Stephen Pollard

hard-Left stooge. The Disputes Panel handles, among other things, allegations of antiSemitism and sexual harassment against party members.

You don’t have to be a genius to work out why a group that has spawned and defended anti-Semites wants to change the chair of the panel that is charged with investigating anti-Semites.

And the reality of Labour under the Corbynites is a leader who embraces terrorists and praises Britain’s enemies, a shadow chancellor who delights at the idea of lynching a female Conservative MP and a shadow home secretary who says: “Every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us.” And that’s barely scratching the surface.

As if there was any earlier doubt, Monday’s Labour NEC results show that the Left is now totally in control. Which raises a number of profound questions for the moderate Labour MPs who remain.

The first is this. In last year’s general election they justified campaigning for Labour, and thus for Jeremy Corbyn and the hard-Left that runs the party, on the basis that the polls showed there wasn’t the slightest chance of Labour winning. So they didn’t have to face the fact that they are representing a party whose

YOU will recall that that’s just what Dick Taverne did in 1973, calling and winning a by-election in Lincoln in protest at the Left’s domination of his local party. It sounds like a decent attempt at a fightback. But I’m sceptical. Because the one thing we know from the past two and a bit years since Jeremy Corbyn’s election is that while the moderates talk a good game of resistance, when push comes to shove they say and do next to nothing.

Yes, it’s possible that they could develop backbones but, with a tiny number of exceptions, most of them have shown they are spineless. They have stood by and moaned while the Labour Party has been taken over, fearful of putting their heads above the parapet.

One of the exceptions put it to me like this. There are perhaps a dozen moderates prepared to battle for Labour’s future. But for the rest they won’t upset the applecart. They like being MPs and while it lasts they’ll enjoy it. They won’t do anything that might antagonise their new hard-Left masters, either in Westminster or their own constituency.

As a result Labour is everdeeper in the mire and the country ever nearer to falling for the lure of change.

‘Profound questions for the moderate MPs’