Let’s face it. As important for Britain as election 2015 may be, so far it has not been the most interesting spectacle. #IlovetheNHS versus #longtermeconomicplan does not always surprise and delight.

Israel’s election, on the other hand, is worlds apart. In this we have the suddenness of the snap poll as Binyamin Netanyahu’s patience with coalition partners/hubris exploded. We have the left uniting against the right, rather than factionalising. And we have primaries that have rewarded grassroots campaigners over the old guard machine politicians of the past.

I love politics everywhere but find Israel’s elections to usually be more a source of sadness than joy given the right’s recent dominance. But having just spent five days with a delegation of Labour councillors and activists last month on a BICOM/Israeli embassy trip meeting Israeli politicians I admit to having real hope for our Israeli Labor comrades. Not only was their own confidence encouraging but the evidence on the ground of an improving situation for the left seemed to justify more hope than we have known in years.

For in just the last few weeks before the election Labor has opened up the narrowest of leads over Likud and the March result looks set to be even closer than our own outcome in May. One of the key drivers of this was the surprise announcement by the leaders of both the Labor and Hatnua parties, Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, to form an alliance, the Zionist Camp, and share the office of prime minister over the course of their term of government.

Some of the reasons for hope are small things like improved voter registration efforts among low-income and Arab-Israeli voters. But there have also been strategic advances, like improved Labor candidate recruitment and clearer messaging that general secretary Hilik Bar has helped usher in.

Critically, Labor is successfully channelling the anti-austerity, pro-social justice movement politics that underpinned Israel’s 2011 mass protests. And the newly announced slate of candidates combines heavyweight players for the key posts of finance and defence like Manuel Trajtenburg and Amos Yadlin with young leaders from the social protest movement.

But it is not just energy that Labor has now. The party has got smarter too. As Lorin Bell-Cross on the Left Foot Forward website noted before Christmas, the left has finally got the framing right in its messaging: characterising the election as Zionism versus extremism which allows the left to appeal to voters as much on patriotism as on peace or social justice. Even the leftwing alliance’s name, the Zionist Camp, allows the left to start retaking the language of patriotism from the right. And with Netanyahu’s approval rating having plummeted from 82 per cent to 23 per cent the prime minister is not the electoral ace he once was.

With Netanyahu facing problems on his own right flank and the Zionist Camp enjoying a wealth of prospective coalition partners the prospects for the Israeli left to end its decade-long exile from power have seldom been better.

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Marcus Roberts is deputy general secretary of the Fabian Society

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Photo: ronsho