Not in my name

Most Corbyn supporters are good people. I disagree with them but I don’t mind sharing a party with them. A loud minority, though, are intolerant and vicious. They view people who disagree with them as scum, and treat them as such.

Jeremy himself has repeatedly said that political disputes should avoid personal abuse. His own manner, bar the occasional tetchy interview, is calm and polite. He denounces bigotry and he condemns violence and threats of violence. Good for him.

But his condemnations aren’t working. There are vicious, far-left fanatics — often sexist and anti-Semitic — who are drawn to him. I don’t know whether this is just the nature of the far left, to aggressively exploit any chance to colonise the mainstream, or whether it’s related to Jeremy’s history of publicly showing sympathy for extremists of various kinds, but they are drawn to him.

Their greatest enemy is not the right but the centre-left. And under the cloak of his “kinder, gentler politics” they hurl abuse and intimidation online and at party meetings. Some even hurl bricks in the dead of night.

And, in turn, the worst of his opponents become intemperate too. The temperature rises, and those of us who want to be able to disagree without making mortal enemies find politics more and more inhospitable.

I believe in his good intentions, but Jeremy has, unwittingly, brought more hatred into the Labour party than I’ve ever known. He has also demonstrably failed to stop it. Whether you think this is because his efforts have been inadequate or simply that the results haven’t been successful, the more extreme of his supporters still thrive.

I would like you to stop for a moment and imagine yourself in his shoes. Think about how you would feel, what you would do, if thugs and bigots were stirring up hatred in your name.

Wouldn’t you be mortified? Wouldn’t you make it your top priority to disown these people, to damn them and do everything you could to drive them out of your party — a party that, whatever its flaws, you believe to be the best hope for good government in this country? Wouldn’t you be determined, on pragmatic grounds of saving your reputation as well as on moral grounds, to stop them?

I think you would.

But what if you couldn’t? What if it proved beyond you to shake off the bigots that were using your leadership as a platform from which to spew their venom? I think you might accept, sadly, that there was only one way to stop them: remove the platform.

Jeremy hoped to create a new kind of politics — and, unfortunately, he has. It’s a more poisonous kind. This is the last thing he could have wanted, but there it is. And without much more drastic action than he has managed so far, it’s only going to get worse. The “nasty party” label will come to be Labour’s. Labour will sink into disrepute, and the Tories will steam ahead, and that will be the new politics.

We needn’t blame Jeremy for the poison these fanatics peddle in his name to recognise that he has unique power to stop it, by taking his name out of their reach. I would like him to use that power, even though it will be hard and painful for him, and resign.

And if he can’t bring himself to resign, then I hope the many good people in our party, whether we voted for him last year or not, will think hard. Think about whether the poison is just an inconvenient side issue or something that threatens to corrupt his whole project. Think about whether the poison is really worth the slim chance of getting the project to work.

Think about whether the poison will seep through his name and into ours.