IHRA examples are taken over bodily – word for word – into the NEC code where they reappear as examples (a), (b), (c), (e) and (g). Example (d) in the NEC Code is identical to the corresponding IHRA example except for substituting ‘Nazi’ for ‘National Socialist’ (a difference without a distinction). One of the IHRA examples is “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis”. The NEC Code incorporates this as example (f) and expands on it: “Classic antisemitism also includes the use of derogatory terms for Jewish people (such as ‘kike’ or ’yid’); stereotypical and negative physical depictions/ descriptions or character traits, such as references to wealth or avarice and – in the political arena – equating Jews with capitalists or the ruling class”. Not only is this a valid addition, not only does it plug a hole in the examples given by IHRA, but it picks out discourse that, in the British context, Labour needs to be cognizant of for the purpose of conducting its educational and disciplinary work.

This is not the only respect in which, in terms of dealing with antisemitism, the NEC Code improves upon the IHRA document. Thus, par. 10 says: “To those examples [in par. 9] the Party would add the making of unjustified reference to the protected characteristics of being Jewish”; in other words, the equivalent of referring to a ‘black mugger’ when the racial or ethnic identity of the mugger is irrelevant or would not be mentioned if the mugger were white. (An example that springs to mind: ‘Jewish banker’.) There is a further addition in par. 14, which says “it is wrong to apply double standards by requiring more vociferous condemnation of such actions from Jewish people or organisations than from others …”. This speaks to the actual experience of some Jewish people on the left, as I know from the testimonies of people close to me.

All these points significantly enhance the IHRA text. But I have not yet come across a critic of the NEC Code – I mean a critic who places a premium on combating antisemitism – who acknowledges them, let alone welcomes them as the enhancements that they are. They are passed over in silence, as if the IHRA document were a sacred text whose words may not be tampered with – not even if the text can be improved. (This implies a fundamental failure to understand the status of the IHRA document, a point to which I shall return at the end.)

Strengthened guidelines
Four examples from the IHRA list do not figure in the NEC list in par. 9. They are as follows: “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.” “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” “Applying double standards by requiring of it [Israel] a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” Critics point to the fact that these examples are absent from the list in the NEC Code.

They are not, however, absent from the Code altogether. Clearly, the drafters of the Code saw these four examples as potentially problematic, partly with an eye to the second part of the conundrum: how to protect free speech in the political debate over Israel and Palestine. Accordingly, in subsequent paragraphs they discuss these examples, along with other tricky issues, and recommend what they see as appropriate guidelines to assist people who have to apply the IHRA working definition. Whether they have ‘got it right’ or not is a question on which people of goodwill might disagree. But the drafters of the Code are surely right to see the need to discuss the complexities with these four examples; and I have yet to see a single critic acknowledge this or wrestle with these complexities themselves.

Furthermore, the NEC Code actually strengthens the role the examples play. This point has been overlooked in the public debate, but it makes a significant logical difference. Consider, first, the IHRA document. When the text introduces the list of examples that “may serve as illustrations”, it says:
“Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel …” (emphasis added). In a similar vein, we are told: “Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include …” (emphasis added). Thus, the IHRA examples are not intended to be examples of actual antisemitism but only of possible antisemitism. Mere possibility has limited value as a guide to making judgments. In contrast, the NEC Code says (in par. 9) that its examples “are likely to be regarded as antisemitic” (emphasis added). This renders them more serviceable as guidelines. By the same token, the criterion of likelihood raises the bar for determining which examples qualify for inclusion in the list and which call for discussion separately.

The four IHRA examples that do not make it into the list in par. 9 of the NEC Code are not simply waved away. Take the ‘loyalty’ example (the first of the four). This reappears in par. 14  of the NEC Code in the following form: “it is also wrong to accuse Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.” This goes beyond mere possibility (IHRA list of examples) and even probability (NEC list of examples). This is a categorical assertion. No ifs and buts; not even the stipulation that such accusations are inadmissible if and only if they are deemed to be antisemitic. This affords a greater degree of protection than any of the examples in the IHRA document. With equal finality, par. 15 says: “it is not permissible to use ‘Zionist’ (and still less any pejorative abbreviation such as ‘zio’ which the Chakrabarti report said should have no place in Labour party discourse) as a code word for ‘Jew’.” Not permissible, full-stop. Once again this provision gives important guidance that is missing in the IHRA text.

