If Keir Starmer falls, British Jewry may fall with him. Not because he has protected us, he hasn’t, but because what comes next will almost certainly be worse.
Let’s stop pretending otherwise and state facts, under Starmer’s leadership, Britain has experienced the sharpest rise in antisemitic incidents since records began. Jewish communities have endured murder, intimidation outside synagogues, harassment on campuses, vandalism, assaults and a climate of hostility that many British Jews say feels unprecedented in modern times.
This is not incidental, it is structural.
Jeremy Corbyn may be long gone from the party he poisoned, but the political culture that allowed anti-Zionist obsession to metastasise into something darker was never dismantled. It was managed, rebranded, tactically suppressed, but make no mistake, it was not defeated.
This week, the courts overturned the proscription of Palestine Action. Its supporters celebrated immediately, among them public figures such as Gary Lineker, Ken Loach and others who have made the destruction of the only Jewish state part of their public identity. Palestine Action’s co-founder openly welcomed the ruling, promised more violence and of course, led by Polanski, the kapo king, political figures aligned with the Green party signalled gleeful approval.
Let’s be clear about what this means. A group that has repeatedly targeted institutions connected to Jewish life and Israeli-linked business operations, engaging in criminal damage and intimidation, now operates with judicial affirmation that it does not meet the threshold for prohibition.
The message to British Jews is unmistakable: You may feel threatened, under attack, targeted, but the state at best does not agree, more likely simply does not care. If you believe Starmer’s departure would usher in a correction, look carefully at the landscape forming behind him.
Ed Miliband’s influence inside Labour is now entrenched. He may not take the leadership, but the factional direction of travel is obvious. Faced with Reform rising and Kemi Badenoch consolidating the right, Labour’s reflex will not be centrist reassurance, it will be base consolidation.
That means leaning left. Not the moderate social-democratic left, the activist, union influenced, identity-driven, Israel-obsessed left.
It means overtures to Green leadership figures who have repeatedly indulged anti-Israel maximalism. It means accommodation of MPs elected entirely on an anti-Zionist platform. It means rhetorical escalation designed to prevent defections to movements that treat anti-Zionism as moral theatre.
Look at Wes Streeting’s email exchange with Lord Mandelson regarding Israel. That wasn’t principle, that was calibration, a politician adjusting to activist pressure. A man reading the room, putting self interest above moral standards and adjusting accordingly.
Political survival now runs through a coalition where visible hostility to Israel mobilises energy and visible solidarity with Jews does not. Protecting Jews has become electorally inconvenient, that is the truth no one wants to confront.
Then there is foreign policy, at the same moment Palestine Action was being liberated by our courts, our government was placing their trust in terrorists.
Reportedly backed by senior advisers, including Jonathan Powell, national security adviser to Kier Starmer, the UK government explored allowing Hamas to retain light arms, AK47s, during a phased disarmament process, loosely invoking Northern Ireland. This insanity was dismissed by both Israel and the United States, but the fact that such an idea surfaces at all tells you something profound about instinct.
Hamas is not the IRA, October 7th was not a negotiation breakdown, it was a massacre, Hamas wants to repeat it, yet the reflex in parts of British policymaking remains symmetry.
Cultural figures who shape public opinion openly cheer the weakening of counter-extremism tools. Politicians who once claimed to stand unequivocally against antisemitism now hedge, nuance, or fall silent. An unholy alliance: anti-Israel zealots who wear their hatred proudly and self interested politicians, willing to do and say anything to ensure their own survival.
The drift is visible.
I have said for some time that my grandchildren will not be born in this country. That is not melodrama, it is prognosis.
I lost faith in the so-called “silent majority" a while ago. If it existed in the way we were told, decent, instinctively fair, unwilling to tolerate hatred, it would have asserted itself by now, it would have drawn a line, made clear that Jewish security is not a bargaining chip in factional politics. (And Palestine Action would not have been let off by a jury, ed.)
My hope, until recently, was that our generation at least had more runway. That we would not see the full consequences in our lifetime, that political gravity would take longer to pull Britain off balance. I am no longer confident of that.
No, British Jews are not packing bags tomorrow, we have deep roots here, have contributed to this country disproportionately and proudly, we are not easily dislodged, but staying and belonging are not the same thing.
If protecting Jews has become too costly for politicians, if antisemitism has become just another variable in electoral arithmetic, if alliances are being built on the quiet understanding that Jewish concerns rank below activist energy, then the centre is but a distant memory.
Starmer has not protected British Jews, far from it, but his fall will accelerate Labour’s consolidation around a coalition where anti-Israel maximalism is rewarded, where Miliband’s ideological current shapes direction, where figures like Streeting recalibrate to the loudest faction and where public personalities cheer the weakening of anti-extremism enforcement. His departure will not mark renewal, it will mark confirmation that British Jews are politically orphaned. The political party that once claimed to stand for minorities has decided we no longer count.
Once a community concludes it is alone, not rhetorically, but structurally, something irreversible begins. Not a dramatic exodus, not a public rupture, but a recalculation, a shift of expectation, a generational decision.
Countries do not lose their minorities in a single moment of outrage, they lose them when protecting them becomes optional. It seems Britain has chosen to treat Jewish security as precisely that.
So no, I’m not asking whether Jews have a future in Britain, I’m asking whether Britain deserves one with us in it. Because right now and under a Labour government, I’m not sure it does.
Leo Pearlman is a London based producer and a loud and proud Zionist. His most recent film about the Oct 7 Nova Music Festival massacre, ‘We Will Dance Again’ has won the 2025 Emmy of the 46th Annual News & Documentary Awards for most ‘Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary’.