UK Edition
You may or may not have heard of Luciana Berger. She's the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, one of the safest Labour seats in the country.
This year's general election was called a few weeks after she gave birth to her first child. Another person might have looked at the 20,000+ majority, considered the likelihood of a challenger taking the seat, and decided, so soon after giving birth, to keep campaigning to an absolute minimum. But Ms Berger didn't take anything for granted. She went campaigning, along with her six-week old baby.
She won the seat, of course. But having won that fight, she is now faced with another. Yesterday, Momentum took over control of Ms Berger's constituency Labour Party (CLP), and immediately started issuing not-so-subtle threats. They demanded that she apologise to Jeremy Corbyn – a particularly grotesque piece of theatre designed to do nothing other than humiliate.
They said she needed "to get on board quite quickly now".
"She will now have to sit round the table with us the next time she wants to vote for bombing in Syria or to pass a no confidence motion in the leader of the party – she will have to be answerable to us."
In other words, power is not in the hands of the democratically elected member of parliament for the area, but a local board of hard-left goons. The implication was clear - if Ms Berger does not comply, she is likely to get deselected.
Ms Berger happens to be Jewish and Zionist, supporting the right of the Jewish people to have a state in their ancestral homeland – while also supporting the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.
Louise Ellman is a Labour MP in a neighbouring constituency. She is also Jewish, as well as being a supporter of the right of the state of Israel to exist. She has experienced some loathsome antisemitism as a result of this – from hard-left members of her local party. Mrs Ellman spoke briefly at a Jewish event in London a couple of weeks ago, where she said she hoped the matter would be cleared up soon. Her tone did not inspire confidence that this would be the case.
I am reluctant to point to the Judaism of both of these MPs as a common denominator in far-left's hounding of them. But it seems clear that with MPs like these, the far-left's well documented record of sexism combines with its extreme anti-Zionism to produce a profoundly malevolent effect. Ruth Smeeth is another example. Jewish, a proud anti-fascist and devoted Labour member, she left the launch of the party's inquiry into "antisemitism and other forms of racism" in tears, after a far-left activist accused her of conspiring with The Telegraph. Mr Corbyn did nothing to stop the events unfolding before his eyes. He was later caught on camera apologising – to the far-left activist in question. Ms Smeeth was then subjected to a torrent of online abuse from Corbyn supporters.
What will we see from other Labour MPs? An empty expression or two of "solidarity", most likely. But they will do nothing. After all, they did nothing to stop Reg Freeson's de-selection.
If you're below a certain age, chances are you've never heard of Reg Freeson. But you should – because it might give you some sort of indication of what's in store for Labour now.
He was an outspoken anti-fascist, editing Searchlight, the anti-fascist magazine, for a three year period in the Sixties. He was also a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, one of a handful of Labour MPs who took part in the first Aldermarston anti-nuclear weapons march. He was a vocal critic of the Korean and Vietnam wars, and a strong supporter of Irish nationalism.
He was also a proud Jew and a devoted Zionist.
But then, in the mid-1980s, Ken Livingstone decided that he wanted Reg Freeson's seat of Brent East. In a fight referred to by the Guardian in Mr Freeson's obituary as a "political murder", Freeson was deselected after the far-left took over his CLP – with Livingstone subsequently chosen to be Labour candidate for the seat.
Labour MPs did nothing to stop that then. It seems likely that they would do nothing to try and stop a similar effort aimed at either Ms Berger, Mrs Ellman or Ms Smeeth now.
One can only hope that, seeing colleagues threatened with de-selection and suspecting similar threats might be made against them before long, Labour MPs will decide that they have nothing left to lose and finally renounce the whip of a party which has turned itself back into a haven for far-left cranks, conspiracy theorists and bigots of every stripe.
Labour's hard Left has deselected Jewish MPs before. Will the party respond this time?