Keir Starmer used to be our MP and I have always had a soft spot for the blinking dafty ever since I wrote to him at the height of the antisemitic triumphalism of the Corbyn era. I warned him of the strength of feeling in our corner of north London, and suggested he be careful if he planned to come canvassing down our mews. Our elderly Jewish neighbour, like Starmer a keen Arsenal man, had put me on standby to run any Labour activists up the hill to Royal Free A&E should they take their chances by knocking on his front-door.

Pretty much everything is going the way of Labour’s new intake of mulish left-wing backbenchers

To his credit, Starmer replied to my email with more than boilerplate. He said he knew Labour had a big Jewish problem and that he was determined to sort it out, and even suggested we meet to discuss the matter over coffee. I rather churlishly put him off, for somehow I just couldn’t quite face sitting down with him for 45 minutes. Participants in focus groups who are asked which politician they would like to go for a pint with will know what I mean.

Now we know that Starmer’s determination to purge the party of Corbynite antisemitism was really part of the grand plan of that master tactician Morgan McSweeney to make Labour electable. McSweeney had seized upon Starmer as a handy empty vessel into which could be poured grown-up priorities, such as Stability, Competence, and Growth. First, Corbynism had to be discredited in all its manifestations, then Labour would be electable again after the May-Boris-Truss nightmare.

Starmer just about concealed his political cluelessness through the zombie general election campaign of 2024, crafted around a Labour manifesto that........

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