Jeremy is driven by social justice. When the Human Rights Bill was going through Parliament, he sat through all the stages. He wanted to understand what the Human Rights Act would mean. He’s backed it ever since. Jeremy champions human rights. His Labour Party opposed the ditching of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as part of UK law post Brexit. He understands that when politics fail, if nothing else, human rights must be there as a last resort.

Why then are his approval ratings so low? Ironically, it is his willingness to give people a voice that makes him an outsider.

Jeremy’s gift is to give people a voice. That gift to the homeless and isolated, he has also given to others. This includes groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. No doubt what interested him originally was their struggle against injustice and inequality, but Hamas and Hezbollah are also peddlers of hate. That hate has many targets, principally Jews. Dressing up their anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism doesn’t make the anti-Semitism any less real. They take aim at Jews. The stereotyping of Jewish people by those associated with and supportive of Hamas and Hezbollah is repellent. No doubt others that Jeremy gives a voice to may have equally odious views, but the opinions of an older lady in a food bank are not newsworthy. Jeremy does not need to challenge her.

But Hamas and Hezbollah are different. Their anti-Semitism infects. The garbage that has come from the mouths of some Corbyn supporters within the Labour Party would not be out of place at meetings of a Hamas local council group. By giving Hamas and Hezbollah a voice, permission is given to express their views. That is the danger of unbridled free speech. It also suggests something inconsistent about Corbyn’s commitment to human rights. He respects them at home, but can they be overlooked abroad? The Hamas administration in Gaza, for example, presides over some of the worst human rights atrocities anywhere in the world. Hezbollah is not much better.

And what of LGBT equality? Others took up the cudgel in the UK and made that equality happen here, but the LGBT community are indebted to Jeremy. I can still recall my gratitude in those dark years that someone would speak up for us. But how can that be reconciled with his giving a voice to Hamas? It is one of the most gay-hating organisations. They cause untold misery to the lives of LGBT Palestinians. They’re happy to retain the criminal laws targeting LGBT people bequeathed by the British when Palestine was a colony. The West Bank got rid of theirs. Jeremy also expressed no criticism of Fidel Castro’s anti-gay policies, which even included camps for people with AIDS.

Back in 2017, Jeremy gave a knighthood to a Labour MP, David Crausby. Crausby’s a union man. No doubt he’s hardworking. He’s also got an appalling record on LGBT equality, not only voting against equal marriage and adoption rights, but voting to retain the infamous section 28, which forbade local government from promoting or supporting LGBT rights. I am still bewildered by Corbyn’s honouring of this man.