What do these two countries have in common? Britain, in a historic victory by Labour, will be moving left. France, in a surge by the National Rally in the first round of its election, is likely to secure gains by its rightist party. It seems they are moving in opposite directions. And yet, maybe not. For we see one common theme — voters in both countries are delivering major gains to leaders who decided to confront antisemitism within their ranks. 

In the case of Britain, the hero of the story is Sir Keir Starmer. He began his rise in a Labour Party that, under Jeremy Corbyn, had become infected with antisemitism and hostility to Israel. It was nasty and blunt. It became so shocking that, in the summer of 2018, three major Jewish newspapers in Britain issued a joint editorial warning that if Mr. Corbyn were to form a government, it would present Jewish life in Britain with an “existential threat.”

The Guardian at the time opened its pages for Mr. Corbyn to claim, “I will root antisemites out of Labour — they do not speak for me.” Replied The New York Sun: “We don’t believe him for a nanosecond. We don’t believe he will root antisemites out of Labour. Neither do we believe the anti-Semites don’t speak for him. If either of those two vows had been bankable, Mr. Corbyn would have risen to the occasion long ago.”

Eventually, Mr. Corbyn was toppled from the leadership of the Labor Party by Sir Keir. That happened in April 2020. Sir Keir, on his first day as head of the party, issued on its behalf a forthright and impassioned apology for the party’s antisemitism and vowed to purge it from the party entirely. This is how Sir Keir’s rise began. Mr. Corbyn was suspended later that year, as Sir Keir pursued the triumph he just recorded.

The situation in France is no less dramatic. The story of the moment is that the National Rally’s Jordan Bardella could end up as premier. That’s not certain, but the party won last week the most seats in the first vote, and it’s not out of the question. Madame Le Pen could yet win the presidency. She is the daughter of, in Jean-Marie LePen, the longtime National Front chief when it stood for hostility to the Jews. He was convicted of Holocaust denial.

It would be hard, at least for us, to reckon who is worse, Le Pen, père, or Mr. Corbyn. Madame Le Pen, in a drama worthy of Shakespeare, defeated her father for the leadership of the National Front in 2011 and began a long quest to reform its image. It is now known as the National Rally. Madame Le Pen engineered the expulsion of her father from the party and pursued her quest for the presidency, even winning a degree of support from Jewish voters.

The Jewish dimension to these two stories is only one facet of a much larger canvas. In Britain and France, we will see whether the rightists, in or out of power, find their way back to classical economics. The elections will have implications for the war between Russia and Ukraine and the Middle East. Plus, we’re not entirely sanguine about the future of either British Labour* or the French right. Either one or both of them could revert to form. 

All the more apt is the question of what Britain and France have in common. The answer is that highly controversial parties and leaders in both countries have advanced toward power by addressing the antisemitism within their ranks. And it couldn’t be happening at a more propitious time, given the surge of antisemitism in America, Europe, and the Middle East. We see it as a guardedly hopeful pair of examples in a dangerous world.

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* Joseph Sternberg of the Wall Street Journal reported in February that recent antisemitism scandals within the Labor Party suggest that Sir Keir has managed more to suppress than expunge the problem within the party.