The chilling reality of Corbyn’s hard Left

THIS was the week Labour took an eightpoint lead in the polls, surging ahead of the Tories for the first time since the EU referendum. It was also the week Jeremy Corbyn’s hate-filled stormtroopers set about purging the party of those who deviate from red-blooded Marxist Socialism.

In Liverpool, MP Luciana Berger, fresh from substantially increasing her majority, was handed an ultimatum after a mass takeover of her Wavertree party by the hard Left: apologise now for your past criticisms of Mr Corbyn... or face the axe.

It also emerged that Miss Berger, now on maternity leave, has been bombarded with anti-semitic abuse from the Labour leader’s Hamas and Hezbollah-backing supporters.

Meanwhile at Westminster, after Sheryll Murray’s chilling revelations of swastikas carved into her election posters and a protester urinating in her office doorway, more women Tory MPs came forward with accounts of intimidation.

Among them was Sarah Wollaston, who told how a masked man painted her office with insulting graffiti in an attempt, as she put it, to ‘force me out of town’.

In South Tyneside, the local Momentum group of Corbynite agitators also apparently published – and then renounced – a hit list of 49 prominent Labour MPs whom they wanted to replace with fellow zealots.

Nor is the thuggery directed only at politicians, Labour and Tory, who disagree with Mr Corbyn’s half-baked Marxism.

In the capital, agitators purporting to represent Grenfell Tower fire victims turned their hatred on Sir Martin MooreBick, the palpably decent and eminently qualified retired judge leading the inquiry.

As he said: ‘I can’t do more than assure you that I know what it is to be impartial. I’ve been a judge for 20 years, and I give you my word that I will look into this matter to the very best of my ability and find the facts as I see them from the evidence.’

Yet in the eyes of his attackers, Sir Martin’s decades of public service merely damn him as a member of the white, male Establishment. The last thing they want is impartiality. For them, nothing less than a political show trial will do.

Meanwhile, it emerges that the threat of vandalism and violence – which has already delayed Donald Trump’s state visit – may prevent the erection in Parliament Square of a statue of the nation’s saviour, Margaret Thatcher. Though the Iron Lady might have had reservations about the monument’s ugliness, how she would have disdained such pusillanimity.

Yes, this country has a long history of protests by often misguided idealists. But what we are witnessing today is far more sinister: a concerted drive by the hard Left to seize power by intimidation and unrest.

Worse, these ugly tactics appear to have the tacit support of the Opposition leader, catapulted from Labour’s extremist fringe to centre stage by the rent-a-vote electoral system introduced by Ed Miliband.

Indeed, Mr Corbyn has said not a word to distance himself from the thugs and bigots plotting to install him in No 10 – while Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has actively encouraged them.

Which brings us to the mystery of how such extremists can be making headway in the (admittedly unreliable) polls.

Part of the explanation is the BBC’s virtual news blackout on the manoeuvrings of the hard Left, just as during the election the Corporation drew a veil over the Labour leadership’s links with terrorists.

But the fault also lies with widespread ignorance, especially among the young, of the consequences of Mr Corbyn’s brand of Socialism. The fact is that everywhere it has been put to the test, from Albania to Venezuela, it has caused nothing but poverty, misery and tyranny.

If Britain is to be spared a similar fate, voters – particularly the young – should start reading history.