The Labour Party NEC will be meeting today to discuss the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. Hopefully is will re-adopt the accepted definition with all the examples that it has already been using since December 2016. As Ann Black says, the whole thing has just got the Labour Party into a nasty confrontation with the Jewish community that is deeply damaging to our reputation. I attended the very successful JLM conference on Sunday and there is no doubt of the depth of feeling on this issue. It has drained the Labour Party's effectiveness all through the Summer and we should never have tried to revise it for all the reasons that Gordon Brown explained. The full text of Gordon speech is now available.
I gather that a range of people, many obviously anti-Labour, are urging the NEC to try to invent quibbles to keep the argument going. I think these people do not have the Labour Movement's best interests at heart.
UPDATE 12.17pm
I notice that the usual assortment of people are out protesting on this return to the December 2016 policy. The very phrase "Israel Lobby" as if all Jewish people were part of an organised conspiracy rather than just people concerned at racist discrimination against them well illustrates the way in which racism has so entered some of these peoples' thinking that they are not even aware of it. We would never respond to concerns by, say, Sikhs as part of a "Sikh Lobby" organised by a foreign country.
These people are inflicting damage on the Labour Party's reputation and the effects are already likely to last for years.
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