We have been conned into believing that anti-Semitism is now a disease of the left. In reality, it is still found mostly in racism\u2019s historic home: on the right. But right-wingers use coded language for it.
In the 1930s, campaigners for a deal with Hitler started by arguing that Britain should not fight the \u201cJews\u2019 war\u201d. Then they got cleverer. My father was one of them, and Richard Griffiths, an expert on the far right, writes that John Beckett and others used the terms \u201cusury\u201d, \u201cmoney power\u201d, \u201calien\u201d and \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d as coded references to Jews.
Today, one code is \u201cnorth London metropolitan elite\u201d. Danny Cohen, until 2015 the BBC\u2019s director of television, was furiously attacked by newspapers for firing Jeremy Clarkson, and the Times called Cohen a \u201cfixture of the north London metropolitan elite\u201d. The comedian David Baddiel tweeted: \u201cSurprised Times subclause doesn\u2019t add, \u2018and y\u2019know: a rootless cosmopolitan of east European stock\u2019.\u201d Dave Cohen, the author of Horrible Histories , tweeted: \u201c Times calls Danny Cohen \u2018part of north London metropolitan elite\u2019. We hear what you\u2019re saying, guys.\u201d
The tradition is that of Dornford Yates and Bulldog Drummond, memorably satirised by Alan Bennett in Forty Years On : \u201c. . that bunch of rootless intellectuals, alien Jews and international pederasts who call themselves the Labour Party\u201d. Clarkson is a perfect opponent for a member of the north London metropolitan elite \u2013 a privately educated, British Bulldog Drummond figure for our age.
Another fully paid-up member of the north London metropolitan elite is Ed Miliband, and the attacks on him before the 2015 general election had an unmistakably anti-Semitic edge. Colin Holmes, the author of Anti-Semitism in British Society , points to the Daily Mail \u2019s
attack on Miliband\u2019s academic father, Ralph.
\u201cThe word \u2018Jew\u2019 doesn\u2019t have to be mentioned,\u201d says Holmes. \u201cAll you have to do is make it clear that Ralph Miliband was a refugee from Nazism, and then suggest he has no loyalty to the hand that succoured him. His allegiance was to Moscow. He was one of those rootless cosmopolitans. That theme of Jews owing no allegiance can be found throughout the history of British anti-Semitism. The depiction of Miliband drew strength from the prehistory
of such sentiments linked to Jews, treason and Bolshevism.\u201d
So the Mail article tells us, correctly, that Ralph Miliband was an immigrant Jew who fled Nazi persecution. A couple of paragraphs further on, in case we have forgotten that he wasn\u2019t really English, we read about \u201cthe immigrant boy whose first act in Britain was to discard his name, Adolphe, because of its associations with Hitler, and become Ralph\u201d.
It follows Miliband to Cambridge, where he was no doubt taught by several tutors, but only one of them is mentioned: the Jewish Harold Laski, \u201cwhom some Tories considered to be a dangerous Marxist revolutionary . .. One is entitled to wonder whether Ralph Miliband\u2019s Marxism was actually fuelled by a giant-sized social chip on his shoulder as he lived in his adoptive country.\u201d What exactly is the purpose of the last seven words of that sentence?
Calling Ed Miliband \u201cweird\u201d was another code, and the argument that we should have had David Miliband, not Ed, because he looked and sounded better was a coded way of saying that he looked and sounded less Jewish.
Yet when, come the 2015 general election, I worked for the Labour candidate in my north London constituency, Finchley and Golders Green (which has a higher proportion of Jewish voters than any other), I found not anger at anti-Semitic attacks on Labour\u2019s leader but a belief that anti-Semitism was Labour\u2019s virus. In vain, I pointed out that we were offering not just the first Jewish prime minister since Disraeli but a Jewish MP in Sarah Sackman.
The constituency was awash with rumours \u2013 none of which have ever been substantiated \u2013 of Labour canvassers saying anti-Semitic things on the doorstep.
On voting day, I did the early morning shift at my polling station. The first words that my Conservative counterpart said to me were: \u201cI hope you\u2019re ashamed of the way your party has campaigned.\u201d It turned out that the tabloid press had run a story that morning to the effect that Labour canvassers had telephoned Orthodox Jews to tell them that they should not vote for the local Tory MP, Mike Freer, because he was gay.
He is gay, but no evidence has been offered to back up the story. I have written to Freer (still, alas, my MP), asking for chapter and verse. He has not replied.
