Actually, you’re just like a concentration camp guard. You’re just doing it because you’re paid to, aren’t you?” If you’re Jewish, and live in London, you might dimly recall those words. But if not, here’s a clue. They were spoken to a Jewish reporter a decade ago by the man who today indignantly described himself as having fought a lifelong battle against discrimination – shortly before being suspended from the Labour party for potentially bringing it into disrepute with clumsy references to Hitler.

Ken Livingstone suspended from Labour after Hitler remarks Read more

Rereading the transcript of that 2005 exchange between Ken Livingstone and a hapless Evening Standard reporter today, what takes the breath away isn’t the rather tasteless suggestion from London’s then mayor that anyone working for a paper whose owners he disliked was probably “a German war criminal” in a previous life. It’s that when the reporter explained he was Jewish and was offended by the Nazi reference, Livingstone didn’t stop. He doubled down on the concentration camp stuff, took his spade and kept digging. And he got away with it. There were calls for his resignation, of course, but he got away with it.

He carried on being mayor for another two years, and has carried on ever since being feted by people who would have bayed for the blood of any Tory making racially insensitive remarks to a black reporter. He went on blithely to suggest that Jews have stopped voting Labour because they’re rich, and still didn’t really seem to see what the problem was; but then, he was surrounded by people who didn’t seem to want to see the problem either.

And that’s one explanation for how a politician as naturally gifted as Livingstone could ever think it a good idea to summon Hitler as a witness for the defence, when defending his party against allegations of antisemitism.

Perhaps he has simply lost sight of how it looks, outside the circles – once fringe, now mainstream in the Labour party – in which he moves. You could see today’s extraordinary day of bloodletting – which saw first the suspension of the Labour MP Naz Shah for pre-election Facebook posts suggesting Israel be forcibly transported to the US, and then that of Livingstone for only making matters worse – simply as payback for all the times someone got away with it. Fail to challenge dubious attitudes and they quickly seep into the mainstream.

The ferocity of the backlash against Livingstone from the party is a measure of MPs’ deep frustration and shame

But there is another possible explanation, and that’s the belief found close to many leftwing hearts that they, and they alone, are the good guys – the champions of equality and fairness – and therefore incapable of prejudice. They don’t need to question their assumptions, or take a long hard look in the mirror, because the racists are the other guys.

As Ken explained in injured tones to the BBC’s Martha Kearney today, real racism is when you’re rude to your neighbour’s face in Stoke Newington, which he’d never do. And anyway, racists would hardly be attracted to Labour, would they? To which one could almost hear his colleagues screaming at the radio; well if they weren’t before, mate, they might now.

The ferocity of the backlash against Livingstone from left to right of the party is a measure of MPs’ deep frustration and shame that a party that prides itself on fighting discrimination should have come to this. It’s not about factional infighting any more, rightwingers finding excuses to snipe at Jeremy Corbyn and his Stop the War mates. This is about a party trying desperately to stop itself being dragged into the gutter, and to assert values it once thought people took as read.

There is prejudice in all parties, from the Tory golf club bores who used to mutter that Michael Howard couldn’t be leader because of what was euphemistically called his “background” to the shaven-headed thugs of the far right. But for some time now it’s been clear Labour too had a boil to lance.

There were too many stories piling up; lurid although unproven allegations about Labour students using “Zio” as a routine term of abuse for Jews; a dismal string of councillors and activists peddling anti-Jewish conspiracy theories on social media; prominent Jewish leftwing figures saying they no longer felt comfortable in what the party had become. Ritual sacrifice was required.

But God, it’s depressing that it had to be Shah, on whom so many other women’s hopes were pinned after she famously survived a violent childhood, forced marriage at 15, the jailing of her mother for killing an abusive partner, and then a viciously dirty election campaign in order to reach parliament.

What a dismal way to end a career, over a motley collection of dubious posts shared on Facebook before she was elected; an “#apartheidIsrael” hashtag, some dark-sounding stuff about how the “Jews were rallying”. To be honest, I really didn’t want her to lose the whip any more than Corbyn did.

But there was no alternative, for all the reasons the frontbencher Lisa Nandy gave when she broke ranks to call for the suspension. It can’t be one rule for obscure councillors and activists and another for popular MPs. And besides, the blunt truth is that having under-reacted for so long to this creeping cancer spreading through the party, nothing but radical surgery now will do.

Some will see in this a chilling of debate over the Middle East, a silencing of pro-Palestinian voices in the Labour party. But that’s a mirror image of the eternal rightwing grumble that they’re not “allowed” to talk about immigration any more thanks to political correctness, and about as well founded.

Here’s a clue, for those confused about how to champion Palestinian rights or condemn an oppressive regime without overstepping the line: just treat Israel as you would any other country guilty of human rights abuses.

There’s nothing inherently antisemitic about seeking economic sanctions against Israel, supporting an oppressed minority’s right to self determination, condemning a government, or anything else you’d do if this was Burma.

Naz Shah row: peers accuse Labour of failing to root out antisemitism Read more

But calling for its people to be swept into the sea, or forcibly transplanted somewhere else, or in any other way denying Israel’s right to exist, is crossing a line because that simply doesn’t happen to other countries no matter how oppressive their regime. No other nation state on the planet is constantly asked to prove itself morally worthy merely of being allowed to exist.

We don’t argue that the civilian population of Syria, or 1930s Germany for that matter, should have been forcibly removed from their homes and their nation states obliterated because of abuses committed by governments and condoned by some if not all of their citizens. Activists direct their fire at governments and political movements, people with the power to change. But there’s an uglier name for those who single out and target a race, religion or group of people; who talk about “the Jews” in a way they’d never talk about “the blacks”.

The wider lesson from Labour meanwhile, from what has been a dark and depressing week even by current standards, is that the trust of minorities is not given as of right to progressive parties but must be earned. For too long, Labour hasn’t done enough to deserve it.