A long time ago on a South Bank Show, Melvyn Bragg asked Ian Dury if the worst thing about being disabled was being patronised. No, replied the late and exceedingly great lyricist with a grin, the worst thing about being disabled is being disabled.

So it is, lest anyone be tempted to confuse what follows with a blithe dismissal of the scope of this problem, with Labour and antisemitism. The worst thing about it is the thing itself – the fact that a small but disproportionately loud portion of party members, their ignorant voices amplified by the loud hailers of social media, plainly do not care for the Jews.

Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said Show all 14 1 /14 Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On Israel and Palestine The simple fact in all of this is that Naz made these comments at a time when there was another brutal Israeli attack on the Palestinians; and there’s one stark fact that virtually no one in the British media ever reports, in almost all these conflicts the death toll is usually between 60 and 100 Palestinians killed for every Israeli. Now, any other country doing that would be accused of war crimes but it’s like we have a double standard about the policies of the Israeli government Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On Antisemitism in the Labour Party As I’ve said, I’ve never heard anybody say anything antisemitism-Semitic, but there’s been a very well-orchestrated campaign by the Israel lobby to smear anybody who criticises Israeli policy as antisemitic. I had to put up with 35 years of this Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On Naz Shah It’s completely over-the-top and rude, but who am I to denounce anyone with all of that. It was wrong. I don’t think she is antisemitic, it was incredibly rude but I don’t believe she is an antisemite. When the NEC investigation is finished they'll say it was rude and over the top but they won’t find any evidence that she actually hates Jews. We’ve got to investigate all these charges and the context in which they are made. If she is antisemitic like the other three or four members we’ve found who are antisemitic, she’ll be expelled Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On other alleged antisemites in Labour That is part of the classic antisemitic thing about an ‘international Jewish conspiracy’ – that is the reason we need to have an investigation. I’ve got an open mind. I’ve seen nothing to suggest to me that she is antisemitic. I wouldn’t have supported her if I [thought] she was antisemitic Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On whether what Hitler did was legal, as stated by Naz Shah That’s a statement of fact – Hitler, I’m sure, passed all those laws that allowed him to do that … it’s history … literally, Hitler was completely mad, he killed six million Jews. She’s not saying it’s legal to kill six million Jews: what they were doing in that country allowed them not just to kill six million Jews, kill all the communists, kill all the leftists like me, my father almost died when a Nazi sub sank his boat. I have no sympathy with Hitler Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On another alleged antisemite in Labour No, that is, and that’s why she’s been suspended or expelled. What I’ve said is that in 47 years of the party in all the meetings I’ve been in I’ve never heard anyone say anything antisemitic. There are bound to be in a party of half a million people you’ll have a handful of antisemites, you’ll have a handful of racists. You’ve managed to dig out virtually every antisemitic comment that Labour members have made out of half a million people. I’ve never met any of these people. There’s not a problem. You’re talking about a handful of people in a party of half a million people. Jeremy Corbyn has moved rapidly to deal with them Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On Jeremy Corbyn’s response to the allegations He met with Naz and she agreed she would stand down while the investigation is going on. He called her in to see her. There’s been a huge investigation of virtually everything that anybody put on the internet … many of these people are quite new and recent members of the party that joined in the big influx. 300,000 new people came in Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On his meeting a man accused of antisemitism in London This is the man who called for Muslims around the world to donate blood after the attacks of 9/11 when he came to London I went with him to the Regent’s Park mosque where he said no man should hit a woman and you should not discriminate against homosexuals. So I can’t equate what I heard him say… he made no antisemitic statement while he was here in London. I don’t investigate people. I’ve simply said what I believe to be true which is that Naz was not antisemitic. She was completely over the top, very rude, but that does not make her an antisemite Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On John Mann’s comments He went completely over the top. I was actually doing a radio interview at the time that he was bellowing that I’m a racist antisemite in my ear. I’ve had that with John Mann before a few weeks ago screaming that I was a bigot down the phone. I’m not an apologist for anyone who makes antisemitic statements. What I’m saying is don’t confuse antisemitism with criticism of the Israeli government policy Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On calling a Jewish journalist a “concentration camp guard” whilst Mayor of London I can’t tell if a journalist is Jewish or Catholic or anything. If a journalist is chasing you down the street at nine of clock at night you might be rude to them. Some people might have hit him! He said he was just doing his job. We went all the way to the High Court and the judge opened his judgement by saying ‘I hope no one here is going to suggest that Mr Livingstone is antisemitic’. We won the case Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On claims about Hitler and Zionism I can’t tell if a journalist is Jewish or Catholic or anything. If a journalist is chasing you down the street at nine of clock at night you might be rude to them. Some people might have hit him! He said he was just doing his job. We went all the way to the High Court and the judge opened his judgement by saying ‘I hope no one here is going to suggest that Mr Livingstone is antisemitic’. We won the case Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On John Mann I’d simply say to John Mann go back and check. Is what I say true, or is it not? The BBC, you’ve got a huge team of researchers, it will take just an hour or two to go back and confirm. I was asked a question, I answered it. I have never in 45 years since I won my first election, I have never lied. I have always answered the question Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On raising the issue if Hitler It lays you open to people smearing and lying about you. I’ve always answered the questions put to me and that simple fact is we’ve had a handful of people saying antisemitic things in the Labour Party, they’ve been suspended, some of them are on their way to being expelled, some of them have been expelled already Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On people calling for him to be suspended All my usual critics – but the simple fact is I agree with them; there is no place for antisemitism in the Labour party. For them to suggest I am antisemitic is a bit bizarre considering we worked with Jewish groups and put on exhibitions about the scale of the holocaust, we worked with Jewish groups to tackling the scale of antisemitism back in the 1970s. I’ve always opposed every form of racism whether it’s against black people or Jews. I’m going to stay in the Labour party and continue to fight against all forms of racism and discrimination as I have my entire life

