Albie Amankona is a broadcaster, financial analyst, vice-chair of LGBT+ Conservatives, and co-founder of Conservatives Against Racism.
Britain has built a hierarchy of prejudice. The Left cares about every form of racism more than antisemitism; the Right cares about antisemitism more than every other form of racism.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour turned antisemitism into a national disgrace. Under Starmer, the party has cleaned up its image, but it has not fully uprooted the instincts that made that scandal possible in the first place. In Rochdale, Labour initially stood by its parliamentary candidate Azhar Ali after he suggested Israel had effectively allowed the 7 October attacks to happen. Only later, after further remarks emerged, including comments about media coverage coming “from certain Jewish quarters”, did the party withdraw support. Graham Jones, then Labour’s candidate for Hyndburn, was also suspended after remarks about Israel.
Starmer’s Labour has not fully purged the culture that made the party so morally unserious about antisemitism to begin with. The problem may be less dramatic than it was under Corbyn, but it has not disappeared.
Then there are the Greens, combining moral vanity with political squalor: weak vetting, repeated candidate scandals, and activists who treat allegations of antisemitism as ‘smears’ to be swatted away rather than signs of a real problem to confront. During the 2024 election campaign, then co-leader Adrian Ramsay said at least three Green candidates had been dropped over “inappropriate comments” amid an antisemitism row. More recently, reports emerged of a Green support group for candidates facing antisemitism accusations, with deputy leader Mothin Ali allegedly telling candidates, some of whom had described the Hatzola ambulance attack as a “false flag”, that they were making “the right type of noise”.
This is what anti-racism amounts to on parts of the Left: endless posturing about justice, paired with a chronic inability to treat antisemitism as seriously as every other prejudice they claim to oppose.
The Right is no better; it just plays the same game in reverse. Take Kemi Badenoch’s latest intervention on antisemitism. In an interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC, she said that, as a black woman, she had “never seen” racism, discrimination, intimidation and attacks at the level now directed at Jews, adding that “if black churches were being firebombed there would be a national emergency”. The horror at attacks on Jewish communities is entirely justified, the problem was her framing. It was reckless, needlessly pitting black Britons against British Jews, as though one community’s problems must be measured against another’s.
I have long been a supporter of Badenoch, but this is where some of the criticism she faces from within Britain’s black community begins to hit home. Many black Britons, including black Conservatives, see in her a certain detachment from the mainstream black British experience, as though her own life has been positive enough to leave her less understanding to those whose experience has been harder. That criticism can sometimes be overstated, but comments like these make it much harder to dismiss.
For what it is worth, I understand Badenoch’s perspective. By and large, I do not feel my race has been a major disadvantage in my own life. That does not stop me sympathising with those for whom it has, our good fortune does not invalidate the struggles of others.
When Tory donor Frank Hester made racist remarks about Diane Abbott, Badenoch rightly called them racist and welcomed his apology; the broader Conservative response slipped into the language of Christian forgiveness. Had Hester made similar comments but about a Jewish MP, would the response have been the same? Mercy was nowhere to be found when Kanye West apologised for his antisemitism and linked his behaviour to bipolar disorder. He was barred from the UK, which triggered the collapse of Wireless festival.
West’s anti-black racism also seems to have attracted far less lasting outrage. His claim that slavery was “a choice” caused fury at the time, but nothing like the sustained condemnation that later greeted his antisemitism. Why is forgiveness available when anti-black racism comes from a Tory donor, or even from the involuntary tic of a Tourette’s campaigner such as John Davidson at the BAFTAs, but not when antisemitism comes from a pariah celebrity with a mental illness?
Reform UK offers its own version of the same hypocrisy. This is a party that never stops denouncing identity politics, mocking grievance culture and treating identity-based organising as inherently suspect. Yet it now has a Reform Jewish Alliance, which Jewish and non-Jewish members alike are being encouraged to join. I am told by my own sources that this is the party’s only identity-based affiliate group. Why is identity politics corrosive when it comes to black, Asian, Muslim, Hindu or LGBT grassroots political organising, but legitimate when it serves groups the Right is more comfortable defending, such as Jews, Christians or white working class boys? The objection, plainly, is not to identity politics as such. It is to who is allowed to practice it.
We need one standard, not an identity-based pecking order in which sympathy is dispensed according to fashion, ideology or political usefulness. I condemned the recent wave of antisemitic terrorist attacks on Sky News, and I do so again now. Antisemitism is vile, it is among the oldest hatreds in existence, and it must be confronted robustly. If Britain is serious about easing tensions at home, that means cracking down on Islamist extremism, ending illegal migration, pursuing a robust community integration strategy, backing a sustainable two-state solution in the Middle East, and condemning all forms of racism and discrimination with equal seriousness.
Once people start to believe that some communities are protected more fiercely than others, that some hatreds are punished more seriously than others, and that some victims matter more than others, social trust begins to collapse and true integration becomes impossible. If Britain wants peace at home and a well-integrated multi-racial and multi-faith society, the rule must be brutally simple: no hierarchy of victims, no selective outrage, and no double standards.
