The two antisemitism legacies of Keir Starmer

When Keir Starmer stood outside Downing Street to announce his resignation, he listed “ripping out the poison of antisemitism” from the Labour Party as one of the defining achievements of his leadership.

It was a claim that likely carried personal significance. His wife, Victoria, is Jewish, and they have raised their children in the Jewish faith. But does the data bear it out? And if Labour became safer for Jews while Britain itself became less so, how much did that victory ultimately matter?

Fixing Labour from within

To understand the scale of what Starmer inherited in 2020, one must return to the wreckage left by Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure. In the 2019 general election, just 11 percent of British Jews voted Labour, and for good reason: An EHRC’s October 2020 report found unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination within the party, including political interference in the handling of antisemitism complaints made in 2018, and a systemic failure to provide adequate training to those responsible for processing them.

For the first time in British political history, a major party had been found to have broken equality law in its treatment of Jewish members.

Starmer moved quickly and, by most measurable standards, effectively. Labour expelled hundreds of members and proscribed affiliated groups that had actively campaigned against the EHRC’s recommendations. Independent complaints processes were introduced and Jeremy Corbyn was blocked from standing as a Labour candidate.

By January 31, 2023, the EHRC concluded its monitoring period, satisfied that Labour had implemented the necessary changes to bring its procedures up to the legal standards required. The Board of Deputies of British Jews called it “an important moment,” acknowledging the party’s “strong move in the correct direction.”

The disciplinary data tells a similar story. During Labour’s worst years, annual NEC misconduct cases exceeded 300. By 2024, they had fallen to 138 across all categories, while antisemitism’s share of those cases dropped from 70% in 2022 to 28.3% – still resting at about a third of all cases, but a significant drop nonetheless.

The electoral reversal was equally striking: by July 2024, close to half of British Jews were estimated to have voted Labour, completing one of the most remarkable community-level political rehabilitations in recent British history.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Starmer’s mission still left complaints filed against over a dozen sitting Labour MPs unresolved, even after special measures were lifted. And post-October 7, new figures emerged inside the party over Gaza, with several MPs suspended for comments touching on antisemitic tropes. Finally online, Jeremy Corbyn has remained a prominent voice for an impressionable youth drawn to Labour’s recent bygone era.

Outside of Westminster

Starmer’s more significant failure (one that his resignation speech conspicuously glossed over) was not inside Labour, but on the UK streets themselves. The Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents across the UK in 2025, a 4% rise from the 3,556 logged in 2024 and the second-highest annual total ever documented.

The most serious incident occurred on Yom Kippur in Manchester, when a terrorist attack killed two people and marked the first fatal antisemitic terror attack since CST began monitoring in 1984. Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s adviser on terrorism, described attacks on Jewish people as “the biggest national security emergency” in almost a decade.

The psychological toll has been equally severe. A Campaign Against Antisemitism survey of 4,490 British Jews conducted in November 2025 found that 51% do not believe Jewish people have a long-term future in the UK, while 61% have considered leaving the country in the past two years, up from 50% the previous year.

Some 59% of British Jews now try not to show visible signs of their Jewishness in public. A report by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that 47% of British Jews today see antisemitism as a very big problem, a figure that stood at just 11% in 2012.

Is Burnham better?

Which brings us to what comes next. Andy Burnham, the frontrunner to succeed Starmer, is widely seen as being on the left of the party, and his positioning on Israel and the Jewish community carries its own ambiguities.

On one hand, Burnham has been a member of Labour Friends of Israel since 2015 and has previously dismissed the BDS campaign as “spiteful.” On the other, he broke ranks with the Westminster leadership in late October 2023 to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

It was a move that electorally paid off, helping him retain Greater Manchester while Labour lost a third of its vote share in areas with Muslim majorities at the 2024 local elections.

The concern for British Jews is less about Burnham’s personal convictions than about the political gravity that could pull him leftward once in office. Burnham will be keen to respond to the Green insurgency and win back left-wing voters, which could mean a much stronger response to Israeli military operations in a bid to inject new purpose into a Labour government and retain Muslim voters in the party.

Starmer’s resignation speech treated the antisemitism chapter as closed. On the narrow question of Labour’s internal culture, the evidence shows he did indeed leave a legacy of change.

But with a succession battle soon underway, there is a genuine question of whether the next occupant of Downing Street will keep the party – and the country – safe for its Jews.