Dame Margaret Hodge (Labour MP for the Barking constituency in East London) has just gone beyond her insult, widely reported, that Corbyn was a 'fucking anti-semite' and a racist. She has now decided that the disciplinary procedure of the Labour Party, which was invoked following her public statement about Labour's leader, is comparable to Nazi Germany. Being investigated by the party after her confrontation with Corbyn she said to SKY news that it had made her feel 'like a Jew in Germany in the 1930s.' In fact the Labour Party investigation had been dropped before Dame Margaret made her latest comments.
What is this?
Even if you agree with Corbyn's view that the Labour Party has a small but serious anti-semitic problem, Dame Margaret's view of her world has become more and more bizarre. Whatever might be thought of the various bodies of the Labour Party the idea that they echo Nazi Germany is truly fantastical. Dame Margaret has not only described (part?) of the Labour Party as fascist, she is placing herself as a Jewish victim of fascism. Perhaps her own remarks regarding her own 'victimhood' shed light on how she is thinking;
'On the day that I heard they were going to discipline me and possibly suspend me, I kept thinking: what did it feel to be a Jew in Germany in the 1930s. It felt almost as if they were coming for me.'
Dame Margaret's self-identification with Jews in Nazi Germany maybe touching but it is a dangerous error. The comparison she makes does not show how monstrous and murderous the Labour Party Committees are, rather it belittles the violence and terror created by the Nazis.
More
Now Labour MP Chuka Umunna has decided that the Labour Party is 'institutionally racist.' (14 August.) He said
'The Macpherson Report defined institutional racism as 'the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin.'
'It said this 'can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.'
'Based on its actions (or failure to act), it is beyond doubt that Labour, as an institution, meets these criteria insofar as the Jewish community is concerned – something which should shame every member of our party.'
Macpherson and his Enquiry spent years studying huge amounts of evidence about why the Police, as an organisation, had failed to carry out their duties when faced with the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Umunna does not in any way describe, define, detail or explain the 'collective failure of an organisation', in this case the whole Labour Party, in its 'service to people because' they are Jewish. He undoubtedly wants to scare the Jewish community in Britain away from Corbyn becoming the next Prime Minister. And we could be quite sure that should Umunna take the leadership of the Labour Party the 'institutional anti-semitism of the Labour Party' would apparently dissolve like snow in the summer sun. Again Umunna does not describe the reality of the Labour Party relationship with the UK's Jewish population as a whole, despite his scare tactics, but he does end up diminuishing the weight and significance of Macpherson judgement.
What next?
These wilder and wilder assertions need to be dealt with as they turn the Party into a public laughing/weeping stock. In fact they have to be a turning point for Corbyn's Labour. If nothing else they prevent attention being focused on the most serious racist development in society, in the block being built by the remnants of UKIP, the Alt Right, all headed up by the Tory Party's future candidate for Prime Minister. Enough is enough. It is clearer and clearer that some Labour MPs prefer a continuing Tory government to a Labour Party led by Corbyn. But Labour needs to reorganise away from these MPs and re-centre itself in the battle to get the Tories out.
The leadership of the Party now need to act politically, starting with a statement that the Party is dealing successfully with the small number of members and supporters who expressed anti-semitic views, that the focus of the Party will now be turned on to the deeply serious racist developments in the fringes of the Tory Party, that any future internal tirades by Labour MPs, claiming that the Party and its leadership is anti-semitic, will be rejected without response or argument but will be raised in the MP's constituencies, and that the coming Labour Conference will put a resolution to the vote on these steps.