How widespread is anti-semitism in Britain?

Well, there's bad news but there is also - for once - good news too.

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There is something in the air, isn’t there? Howard Jacobson, the 81 year old novelist and former winner of the Booker prize, told my Times colleague Hugo Rifkind at the weekend that, despite being alive to anti-semitism of one sort or another for most of his time on earth, he had somehow “missed” a lot of this “hatred”. “I am flabbergasted to see what’s out there” he said. And there is a lot of stuff out there, isn’t there?

Hugo, for instance, draws my attention to one Asif Munaf, a contestant on the latest series of the BBC’s anti-capitalism show The Apprentice (seriously: if you wished to condemn market-based economies, The Apprentice is precisely the sort of show you might make). Apparently Munaf, a doctor of some sort, has form. Online, he’s the sort of chap happy to share his deeper thoughts. Such as: “Have you ever met even a …