A couple of years ago, after I wrote about my childhood experience of living in Liverpool under Derek Hatton’s Trotskyite politics, Neil Kinnock sent me a copy of his book, Thorns and Roses, featuring his famous 1985 Labour conference speech in which he tore into the way Militant was poisoning the party.

The inscription by Lord Kinnock, which he wrote in September 2015, the same month Jeremy Corbyn became leader, reads: “To Jane, who knows about the thorns.” Back in 1985 the-then Labour leader rid his party of those hard-left thorns with some judicious hard pruning. Today Labour’s red rose is crushed by them.

Being a member of the Labour Party, as well as a lifelong Labour voter, has been agony this week. There