The Labour government has declared antisemitism a national emergency. Sir Keir Starmer convened a Downing Street summit on 5 May, announced an extra £25 million in police protection for Jewish communities, and called for a "whole of society response." On the face of it, that sounds like exactly what a serious Prime Minister should do. Look closer and you see the same story we keep seeing from this government: dramatic announcements, large cheques, and a refusal to name the underlying problem.
A Welcome Response — To a Problem Labour Helped Create
Jewish Britons are right to be frightened. Two Jewish men were stabbed in north London. Synagogues need armed guards. Children are being told to hide their school uniforms on the bus home. This is the reality on British streets in 2026 — in the country that liberated Belsen. Anyone with a sense of national self-respect should be horrified.
But ask yourself an honest question: why has antisemitism in Britain risen so sharply over the past eighteen months? It isn't because the British people have suddenly decided to hate their Jewish neighbours. It's because we have, for years, imported hundreds of thousands of people from parts of the world where Jew-hatred is mainstream — and then policed dissent against that policy more aggressively than the antisemitism itself.
£25 Million Is Not a Strategy
The cheque from the Treasury brings total funding for Jewish community protection to roughly £58 million. That money will buy security guards, CCTV and patrols. None of it will reduce the number of people in Britain who think Jews are fair game. You cannot police your way out of a problem your own immigration policy created.
The Prime Minister has hinted darkly that "a foreign country may be behind" the wave of attacks. That's a serious claim. If he believes it, he should name the country, expel its diplomats, and explain how a hostile state was able to operate so freely on British soil. If he doesn't believe it, he shouldn't say it. Vague foreign-bogeyman briefings are a way of changing the subject when the truth is closer to home.
The Free Speech Double Standard
While Jewish Britons live in fear, the same Home Office that announced this summit is overseeing 22 speech-related arrests a day. Pensioners are getting collars felt for tweets. Pro-Palestine marches close central London weekend after weekend. The government has the resources to silence a grandmother in Cumbria, but not to stop a stabbing in Hampstead. That is the definition of two-tier policing, and the public can see it.
You cannot lecture the British people about tolerance while letting genuine intolerance flourish under your watch. People notice when chants of "globalise the intifada" go uncharged but a Facebook post about small boats lands you in a cell.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would treat antisemitism as a national emergency by acting on the cause, not just the symptoms. That means a hard cap on net migration, proper vetting of every person coming into this country, and the deportation of foreign nationals who incite or carry out violence — including those who lead the worst of the marches. It means scrapping non-crime hate incidents and rebuilding a single, neutral standard of policing that applies to every community equally.
It also means an honest national conversation about who we have let in, why, and what we expect of them. If the Prime Minister wants a "whole of society response," he should start by admitting that his party's open-borders instincts are part of what brought us here. Until then, £25 million is just a sticking plaster on a wound the government refuses to stitch.