Albie Amankona is a broadcaster, financial analyst, vice-chair of LGBT+ Conservatives, and co-founder of Conservatives Against Racism.
Britain has built a hierarchy of prejudice. The Left cares about every form of racism more than antisemitism; the Right cares about antisemitism more than every other form of racism.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour turned antisemitism into a national disgrace. Under Starmer, the party has cleaned up its image, but it has not fully uprooted the instincts that made that scandal possible in the first place. In Rochdale, Labour initially stood by its parliamentary candidate Azhar Ali after he suggested Israel had effectively allowed the 7 October attacks to happen. Only later, after further remarks emerged, including comments about media coverage coming “from certain Jewish quarters”, did the party withdraw support. Graham Jones, then Labour’s candidate for Hyndburn, was also suspended after remarks about Israel.
Starmer’s Labour has not fully purged the culture that made the party so morally unserious about antisemitism to begin with. The problem may be less dramatic than it was under Corbyn, but it has not disappeared.
Then there are the Greens, combining moral vanity with political squalor: weak vetting, repeated candidate scandals, and activists who treat allegations of antisemitism as ‘smears’ to be swatted away rather than signs of a real problem to confront. During the 2024 election campaign, then co-leader Adrian Ramsay said at least three Green candidates had been dropped over “inappropriate comments” amid an antisemitism row. More recently, reports emerged of a Green support group for candidates facing antisemitism accusations, with deputy leader Mothin Ali allegedly telling candidates, some of whom had described the Hatzola ambulance attack as a “false flag”, that they were making “the right type of noise”.
This is what anti-racism amounts to on parts of the Left: endless posturing about justice, paired with a chronic inability to treat antisemitism as seriously as every other prejudice they claim to oppose.
The Right is no better; it just plays the same game in reverse. Take Kemi Badenoch’s latest intervention on antisemitism. In an interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC, she said that, as a black woman, she had “never seen” racism, discrimination, intimidation and attacks at the level now directed at Jews, adding that “if black churches were being firebombed there would be a national emergency”. The horror at attacks on Jewish communities is entirely justified, the problem was her framing. It was reckless, needlessly pitting black Britons against British Jews, as though one community’s problems must be measured against another’s.
I have long been a supporter of Badenoch, but this is where some of the criticism she faces from within Britain’s black community begins to hit home. Many black Britons, including black Conservatives, see in her a certain detachment from the mainstream black British experience, as though her own life has been positive enough to leave her less understanding to those whose experience has been harder. That criticism can sometimes be overstated, but comments like these make it much harder to dismiss.
For what it is worth, I understand Badenoch’s perspective. By and large, I do not feel my race has been a major disadvantage in my own life. That does not stop me sympathising with those for whom it has, our good fortune does not invalidate the struggles of others.
When Tory donor Frank Hester made racist remarks about Diane Abbott, Badenoch rightly called them racist and welcomed his apology; the broader Conservative response slipped into the language of Christian forgiveness. Had Hester made similar comments but about a Jewish MP, would the response have been the same? Mercy was nowhere to be found when Kanye West apologised for his antisemitism and linked his behaviour to bipolar disorder. He was barred from the UK, which triggered the collapse of Wireless festival.
West’s anti-black racism also seems to have attracted far less lasting outrage. His claim that slavery was “a choice” caused fury at the time, but nothing like the sustained condemnation that later greeted his antisemitism. Why is forgiveness available when anti-black racism comes from a Tory donor, or even from the involuntary tic of a Tourette’s campaigner such as John Davidson at the BAFTAs, but not when antisemitism comes from a pariah celebrity with a mental illness?
Reform UK offers its own version of the same hypocrisy. This is a party that never stops denouncing identity politics, mocking grievance culture and treating identity-based organising as inherently suspect. Yet it now has a Reform Jewish Alliance, which Jewish and non-Jewish members alike are being encouraged to join. I am told by my own sources that this is the party’s only identity-based affiliate group. Why is identity politics corrosive when it comes to black, Asian, Muslim, Hindu or LGBT grassroots political organising, but legitimate when it serves groups the Right is more comfortable defending, such as Jews, Christians or white working class boys? The objection, plainly, is not to identity politics as such. It is to who is allowed to practice it.
We need one standard, not an identity-based pecking order in which sympathy is dispensed according to fashion, ideology or political usefulness. I condemned the recent wave of antisemitic terrorist attacks on Sky News, and I do so again now. Antisemitism is vile, it is among the oldest hatreds in existence, and it must be confronted robustly. If Britain is serious about easing tensions at home, that means cracking down on Islamist extremism, ending illegal migration, pursuing a robust community integration strategy, backing a sustainable two-state solution in the Middle East, and condemning all forms of racism and discrimination with equal seriousness.
Once people start to believe that some communities are protected more fiercely than others, that some hatreds are punished more seriously than others, and that some victims matter more than others, social trust begins to collapse and true integration becomes impossible. If Britain wants peace at home and a well-integrated multi-racial and multi-faith society, the rule must be brutally simple: no hierarchy of victims, no selective outrage, and no double standards.