Millions of voters have ignored Labour’s shocking anti-Semitism problem to back an institutionally racist party: Bill Carmichael

The election of December 2019 has been characterised by deliberate misinformation – aka downright lies – aggression, insults and even death threats. Dead rats have been sent to candidates through the post, canvassers have been physically assaulted on the doorstep and social media has been even more a cesspit of abuse than usual.

Jewish voters in Leeds walk out of hustings over Labour anit-semitism

Now the campaign is finally over it is right to ask the question – why has our politics reached such a low ebb? The answer, I am afraid, is glaringly obvious. Quite simply our political system only works properly if the losers of a democratic vote are prepared to accept the result.

If the losers refuse to abide by that fundamental, decades old principle – simply because they happen to disagree with the result – then faith in our democratic institutions begins to fray and the whole thing comes apart at the seams. That is precisely what is happening now.

Chief Rabbi has support of Jewish community in Leeds over Jeremy Corbyn criticism: Yorkshire Post Letters

Our political forefathers understood that, and the importance of maintaining our democracy despite personal disappointments, and that’s the way it has been for as long as I can remember.

For example, despite bitter ideological differences, supporters of Edward Heath accepted defeat by Harold Wilson in 1974; Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock took it on the chin when they were bested by Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and 1987; and three successive Conservative party leaders gracefully took defeat at the hands of the electoral machine that was Tony Blair.

Indeed, when the British public voted to stay in what was then known as the Common Market in a referendum in 1975, the losers accepted the result. But that long and noble tradition came to a catastrophic end in 2016 – and all our present troubles, and the dreadful tenor of this campaign, stems directly from that mistake.

And if you think this campaign has been bad just imagine what horrors a second referendum would inflict on us – it would be 100 times worse!

The truth is the political class has hardly covered itself in glory over the last three and a half years.

First of all they voted overwhelmingly to hand over to the people the decision on whether to remain in the EU or leave, with the government making the solemn pledge on a leaflet delivered to every household in the country: “This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide.”

But because the ordinary people had the audacity to vote the “wrong” way, our political elites turned on a sixpence and have spent years trying to ignore or nullify the vote and smearing Leave voters as thick, ignorant racists.

Even as late as the 2017 election, the two main parties were promising – hand on hearts – to honour the result of the referendum, a stance which helped them attract the support of around 84 per cent of voters.

But again once the election was over they broke those promises and instead spent months trying to thwart the will of the people using every underhand legal and parliamentary trick in the book.

The result has been bitterness, division, paralysis at the top of the government and disillusionment with politics on a scale we have not seen before. Regardless of today’s result it will take many months or years to repair the damage.

There will be a lot written about the “cut-through” moment of the campaign. Was it the little boy in LGI lying on the floor with an oxygen mask? Or perhaps the tape of Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth admitting Jeremy Corbyn is a threat to national security?

For me it was undoubtedly the leaked files from Labour whistle-blowers revealing the truly shocking depth of anti-Jewish racism in the party and the leadership’s lamentable failure to deal with it properly. One Labour member called for the “complete extermination of every Jew on the planet”, but it was 10 months before he was expelled.

No wonder our Jewish friends and colleagues were so concerned about a far-left Corbyn government. And the fact that millions of Britons have been prepared to vote for an institutionally racist party, under investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, should shame us all as the result is confirmed.