Whatever interpretation is placed on this week’s events surrounding Jeremy Corbyn, one fact is clear: a disciplinary panel of Labour’s National Executive Committee decided that it is acceptable for party members to say that antisemitism has been “dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media”.
In other words, that the party rejects the very basis of last month’s Equality and Human Rights Council report. When the full NEC next meets, it will either uphold or overturn Mr Corbyn’s reinstatement.
Should it uphold it, it will quite literally make the party institutionally antisemitic. In lifting his suspension, the party has, in effect, chosen to support Mr Corbyn rather than its Jewish members.
This is the prism through which Labour must now be viewed. And it is the context in which Sir Keir Starmer’s decision not to resinstate the whip to Mr Corbyn has to be understood.
