I’m no Diane Abbott acolyte – after all, the daft old bint blocked me on Twitter an age ago for mocking her abysmal arithmetic.

So what if she has made a bad point, or if she defines ‘racism’ a little differently to others? Isn’t that what politics is all about? She’s just saying that those whose difference is more pronounced experience prejudice in every encounter because it’s right out there. To her, that is ‘racism’. In her opinion, some groups can occasionally fly under the radar at certain times, but those with dark skin cannot.

Seems a fair enough point, but is she correct with her terminology? Possibly not. How the article can be labelled ‘antisemitic’ adds up only ironically in much the same way as an Abbottesque shadow home affairs statement.

So, why not just challenge her and win the argument?

Well, that’s not how the thought police work. It’s all about crushing alternative voices or cynically exploiting situations to wipe out dissenting voices.

In a similar vein,there are many who define ‘crime’ as ‘any social harm’, which would doubtless raise the hackles of most police officers, particularly those chiefs bent on reducing their reported crime stats.

What happens to these people? They take up academic posts and write books that people scrutinise and pick apart.

And bully for them. They are either on the money, crackpots, or somewhere in between.

They are not however deserving of defenestration just because they hold a different point of view.

The whole sorry saga furthermore shines a light on a Labour leader who can be decisive only when sticking it into the Corbyn left.

And as I have previously outlined, there’s no more vicious method of political weaponisation than to accuse a passionate campaigner of exactly that against which they have spent their whole life fighting. It’s precisely why the Nazi label on Israel is so offensive – and why it’s used in the first place.

We may now be seeing not only the dying breath of a remarkable political career carved out against all the odds, but also that of an opposition party that has lost its political compass.

They need to start getting stuck in on the Tories.