Britain’s local elections are supposed to be about mundane things. Trash pickup. Pothole repairs. The stuff that actually matters in neighborhoods. Instead, tomorrow’s vote is drowning in accusations of hate speech, with politicians across the spectrum hurling antisemitism allegations at each other like grenades.
According to NPR reporting, a genuine surge in antisemitic incidents has created fertile ground for this kind of political finger-pointing. But there’s something darker happening underneath the campaign theater: real violence against Jewish Britons is being folded into electoral calculus, and nobody seems to know how to untangle that without making things worse.
When a Crisis Becomes Ammunition
The Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, just released a campaign video targeting the upstart Green Party. The video features a woman reading antisemitic conspiracy theories and hate speech, attributing the words to Green candidates. The woman identifies herself as Jewish, as if that makes the accusations sharper. The message is clear: vote Green, vote for antisemitism.
The problem is that this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Over the past 2.5 years, Britain has been rocked by pro-Palestinian protests that have drawn hundreds of thousands into the streets. Simultaneously, there’s been a documented spike in attacks on British Jews. Last week, two Jewish men were stabbed in London’s Golders Green neighborhood. When Starmer visited the site, he was heckled by members of the Jewish community chanting “Keir Starmer, Jew harmer,” accusing him of failing to protect them.
It’s a genuinely tragic situation. But it’s also become the centerpiece of a political slugfest that threatens to weaponize Jewish safety into a partisan talking point.
The Spectrum of Accusations
The Conservatives, led by Kemi Badenoch, want Starmer to ban pro-Palestinian marches entirely. According to BBC reporting, Badenoch argued that these protests have become “a cover for antisemitic activity” and can no longer be considered legitimate demonstrations. The framing is stark: protect free speech in principle, but these aren’t protests anymore.
The Greens push back hard. They’re the only major UK party led by a Jewish person—Zack Polanski—and he’s made clear that you can be both pro-Palestinian and committed to Jewish safety. According to BBC reporting, Polanski stated: “I am both pro-Palestinian and I’m Jewish. And I care about Jewish safety. There’s no conflict in those positions.” The Greens argue that Starmer is cracking down on legitimate dissent and outlawing support for pro-Palestinian organizations.
Both sides have a point. And both sides are using this crisis to club the other into submission.
The Real Casualties
Rabbi Charley Baginsky, whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, has moved past political games into something far more immediate. She’s now telling her children they can’t wear Hebrew on their clothes in public. “For the first time,” she said, according to NPR, she’s imposing restrictions on her own kids’ freedom of movement and expression.
That’s not a campaign talking point. That’s what happens when antisemitism stops being theoretical.
Stephen Bush, a Jewish and Black columnist for the Financial Times, has written extensively about how antisemitism gets weaponized in public discourse. According to NPR, he noted that “antisemitism is almost like a bride with the wedding train of racism kind of coming behind it.” His worry, though, is that the focus on social media controversies and candidate statements obscures the harder work of actually governing. “It’s much harder to work out whether or not someone can successfully run a local authority than it is to prune their social media for whether or not they’ve said vile things,” he said.
Which brings us to the deepest fear Rabbi Baginsky voiced: if one party becomes associated with being “pro-Jews” and another with “pro-Muslim communities and anti-Israel rhetoric, which spills into antisemitism,” then you’ve essentially fractured the social cohesion that holds democracy together. You’ve turned a catastrophic safety issue into tribal identity politics.
The Cleanup
Elections matter. But so does the day after the votes are counted. On that day, Jews and Palestinians and everyone else in Britain will still need to live together. They’ll still need to share buses, neighborhoods, workplaces. They’ll still need to believe that their democracy isn’t just a vehicle for whichever group can shout the loudest about how oppressed they are.
Right now, the political incentive structures are all pointing the wrong direction. There’s no upside for any candidate in saying “this is serious, and we need to address it together as a society.” There’s plenty of upside in dunking on your opponents for failing to protect vulnerable communities.
What happens when the outrage cycle fades and one party is seen as the “Jewish party” and another as the party that tolerates antisemitism? When safety itself becomes a wedge issue?
