COMMENT

EVER since the election, all we have heard from the BBC is how deeply divided the Tories are over Brexit. But as last night’s Commons vote made crystal clear, it is Labour where the great chasms truly lie.

It simply beggars belief that Mr Corbyn had to order his MPs to abstain on a vote to keep Britain in the single market – despite the party’s manifesto promising to respect the referendum result. Yet nearly 50 Blairite MPs could not even manage that and defied their leadership. With party discipline in ruins, three shadow ministers were sacked and another quit.

What an unholy shambles!

They are the despicable actions of the hate mob.

Swastikas and four-letter insults daubed on campaign posters… Vicious online posts saying ‘Burn the witch’… Internet trolls calling for her to be stabbed…

As we reported yesterday, Tory MP Sheryll Murray was so worried by the torrent of vitriol she endured during the election campaign, she was forced to close her constituency office and cancel a hustings.

Nor was she alone. Indeed, it is slowly becoming apparent that across the country Left-wing activists attempted to intimidate and silence large numbers of Conservative candidates. And it didn’t stop on polling day. Indeed, Cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom warned yesterday that Tory MPs are still ‘scared for their safety’.

Inevitably, the abuse was at its worst on the lawless social media sites Facebook and Twitter, as Guy Adams’ disturbing investigation in Saturday’s Mail showed.

Tory candidate Byron Davies, who lost his Gower seat, endured not only obscene messages but a stream of fake news stories claiming entirely falsely that he was under investigation for electoral fraud and had fiddled his expenses.

Another posting – which went viral within minutes – used a made-up quote to slur Theresa May, claiming she had criticised lesbians while a councillor in the 1980s. Labour activists also spread a mocked-up poster that suggested the Tories intended to privatise the NhS and charge every family thousands for health insurance.

It is no surprise the worst abuse was targeted at women. The same hard-Left activists who idolise Jeremy Corbyn were responsible – during his leadership reelection campaign last year – for death and rape threats against women Labour MPs.

They are also the same Labour shock troops who stand outside Conservative conference, spitting, throwing eggs and screaming ‘Tory scum’. (Mild behaviour, incidentally, compared to the foul and hateful language apparently used by Channel 4’s Jon ‘F*** the Tories’ Snow).

Truly, with the march of the fascist Left and their politics of bigotry and hatred, as Dominic Sandbrook describes on the opposite page, we live in chilling times.