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The weekend has seen the leaders question time debates.

Johnson failed to answer a question and the BBC edited later edited footage to change laughter at him to applause.

Swinson continues to prove that the Lib Dem campaign planners don't understand the electorate. They based the campaign around her and the more the public see her and the more she opens her gob she proves she's the witless headgirl who really knows fuck all.

Corbyn has now adopted a neutral 2nd referendum position. Far too late.

Jo Johnson apparently said that a good election manifesto is one people aren’t talking about 48 hrs later, and it seems that the Conservatives really have gone for that strategy.

Johnson had promised a manifesto for change yet of the three main parties it seems far from that. It avoids controversy for the most part, but also doesn't offer solutions to some of our biggest problems like social care. But with the Tories so ahead in the polls, the status quo and making sure they don't have a repeat of the 'dementia tax' car crash seems to be the order of the day. Because Brexit is going to going to provide a magic solution instead...

Meanwhile the Labour Party have gone completely the other way and really have gone for it and come up with ideas. With a mixed response from the public and press.

And I still can't tell you what is in the LD one, cos Prince Andrew...

This week should see the election come into focus as postal voting starts. As it stands its hard to bet on anything but a Tory majority.

I do find it very hard to believe that the Labour party is as riddled with anti-semitism as the above reports suggest. Those Labour men that I know tend to unthinking mysogeny - they just think that's the normal order of things until it's pointed out to them. The people I know who are most definitely anti-semitic are rabid right wingers.

I just worry the way this is heading, obviously there is always going to be a reflection of the wider public in the membership of a political party and so of course there are going to be unacceptable views held by some and these need to expelled whether its for racism, antisemitsm and islamaphobia but its almost come to the point that an accusation = evidence and an apology = demonstration of guilt and while Corbyn is constantly accused of himself being an anti semite when there is no recorded evidence that he has ever said anything anti semitic (please forgive me if I'm wrong on this and if you have it please let me see it) and while our media rightly calls out the antisemitsm in the Labour party its worrying that they seem to be unable to call out the Tory parties lack of action on islamaphobia while people like Warsi, Dhesi and the Muslim council of Britain are trying to get some media focus about this they are for the most part are ignored and we have recordings of Johnson using blatantly racist and islamaphobic language, Rees-Mogg and his using of right wing antisemitic tropes in the HOC, its being used as a political weapon and we will regret this, remember which ideology those who have attacked synagogues and mosques spout and it isnt from the left

How bad does it have to be Peregrina?

Two MPs have left because of it. If they had been black would people be minimising in the same way?

Ultimately, though, this is as much about the woeful handling of the issue as the issue itself. It has escalated due to incompetence.

The relevance of a screenshot from 2018 is...?

How bad does it have to be Peregrina?

The way it's now being framed appears to be that all Labour people are anti-semitic, which is just not the case. As I say, the anti-semites that I have the misfortune to know are all right wingers. They don't like blacks either.

Corbyn has been involved in approving an AS trope once and failing to distance himself from it in a foreward. Margaret Hodge has said she found him to be personally AS.

Either way - racism in the party the buck stops with the leader. He didn’t take control, root it out and neutralise the issue and the consequence is that it has exploded.

Meanwhile the appalling racism in the Tories goes largely unchecked because poor management has turned the drama in the Labour Party into a crisis. That is sheer political ineptitude.

The way it's now being framed appears to be that all Labour people are anti-semitic, which is just not the case

I don’t get that impression at all.

Labour voters mostly care about racism, so allegations of any kind hurt Labour

Tory voters mostly don't care - in fact BJ & co deliberately make racist "jokes" as crowd-pleasers

Corbyn has been involved in approving an AS trope once and failing to distance himself from it in a foreward. Margaret Hodge has said she found him to be personally AS.

John Bercow and Ed Milliband dont believe Corbyn to be an antisemite, after Ralph Milliband was subjected to vile abuse by the Daily Mail it was Corbyn who went on TV to defend him, where was Hodge?

Meanwhile the appalling racism in the Tories goes largely unchecked because poor management has turned the drama in the Labour Party into a crisis.

Absolutely nothing to do with the framing of the narrative by the MSM

I've got a bridge here you might be willing to buy

Absolutely. Tories don’t care, and everyone expects them to be racist their fans as much as their critics.

