Theresa May: ‘My support for the community will continue in the years to come’

Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will remain a friend and ally of the Jewish community as the race to succeed her heated up.

In a letter to the Board of Deputies, the outgoing PM reiterated her record of support, including increased security funding, adding: “I am sure that this friendship and my support for the community will continue in the years to come.”

May’s letter, sent on Friday, said the Government’s priorities were to “protect people from online harm, including tackling the dissemination of antisemitic tropes through our society”. She also referenced “specific forms of antisemitism directed at women”.

In 2014, as home secretary, May visited Israel and in January 2015 she appeared at a Jewish event in London holding a sign reading ‘Je Suis Juif’ (I Am Jewish) in solidarity with French Jews killed at a kosher deli in Paris in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

In December 2016 she told Conservative Friends of Israel that she would be adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and in 2017 she celebrated the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.

In her letter to the Board on Friday, she praised the organisation for “fostering good relations between British Jews and those of other faiths so as to improve understanding and friendship”.

Meanwhile, her letter was sent on the day that the House of Commons’ Home Affair Committee held an evidence session for its inquiry into Islamophobia.

Imam Atta, director of Islamophobia monitor Tell MAMA, told MPs: “We work with the Community Security Trust… in order to pick up on best practice and how they have been delivering their security to synagogues and to Jewish schools in order to tailor them to Muslim communities.”