Abstract: Following last week’s horrific antisemitic attack in Golders Green in north London, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called on the public to “open their eyes to Jewish pain”. Yet our research suggests that the PM and his government might do better to open their own eyes to what underpins the pain many British Jews experience today: the state’s failure to honour its social contract with this minority.
Since the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel and the subsequent Israel-Gaza war, Jews in Britain have experienced a growing tide of antisemitism. Over the course of 2025, 3,700 instances of antisemitic hate were reported, up 4 per cent from the previous year and 14 per cent lower than the highest ever annual total of 4,298 antisemitic incidents reported in 2023. Incidents include last week’s Golders Green attack, in which two men were stabbed; an arson attack at former synagogue in east London; an attack on the Jewish ambulance service Hatzola; an attempted firebombing at a synagogue in Kenton, London; and a terrorist attack on Manchester’s Heaton Park synagogue in October 2025, which killed two Jewish people and seriously injured three others.
In the wake of this alarming rise in antisemitism, focus groups we conducted between December 2025 and March 2026 with 43 British Jews across the UK revealed severely declining trust in Britain’s major institutions. The oldest non-Christian minority in the country, the Jewish community is less than 0.5 per cent of the UK population and includes both practising and non-practising members from a range of denominational affiliations and political views.
But despite their differences, people repeatedly expressed a similar stark sense of betrayal. Focus group participants stressed that while they were fulfilling their side of the bargain—complying with the law, paying taxes, contributing to civic life—the state increasingly was failing to provide them with protection and treat them fairly. “The pillars in the society we live in”, bemoaned a man in his 70s from Birmingham, “are letting us down”.
