Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

British Chief Rabbi Turned Away From Polls in Jewish London Borough

(JTA) — Hundreds of voters, including Britain’s chief rabbi and his wife, were turned away from polling stations Thursday morning in a heavily Jewish borough of London.

The voters in Barnet who were not allowed to cast ballots were told their names did not appear on the lists of registered voters, the Jewish Chronicle . The North London borough’s council later announced that the polling stations were provided with updated lists and those voters could return to the polls.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his wife, Valerie, told the Jewish Chronicle they could not return because they were headed to the airport to fly to Holland for a scheduled visit to the Jewish community there. Many others also told media outlets they had come early to vote because they would be unable to later.

Sue Cocker, the Barnet Council’s media manager, told the Jewish Chronicle that the problem had affected all 155 polling stations in the borough. The borough votes overwhelmingly for Tory Party candidates.

Municipal elections took place throughout the United Kingdom on Thursday, including a hotly contested race in London pitting the ruling Conservative Tory candidate, Zac Goldstein, who has a Jewish father but does not identify himself as a member of the community, against the Labour Party’s Sadiq Khan, who is favored to win, which would make him the first Muslim mayor of a major Western city.

Labour, however, is expected to lose dozens of seats nationwide, in part due to a spiraling scandal within the party over allegations of anti-Semitism and racism.

Some 54,000 Jews live in Barnet, making up about 15 percent of the population, The Telegraph reported, citing the national 2011 census.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.