Corbyn's crony: How Shami Chakrabarti will look when she takes her place in the Lords

I wonder how Shami Chakrabarti will feel when those ermine robes she so covets first slip around her shoulders. I’m told they are a little heavy. Her first fitting will probably be in the changing rooms at Ede & Ravenscroft, on Chancery Lane.

Established in 1689, it claims to be the oldest tailor in London and boasts on its website that it provides ‘meticulously maintained, refurbished and altered, ceremonial robes’ made from ‘scarlet superfine faced cloth, a durable tightly woven wool fabric, finely trimmed with three-inch wide bars, and two-inch wide gold oak leaf lace’.

If the former director of human rights group Liberty wants her own coat of arms she will need to contact the College of Arms on Queen Victoria Street. Its specialist scriveners and heraldic artists have been plying their trade since the late 1400s, though the fees can be a bit high – £5,000 is the going rate, I hear.

We should have known, of course. From her bizarre performance at the release of ‘The Shami Chakrabarti Report’ – note the proprietorial title – where she persistently blocked journalists’ questions about the inquiry set up in the wake of a string of high-profile anti-Semitic incidents in the Labour Party, and referred to Jeremy Corbyn in that deferential and slightly sinister way as ‘The Leader’. Yes, we should have detected the whiff of impropriety in the air. Actually, not the whiff, but the foul stench.

Then, of course, there was Chakrabarti’s surreal follow-up appearance at the Home Affairs select committee. It wasn’t supposed to be her appearance, it was supposed to be The Leader’s. But she made sure she got noticed, ostentatiously slipping notes to Corbyn in an attempt to massage his answers, until chairman Keith Vaz put a stop to it.

And then there was the TV interview, when she was asked if she would ever be prepared to accept a peerage. ‘Goodness me,’ she said, a picture of bemused innocence. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ But she did know. Because she had already accepted one. The peerage offered to her by Jeremy Corbyn.

In the hours immediately after what was dubbed the ‘Whitewash for Peerages’ scandal, the Corbynite conspiracy theorists and liberal intelligentsia began to mobilise.

It was just another attempt to smear The Leader. OK, the timing may a little bit unfortunate. But Shami Chakrabarti was a woman of unimpeachable integrity. And just look at what David Cameron and his cronies were up to.

Which is what the Corbynites and the liberal intelligentsia always do when one of their own is threatened. Demean, diminish, dissemble, deflect.

Nothing Corbyn has done since he became leader – the bullying, the hypocrisy, the incompetence, the venality – tops the Chakrabarti affair. And that’s because bullying, hypocrisy, incompetence and venality go to the heart of the Chakrabarti affair.

Think of how this whole disgusting saga began. With the harassment and alienation not just of individual Labour Party members, but of an entire race of them. Corbyn, his closest supporters, his MPs, grassroots members of his party – all implicated in everything from direct anti-Semitism, through Nazi apologism to cosying up to anti-Jewish terrorists such as Hamas. Then think of this pious pledge given by Corbyn during last year’s leadership contest – ‘Labour will certainly not nominate new peers for the Lords, which risks undermining its legitimacy.’

I’m told that well before the Chakrabarti inquiry was completed, Labour officials were being openly told that Corbyn intended to go back on his pledge not to nominate new peers

And look at where we stand today. With the author of a report that sold its soul in the space of the opening eight words – ‘The Labour Party is not over-run by anti-Semitism’ – sizing up her space amidst the scarlet benches.

Having spoken to Labour MPs and insiders, it appears to be an even more sordid tale than has been reported. I’m told that well before the Chakrabarti inquiry was completed, Labour officials were being openly told that Corbyn intended to go back on his pledge not to nominate new peers.

Two names were circulated – Martha Osamor, a long-standing Labour activist, and Chakrabarti. Then, when he realised Cameron would be producing a resignation honours list, he asked his staff to see how he could get Chakrabarti’s name added to it.

To listen to some of her defenders, you would think Chakrabarti was some innocent dupe who had just rolled into Westminster on the back of a turnip truck

When he was told it was traditionally used by the outgoing PM to reward their own advisers and supporters, he asked who he needed to lobby in Downing Street to get the chairman of his ‘independent’ inquiry added to the list.

He was told to contact Cameron’s outgoing chief of staff Ed Llewellyn. A former Downing Street aide confirmed to me that Corbyn’s office then contacted No 10 to lobby actively for Chakrabarti’s inclusion, with Cameron finally agreeing to the request. Having secured Chakrabarti’s place on the list, Corbyn then took to the airwaves to attack Cameron for his cronyism.

It’s worth underlining again the full extent of Corbyn’s duplicity. He pledged not to nominate any new peers. He did. He pledged his inquiry into anti-Semitism would be independent. It was not.

He attacked Cameron for cronyism for producing a resignation honours list. Yet he had lobbied for his own crony to appear on the list. He told journalists that Chakrabarti was ‘fiercely independent’. But she wasn’t, and he knew she wasn’t. Because if she had been, she would have turned down his offer of a peerage out of hand.

But Corbyn is not alone in his duplicity. To listen to some of her defenders, you would think Chakrabarti was some innocent dupe who had just rolled into Westminster on the back of a turnip truck. Instead of what she is, which is just another sanctimonious, self-righteous, Left-wing moraliser who adopts ‘do as I say, not as I do’ as their rallying cry.

People in the Jewish community trusted Chakrabarti. Despite everything – the intimidation, the mockery, the shameless cover-up of a previous inquiry into anti-Semitism – they still had faith in her to bear honest witness to what it means to be a Jew in Corbyn’s Labour Party. And she betrayed them. And in the process, she betrayed herself.

She knew full well, as Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis (pictured) rightly said, that ‘in accepting this peerage, the credibility of her report lies in tatters’

But Chakrabarti did something much worse. On the Guardian website is an interview she gave to the paper in April. She felt she was on safe ground. So she began to showboat. Asked if, during her time lobbying against Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s anti-terror legislation, they had attempted to ‘woo’ her, she confirmed they had.

‘It’s not flattering if at times there’s a suggestion that you would take various honours or jobs or whatever it is in exchange for your silence over things you really care about,’ she declared solemnly.

And that is Chakrabarti’s real crime. Not that she deliberately doctored her report. Or amended it at the behest of her new ermine-touting sugar-daddy Jeremy Corbyn. It’s that she didn’t care.

She knew full well, as Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis rightly said, that ‘in accepting this peerage, the credibility of her report lies in tatters’. Or as Labour Friends of Israel director Jennifer Gerber observed, her nomination ‘clearly undermines the independence of her inquiry and raises further questions about the seriousness of [Corbyn’s] commitment to ridding the Labour Party of the scourge of anti-Semitism’.

But she didn’t care. Or at least, when set next to the opportunity to wear those beautiful robes, and stand up to address that magnificent chamber, she didn’t care enough.

But there is one good thing to come out of it all. Shami Chakrabarti will now be what she has always wanted to be – an icon. An icon for Corbynism. Every time she rises in the House of Lords, every time she speaks, every time her face appears nodding sagely during one of their lordships’ debates – people will remember. How she got there. Why she got there. Who got her there.

All the bullying, all the hypocrisy, all the incompetence, all the venality – Shami Chakrabarti is about to become the poster girl for this whole sordid, squalid period in Labour’s history. ‘She deserves her place in the Lords,’ one of her defenders insisted last week.