2025-08-06
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The attacks on Israel of October 7, 2023, fell on the first day of the Labour Party's conference,
and the scale of the slaughter was still emerging when it was taken as a proxy for a more trivial conflict,
the battle between Labour's factions for control of the party.
Acolytes of Sir Keir Starmer, then its leader and now Prime Minister,
wanted delegates to stand for a moment's silence.
Could it pass, live on television, without a heckle?
It did.
In the zero-sum struggle with followers of Jeremy Corbyn,
Labour's leftist former leader, it was a symbolic victory.
For the Starmorites,
how the conference responded to the massacre was a test of their boss's project to change the party.
It would reveal whether Labour could be a home again for British Jews after anti-Semitism had flourished in its ranks,
and whether a Labour government would be able to tell Britain's allies from its enemies.
Above all,
they saw a test of whether Labour could elevate the priorities of its working-class electorate over the passions of its middle-class activists,
and talk about Nuneaton more than Nablus.