Labour isn\u2019t guiltless. Shami Chakrabarti\u2019s widely attacked report last summer made that clear, and the home affairs select committee found disturbing instances. Part of the reason why Labour gets more than its fair share of the odium is the eagerness with which its warring factions use the charge of anti-Semitism to smear their rivals.
But, as no less an authority than Deborah Lipstadt, the pre-eminent historian on Holocaust denial, has said, \u201cIt has been so convenient for people to beat up on the left, but you can\u2019t ignore what\u2019s coming from the right.\u201d
My foolish father started out as a left-wing Labour MP in the 1920s. But once he embraced anti-Semitism, he quickly moved to the right in all of his other opinions as well. For then, as now, the spiritual home of anti-Semitism, as with any form of racism, is on the right, not on the left.
One of the clich\u00e9s about celebrity life is that all celebrities know each other. Back in the Eighties, when we were moderately famous, Ben and I did often bump into other famous people, and because of mutual recognition, there was a sort of acquaintance, if not friendship.
There was a random element to it, as well. Some celebrities you might never catch a glimpse of, while others seemed to pop up with an unexpected regularity.
In 1987, the car we drove was a 1970s Austin Princess, all leather seats and walnut dashboard. In many ways, it symbolised what people thought of as the basic qualities of our band: unassuming, a little bit quirky, a little bit vintage. We\u2019d had it for a year or so, but Ben was running out of patience. It had a habit of letting us down at inconvenient moments \u2013 for instance, at the top of the long, steep climbs that you encounter when driving through Italy, which we had just recklessly done for a holiday. The car was such a novelty out there that it attracted crowds whenever we parked. They would gather round, nodding appreciatively, stroking the bonnet and murmuring, \u201c Bella macchina. . .\u201d
Having recently banked a couple of royalty cheques, Ben was thinking of a complete change of style \u2013 a rock\u2019n\u2019roll, grand-gesture kind of car.
\u201cI wanna get an old Mercedes 300 SL,\u201d he said to me.
\u201cWhat\u2019s one of those?\u201d
\u201cI\u2019ll let you know next time we pass one,\u201d he said.
We were driving through London in the Princess, and as we swung round into Sloane Square, Ben called out, \u201cThere\u2019s one, look, coming up on the inside now!\u201d I looked round at this vision of gleaming steel and chrome, gliding along effortlessly beside us, and at the same moment the driver glanced over towards our funny little car. We made eye contact, then the Merc roared away. It was George Michael.
\u201cThat was George Michael!\u201d we both shouted. \u201cAnd he was driving the car we want!\u201d
We\u2019d always had a soft spot for George, even though we seemed to inhabit opposite ends of the pop spectrum. He\u2019d once been on a TV review show and said nice things about our first album, and I knew he had liked my solo single \u201cPlain Sailing\u201d. We\u2019d done a miners\u2019 benefit gig where Wham! had appeared, slightly out of place in their vests, tans and blond bouffants. There had been a bit of sneering because they\u2019d mimed. But I remember thinking, \u201cGood on you for even being here.\u201d Their presence showed that being politically active, or even just caring , wasn\u2019t the sole preserve of righteous indie groups.
A couple of weeks later, we were driving along again in the Princess, when who should pull up beside us in traffic? George again. He wound down his window, and so did we. He was charming and called across to say that, yes, he had recognised us the other day in Sloane Square. He went on to complain that BBC Radio 1 wouldn\u2019t play his new single \u201cbecause it was too crude\u201d. \u201cWhat\u2019s it called?\u201d asked Ben. \u201c \u2018I Want Your Sex\u2019!\u201d he shouted, and roared away again, leaving us laughing.
We\u2019d made up our minds by now, and so we went down to the showroom, flashed the cash, bought the pop-star car and spent the next few weeks driving our parents up and down the motorway with the roof off. It was amazing: even I had to admit that it was a thrill to be speeding along in such a machine.
A little time passed. We were happy with our glamorous new purchase, when one day we were driving down the M1 and, yes, you\u2019ve guessed it, in the rear-view mirror Ben saw the familiar shape coming up behind. \u201cBloody hell, it\u2019s George Michael again. I think he must be stalking us.\u201d
George pulled out into the lane alongside and slowed down as he drew level with us. We wound down the windows. He gave the car a long look, up and down, smiled that smile and said, \u201cThat\u2019s a bit more like it.\u201d Then he sped away from us for the last time.
Cheers, George. You were friendly, and generous, and kind, and you were good at being a pop star.<\/p>\n

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