Hard to avoid conclusion left have played this IHRA drama badly. Polling shows Israel is wildly unpopular among British public, and with justification. If from the start we’d said “no definition of AS should include reference to Israel” ->

And explained that Israel lobby uses claims of AS to silence criticism of Israel we would’ve had public on our side. Instead we argued we’d made the definition “stronger”. What we should have expressed as a political red line has become a technical debate over wording ->

We should’ve had a list of things that are uncontroversially antisemitic and suspended anyone who said them for 2 years on the spot, or if severe, expelled. Then when asked about extent of AS we’d have the numbers ->