This morning Keir Starmer went to Buckingham Palace and gave up the job. A little later Andy Burnham arrived, kissed hands, and became the 59th prime minister of the United Kingdom, the seventh in a decade. He ran unopposed, five weeks after winning a by-election in Makerfield. For a country that has made political chaos into a national habit, today was oddly calm.

Which makes it a decent moment to ask the question a lot of us have been circling for two years without quite saying out loud. Was Starmer good for the Jews? And what happens now?

Starmer built his leadership on one promise. In 2020 he said he would tear the poison of antisemitism out of the Labour Party by its roots, and he meant it. He inherited a party found in breach of equalities law, a party thousands of Jews had walked out of.

He did the work. He suspended Corbyn, rebuilt the disciplinary process, and changed the culture enough that Phil Rosenberg at the Board of Deputies called the shift inside Labour transformative, pointing also to unprecedented security funding and the move to proscribe the IRGC. That is not a small legacy.

It mattered to him personally, too. Victoria is Jewish, the children were raised in the faith, and the Friday nights were real........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)