We have 2 parties with institutional racism, but the Tories get let off, because being racist is a core principal, so they are just doing what Tories do,
whereas being against racism is a core labour principal, so they are failing

Then we have the LDems being anti-women, to round off the 3 shit choices in England at least

Ed defended his father, I don’t recall Corbyn’s involvement. Ed also said that Corbyn was a worse leader than he: ‘I bet you didn’t think things could actually get worse’.

For this GE, we have the 3 shit party leaders that we have
Hopefully at least 2 of them will be gone soon afterwards

However, in the GE, it's a case of voting against the one you think will do the most harm in govt, instead of being able to vote for someone with enthusiasm

The relevance of a screenshot from 2018 is
You had earlier commented that corbyn had refused to apologise?

Remember the chief rabbi and Jewish chronicle made the same interventions before the 2017 election - its hardly unprecedented?

It doesn't help that ephraim has never distinguished anti-zionism from anti-semitism - leaving those who abhor the behaviour of the Israeli state no language to use.
www.middleeastmonitor.com/20160506-britains-chief-rabbi-is-wrong-to-say-that-anti-zionism-is-anti-semitism/

Corbyn defending Ralph Milliband

twitter.com/i/status/1157436003889684481

We have 2 parties with institutional racism, but the Tories get let off, because being racist is a core principal, so they are just doing what Tories do, whereas being against racism is a core labour principal, so they are failing

The thing that’s really irritating is that by all accounts this was not a problem before Corbyn. It’s something that has proliferated under him. It’s a recent issue, it’s not a core Labour failing. With an alternative leader it may never have happened. Whereas the Tories have always been racist arseholes.

You had earlier commented that corbyn had refused to apologise?

I was referring to his interview today.

The thing that’s really irritating is that by all accounts this was not a problem before Corbyn

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/08/how-did-labour-lose-trust-britain-s-jews

The general consensus among MPs is that AS was very much a fringe problem prior to Corbyn not a core institutional one. It is he who has overseen the shift to centre stage.

Previous leaders didn't RT antisemitic tweets or meet Hamas leaders

However, the anti-semitism allegations are long-running in Labour,
partly because of the fierce dispute about whether it is anti-semitic for individuals to advocate a one-state outcome

Jewish socialists played a major role in the earlier days of the Labour party and - especially in the days of Golda Meir & Israeli Labour govts - ensured a strongly pro-Israel policy

However, with the much larger Muslim population now in the UK, over 3 million vs about 300,000 Jews, Muslim socialists now have more influence and have been pushing pro-Palestian policies, highly critical of Israeli govt actions

This is a seismic change within the Labour party and is being bitterly fought out

Corbyn going could bring in a leader who will be personally difficult to accuse of anti-semitism, but the internal battle wrt Israel vs Palestine will continue

Hence I would expect the allegations of anti-semitism to continue,

both because of Jewish anger at Labour turning away from its previous pro-Israel policy

and because a minority of pro-Palestinian activists have been brought up in a very anti-semitic atmosphere

• training within the Labour party can correct this, but it often takes complaints before it is realised that someone needs training.

Was it so hard to say I'm sorry and, as Jess Phillips put it, promise to do everything to win back trust. Was that so hard? Apparently, yes.

I think BCF's analysis is very good, except that the strongly pro-Palestine Labour faction is definitely only or even mainly driven by Muslim socialists.

I know quite a few (very) old Labour people (all white men) and Palestine/Israeli treatment of Palestinians is a huge issue for them (as it should be for all of us, actually). Some of these people had left the Labour Party and rejoined because of Corbyn.

I'm thinking of one friend in particular who I would really hesitate to describe as antisemitic; like Corbyn he has a long history of fighting racism in all its forms, in a way that many of Corbyn's critics most definitely do not. However the AS issue has led me to unfriend/mute him on social media :(

I'm not talking about the antisemitic tropes that are common on both far left and far right (Soros dog whistles etc) - the sort of people I'm talking about would never use that sort of language and recognise it for what it is - but about anti-Zionism. There's a blind spot that prevents some of these people from understanding that while anti-Zionism is not in itself racist, you risk getting into bed with people who really are racists.

That should say "definitely NOT only". It's early.