It’s certain that Peretz is the reason that Silvan Shalom and Shaul Mofaz

It’s certain that Peretz is the reason that Silvan Shalom and Shaul Mofaz, the two rivals trying to beat Benjamin Netanyahu for the Likud leadership, have been proclaiming not only their origins as Jews from Muslim countries – if Peretz wins the union leader will be the first such Israeli to lead his country – but also some freshly discovered egalitarian credentials to match the passion for social justice which runs so thoroughly through the Peretz bloodstream.He is, of course, a definable brand, instantly familiar from the television screens even before he became leader, thanks to the famous and endlessly debated moustache, now reduced from its once luxuriant handlebar splendour. For Braverman, arguably the most sought-after man in Israeli politics, had been widely touted as a likely new face in the breakaway centrist party Ariel Sharon launched on Monday. For the new Labour leader this was a coup indeed.
The second came when Tom Wegner, a member of Peretz’s team, stepped out of his office for a breath of fresh air at around 2pm. Yesterday was the last day before the election that it was possible to join the party, and Wegner noticed, as he surveyed the queues waiting to sign up, a remarkable sight. Among them a devout Israeli Arab Muslim was praying on the mat he had brought for the purpose. Not far away was a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, rocking back and forth as they conducted their own devotions.Yet the remarkable 25,000 people who have joined the party in the past 10 days – including Braverman and his religious new fellow recruits attracted by a notably secular leader – are only one sign of the excitement generated by Peretz’s leadership. Nothing could better illustrate the seriousness of Peretz’s campaign – or the falsity of the persistent gibes about him being an obsolete 1940s socialist – than the recruitment of Braverman, an economic liberal and global networker who turned a sleepy college in southern Israel into a world-class university.

Describing the mood at the meeting of Labour’s central committee when he was elected, Wegner says: “This place had begun to feel like a senior citizens’ home; that was more like a rock concert.” Another are the polls showing a rapid improvement in Labour’s electoral standing.It’s likely that Ariel Sharon’s decision to form a new party was partly triggered by the Peretz threat. Yesterday’s Israeli newspapers all carry pictures of Peretz with his arm draped round the tall figure of Avishay Braverman, the president of the University of the Negev, who had just announced he was joining Labour. Abraham Lincoln said that wherever he found a weed, he’d plant a flower I want to do the same thing.”. Two moments at the Labour Party’s Tel Aviv headquarters on Thursday, one highly publicised and one not publicised at all, help to sum up the volatile new dynamic in the politics of Israel – and perhaps of the Middle East – unleashed by Amir Peretz’s assumption of the leadership a fortnight earlier. “But I’d like to be thought of as someone who made the Church accessible to everybody, particularly young people As someone who brought the fun back. If I can contribute to the wellbeing of this great nation, I’ll be very grateful.

“I’m told they are straight talkers, so we are bound to get on.”He doesn’t want, ultimately, to be remembered only for being the first black Archbishop of York “I can’t jump out my skin – I’m aware of that,” he says. Now he and Margaret – who also works for the Church of England, helping to select future clergy – are exchanging their comfortable home in the leafy suburb of Harborne for the austere medieval palace of Bishopsthorpe. (Their children, Grace and Geoffrey, have both left home.) It’s all a long way from Africa.When he moves to York, his first priority will be to meet people. “I hope to find friends who will help me become the person I am trying to become. I have already written to say, ‘Please let me know when I get things wrong.’ I am looking forward to getting to know the people of Yorkshire.” He grins. We are here to live and celebrate the good news of God.”Sentamu says he will be sorry to leave Birmingham.

He is leaving a job he had expected to do for 10 years after just three. He also seems to have limitless energy, not only working extremely hard, but rising early every day to go to the gym before immersing himself in prayer.At the heart of all he does, he says, is his prayer life. “Everything that I have ever fought for has come out of my deep sense of God,” he says. “I never take up causes because they need to be taken up: I take them up because they have come out of a wrestling with God. Take the Iraq War: I wrestled with that, and came to my conclusions in prayer, so that no amount of persuading was going to change my mind. But we are not here to pursue issues and agendas, however important they might be. He has made a massive effort to reach out to marginalised people, whether or not they are religious.”Sentamu is also well-known for his generosity: he gives away 20 per cent of his income, and entertains generously.