The IHRA Working Definition
Which brings me to the question of the status of that text. Even as they refer to the IHRA document as a ‘Working Definition’, critics seem to forget the adjective ‘working’, as if it did not qualify the noun. But it does. A working definition is, by definition, a work in progress; it is not the last word. And if this applies to the definition proper it applies all the more to the “examples” that are meant to serve as illustrations of that definition. In short, the IHRA text is a ‘living document’, a document that is subject to revision, continually in the process of being developed. This is the spirit in which the drafters of the NEC Code have approached the document. They keep it alive precisely by altering it and adding to it where they see a need to do so. Their critics, in contrast, treat the text as frozen in time and immune from all  change. Ironically, it is the drafters of the NEC Code, not their critics, who have grasped the meaning of ‘working definition’.
This is not to say that all the changes they have made are necessarily for the better. But, as I have demonstrated, some of them certainly are significant improvements. The way forward for people of goodwill who genuinely want to solve the conundrum with which this article opens – combating antisemitism while protecting free political speech – is to welcome the NEC Code as the latest incarnation of a living document that constantly requires work. As making this case has been my primary aim, I shall refrain from taking up other criticisms of the Code, though they deserve to be addressed and, in my view, can, for the most part, be answered.

Sacred text
But, even in making the case, a part of me feels the hopelessness of appealing to reason, a sense of swimming against a mighty and unmindful current of opinion. Just now I have had sight of a letter in the Guardian signed by sixty-eight British rabbis, including individuals for whom I have the highest regard (not to say affection), rallying around the IHRA text, “full and unamended … including its examples”, as if it were the eternal word of God. But in the Judaism in which I was nurtured and educated, there is only one text whose status is sacred; and it was not written by a committee of the IHRA.

This article was originally published in the independent online magazine www.opendemocracy.net 

Today from the everysmith vaults: Anthem of the Sun, obviously.

They are all there, lined up on the shelves, their multi-coloured paper backs leaping out from the more sombre company of Mailer, Roth, Updike, Irving and Thompson, their painted words shouting “Me! Me!”
 
Until my eye reaches the point where, chronologically, there should be The Bonfire of the Vanities, and it’s not there, and I remember that I abandoned it half-way through and loaned it to a friend and never bothered to ask for it back.
 
If one was reading English in the last couple of years of the ‘60s, Tom Wolfe was required reading. Not required by the syllabus you understand, but by one’s inner writer and critic. If one was also working on a student newspaper, then The New Journalism was there to be emulated, learned from, plagiarized. And if one was a young English person, listening to the Dead and regretting that there was no prospect of joining the Californian counter-culture, then The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test provided a degree of vicarious identification.
 
To a student of English literature, the formula was pretty obvious: third person narration, scene-by-scene narrative, dialogue (loads of it!) and references (loads of them!) to status symbols.
 
But what really marked out Wolfe’s prose was … well, the prose. He used devices such as bizarre punctuation and weird syntax, fancy typography and onomatopoeic neologisms.
 
The result was realist, writer and reader totally and equally immersed in character, narrative, life! His books – essays really – were non-fiction novels. And Wolfe was doing this knowingly, comparing the new journalism with the early realistic novel in England, and arguing that it was prompting precisely the same objections.
 
But there is a part of him, a part of every American writer, that knows the novel is the supreme literary achievement and that the holy grail of the Great American Novel is what he’s been put on earth to produce. (Mailer and Roth had the same aspiration and came closer.)
 
So in 1987 he publishes The Bonfire of the Vanities, and he loses me.
 
It’s full of false and fractured narratives. It’s full of brand names. It’s full of platitudes about race and capitalism. It’s focused on the media and media frenzy. It’s anti-feminist and misogynist. And he said that he wrote it with “a sense of wonder. I was saying [excitedly], 'Look at these people! Look at what they're doing! Look at that one! Look at that one!'”
 
That’s not novelistic. It’s not journalism. And it sure as hell ain’t literature.
 
But that’s ok. Not very much is. And I regret his death a great deal.
 
But not as much as I regret his hubris.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I’ve been listening to the Dead’s 1970 shows and, in so doing, fallen in love again with the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Currently it’s 1970-10-31 at SUNY Gym, Stony Brook, NY.