My sympathy for a Corbynista

SOMETIMES light shines into a tiny corner of the world and you see something which wholly upsets the conventional view of things.

I was approached by a Jeremy Corbyn supporter, Jenny Manson. Jenny, a Jew, is a retired tax inspector in her 70s who lives in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Her mother narrowly escaped an antisemitic massacre in what is now Ukraine in 1917.

I disagree with her about almost everything. For some years she has been facing accusations of antisemitism because of her defence of Mr Corbyn. She is slight, humorous, quiet and friendly.

In a new and extraordinary TV documentary on Al Jazeera (which has its own interest in the subject of Israel), she plays a telephone message left for her, as a result of political attacks on her. Part of it runs ‘You **** ing Nazi bitch, you should burn in the gas oven, you stinking Nazi swine’. The culprit has since apologised and accepted a police caution. But is this what politics has come to?