By Daniel Greenfild, Special for USDR
For everyone who thinks that Jews won’t shift to the right, it’s already happened in Europe.
“The poll, conducted by The Jewish Chronicle newspaper and released Tuesday, found that Jewish voters intend to support the party of incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron by a margin of 56 percent to 18% for Labor, with 12.5% undecided and roughly 2% each going to the Liberal Democrats and the UK Independence Party. The margin climbed to 69% Conservative to 23% Labor when those who refused the survey or were undecided were eliminated from the results.
Some 73% of the 566 respondents said that the parties’ attitudes toward Israel were “very important” or “quite important” in influencing their votes. The Israel concerns paid off for the Conservatives, with 61% of respondents favoring their policies on Israel and the Middle East, while 8% favored the policies of Labor, which in recent months has been sharply critical of Israel’s conduct.
By a wide margin, respondents also saw Cameron as having a better attitude as prime minister to the UK’s Jewish population than Labor leader Ed Miliband — 64% to 13% — even though Miliband is Jewish.”
Jews are a small percentage of the UK (and of the US) so it’s not going to swing any elections one way or another, but the numbers are interesting.
Back in 2010, a survey was showing an even split, so the shift appears to have accelerated.
Israel is very much the issue
It isn’t just Maureen Lipman. This morning the actress and comedienne has announced she will not be voting Labour at the next election.
“Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse” she writes in Standpoint magazine, “just when the anti-Semitism in France, Denmark, Norway, Hungary is mounting savagely, just when our cemeteries and synagogues and shops are once again under threat. Just when the virulence against a country defending itself, against 4,000 rockets and 32 tunnels inside its borders, as it has every right to do under the Geneva Convention, had been swept aside by the real pestilence of IS, in steps Mr Miliband to demand that the government recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel.”
It’s a powerful – and accurate – critique of Labour’s Mid East policy. And it’s a critique that should have Ed Miliband and his advisers very, very worried, because the Labour party’s support within the Jewish community is now on the brink of collapse.
Here’s what the former director of Labour Friends of Israel had to say
I’ve been a supporter of the Labour Party for 20 years but my support is over.
I feel I don’t recognise the party of principle and serious government that I knocked on doors and delivered leaflets for. It has let me down.
I feel Ed Miliband’s and Douglas Alexander’s rush to a condemnation of Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza gave me no choice but to say goodbye to the party I have always voted and campaigned for.
In contrast, David Cameron deserves real credit for his objective and balanced statements on Gaza.”
And the JINO Miliband now faces the loss of the Jewish vote
“Despite his Jewish ancestry, Miliband has described in interviews how politics not religion was the dominant creed in the Miliband household. The family home is in Primrose Hill, London, which was a focal point for leftist intellectuals; the boys grew up around figures such as Tariq Ali and former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, who are known for their dislike of Israel. Their mother, Marion Kozak, is also an anti-Israel campaigner. Ed does not practice Judaism, to the point where the most famous (and disastrous) photo of him to date shows him clumsily trying to eat a bacon sandwich.”
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