Posted on 11/07/2003 5:16:38 AM PST by veronica
LONDON, Nov. 6 (JTA) A former hard-line government minister has become the first Jew ever to lead a major British political party.
Michael Howard, 62, was declared the leader of Britains opposition Conservative Party on Thursday.
No one came forward to challenge him after the party dumped its previous leader, Iain Duncan Smith, last week.
Geoffrey Alderman, a historian of British Jewry, said Howards candidacy carried symbolic importance for Britains Jews but probably would not bear tangible benefits.
Actually, Alderman said, having a Jewish prime minister could be detrimental to the Jewish community, expressing a concern not unlike those voiced by some U.S. Jews during the 2000 vice presidential run of Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
If Lieberman had become vice president, Alderman said, some Jews worried he would have had to bend over backwards on the Middle East to prove that his religion was not a factor in determining U.S. policy.
Michael Howard would also be under such pressures if he became Britains prime minister, Alderman said. It is of more benefit to Anglo-Jewry to have a prime minister who represents a Jewish constituency than to have a prime minister who is a professing Jew.
Alderman cited the example of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who represented the heavily Jewish London constituency of Finchley.
She made friends with the Jews and she never looked back, he said. At one time, Thatcher had five Jews in her Cabinet more than anyone before or since, Alderman said.
Stuart Polak, director of the Conservative Friends of Israel lobbying group, rejected Aldermans suggestion that Howard might be constrained by his Judaism.
It happens to an extent, but the bottom line is that Michael Howard is someone who will never sell the issues that affect the Jewish community or Israel down the river, he said. We have somebody who understands the issues affecting the Jewish community better than most.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a widely respected former foreign secretary and a possible future Conservative Party leader who also is Jewish, said he, too, did not think Howards religion would impact a premiership.
The issue doesnt arise, Rifkind said. As prime minister, Michael Howard will do what is in the interest of the U.K. There are constraints, but they are national and political, not personal.
The Conservatives or Tories, as they are commonly known here have had an ethnic Jewish leader before, the great 19th-century prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli. But Disraeli was baptized a Christian long before he entered politics.
In Disraelis day there were serious constitutional questions about whether a Jew could be prime minister, Alderman said, since the prime minister advises the monarch on the appointment of Church of England bishops.
After Disraeli, there were no Jewish Conservative lawmakers for generations.
But the anticipated selection of Howard to lead the party more than 120 years after Disraeli has raised no apparent concerns.
The British press has noted his immigrant background his father came to Wales from Romania in 1939, and one of his grandmothers died in Auschwitz but has had little to say about his Jewishness.
Some British Jews, however, say they detected a hint of anti-Semitism in an Oct. 30 story about Howard in the Daily Mail, a solidly Conservative newspaper that supports Howards candidacy for party leader.
In the story, Edward Heathcoat Amory wrote that Howard would like to be seen as the very model of that virtually extinct animal, the proper English gentleman. His enemies would complain that he is . . . bent on passing himself off as something he isnt.
Jewish television personality Vanessa Feltz responded in the next days Daily Express the Mails arch-rival whose owner, Richard Desmond, is Jewish.
Heathcoat Amory does not use the J word. He does not come out and call Michael Howard a Jew, Feltz wrote. What he does instead is to introduce the concept of Michael Howards Jewishness by stealth. It is articles such as this that give unwitting succor to racists and anti-Semites.
For his part, Howard has made little of his religion, neither hiding it nor making overt displays of it.
In September, he told the London Jewish Chronicle that he accepted those Jewish values I was brought up with. They are still an important guide and influence on my life.
He is a member of St. Johns Wood Liberal synagogue, one of Londons flagship Liberal synagogues.
A member of Conservative Friends of Israel, he has opposed efforts by pro-Palestinian lawmakers to demonize the Jewish state.
But the former lawyer is far better known in Britain for his skepticism of the European Union, his conservative fiscal thinking and his law-and-order stance than for his foreign policy positions.
As Home Secretary Britains top law-enforcement official under John Major from 1993 to 1997, Howard introduced private prisons and pushed for tough sentencing standards.
When Tony Blair then campaigning to be prime minister vowed to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, Howard famously replied, I know what causes crime: criminals.
That stance will not necessarily harm him among British Jewish voters, who tend to split roughly evenly between Conservative and Labor.
Howard refused to make Holocaust denial a crime when he was Home Secretary, arguing that to do so would make martyrs of Holocaust deniers.
Howard has vowed to lead the Conservative party from the center, but few political analysts predict that he will take it to victory in the next election, which is expected within two years.
The Tories trail the Labor government by a huge margin in Parliament, and some analysts say Howards role is to shore up the party and give it a fighting chance to win the election after next.
If Howard does bow out after an election defeat, the Tories could replace him with another Jew Rifkind or the rising young star Oliver Letwin.
Really. Only Christians. Not a very American argument you have made.
And I recall that it was a very big deal, and discussed all over the place, when America had it's first Catholic President (JFK). So what's wrong with noting a Jewish leader in a UK party, especially Conservative, considering that FR is a site concerned with Conservative issues?
And I also recall that JFK took a trip to Ireland, a country which he deemed close to his heart. Was he a loyal American? Is it disloyal to attend a St. Patrick's Day parade, too?
Jews aren't loyal citizens, neither are Catholics, loyal to the Pope.
Jews and Catholics shouldn't be allowed to hold office, probably not vote either.
You display a level of bigotry that's largely, but clearly not entirely gone, in America.
This is getting interesting, just like 17th century Europe. Which of course is why our forebearers turned up here in the first place.
Justin Raimondo thinks?
You must ask yourself, why are you expressing approval of an adherence to a faith you don't have the conviction to hold yourself?
Truth be told, there are probably many who have some misgivings about muslim office holders at a fearful prejudical level. However, for conservatives, the prejudice for the american political virtue of toleration counter-balances that other prejucice and the principle wins over the primeval. However, perhaps conservatism is not your cup of tea and rationalism is instead.
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