I don’t know who Richard Hutton is or how qualified he is to judge my “half-baked Marxism” but his conclusion is nonetheless welcome after he has made an exhaustive examination of the issues:

“As with Downing’s other pieces, these seem to be examples of half-baked Marxist approaches to complex world events, rather than anything more sinister. It doesn’t seem likely that Downing is anti-Semitic, so much as ingenuous in how this material comes across.”

And doesn’t he really gets at the heart of the matter when he says:

It’s evident that Streeting persistently conflates the state of Israel with Jewish identity; then accuses other people of being anti-Semitic for doing the same thing as himself – that is, failing to make a distinction between people who are Jewish, and Israel. If Streeting does not differentiate between the two, how can others really be faulted by him when they follow suit? It’s not something which can be had both ways.

“Much the same is true of several other Labour MPs at the forefront of making allegations of anti-Semitic sympathies against both the Labour party and its leader; whose commentaries conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Chris Bryant published a piece in the Times newspaper – quoted in the paywall-free Independent – titled ‘If Labour gives in to antisemitism it loses its soul’; but subtitled ‘criticising Israel is one thing, but questioning its right to exist is another’ [7]. While, writing in Jewish News, the Labour MP, Angela Smith, opined that “for far too long, some on the left have exhibited a distorted logic when it comes to anti-Semitism by equating every aspect of Jewish identity and culture with the politics of Israel and the Middle East” [8]. So, on the one hand, Jewish identity is bound up with the state of Israel; but on the other, it is separate. Again, it’s not possible to have it both ways.”