This much we know beyond doubt, as we know that a section of the Tory membership, and all memberships, and indeed of every society on earth, share the prejudice. It is an awful if depressingly unsurprising fact of human existence that some people dislike Jews, just as some dislike black people and Asian people and ginger people and gay people and representatives of every imaginable group which is in some way, in any way, unlike their own.

For Jeremy Corbyn, this is a painful and troublesome condition which with courage and stoicism should, like Dury’s polio, be manageable. That it continues to prove otherwise may be only the second worst thing about antisemitism in Labour, but it is the most serious.

The messaging has been appalling for more than two years, and becomes more so by the week. If an opposition leader can’t handle as trifling and predictable a problem as this, how are undecided voters expected to trust him with the plethora of unforeseeable crises that explode in the prime minister’s face? If he appears paralysed by indecision over a piddling micro-difficulty, how would he cope with macro challenges like social immobility, child poverty and the broken housing market, let alone the aftermath (should it happen) of Brexit?

Yet another chance to close the issue down, or at least begin the process, presents itself. There have been plenty of these since Ken Livingstone’s historically demi-accurate but hugely disquieting portrayal of Hitler as a proto-Zionist in April of 2016. For whatever reasons – innate ditheriness, the shackles of tribal loyalty, the distaste that I and many other Jews share about successive Israeli governments’ treatment of the Palestinians – Corbyn has funked them all.

Now, in the form of one Peter Willsman, he has another. Textually, Willman’s address to Labour’s National Executive Committee, in front of Corbyn himself, was by no means a blatantly antisemitic rant. It wouldn’t satisfy the requirements of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism that Labour has foolishly rejected.

Tonally, however, his bellicose insistence that the problem of antisemitism exists nowhere but in the addled minds of paranoid rabbis, and his identification of those who claim otherwise as Jewish “Trump fanatics”, is disturbing enough for immediate disciplinary action. And here, as always at the more nuanced ends of the racist spectrum, tone is everything.

I absolutely understand, or think I do, Corbyn’s unwillingness to take a hard line. A man of iron principle, he is desperate to avoid what he regards as surrendering to those voices who conflate any and all criticism of Israeli policy with hatred of Jews. These voices are every decibel as deafeningly tribalist as those who depict justified concern about antisemitism as the synthesised outrage of Blairite anti-Corbyn conspirators.

About 15 years ago, Gerald Kaufman, a long-term and staunch supporter of the Jewish state, was manhandled in St John’s Wood synagogue after criticising the actions of its government. Max Hastings, author of books gushing with admiration for Israel and as fervent a Jewophile as I ever met, was attacked as an antisemite for doing the same.

Those who believe they defend Israel by treating its candid friends so despicably are drastically deluded. Nothing in that IHRA definition conflates honest criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and those who do so degrade themselves.

Plotting a course between the hysteria that plagues this argument at both extremes – from the horrors who pepper Jewish MPs with threats of violence on one side; from Margaret Hodge, and the three Jewish newspapers who foresee a Corbyn government as an “existential threat” to British Jewry on the other – isn’t easy. But leadership never is, and in the league table of challenges, sending out the clear message that you simply will not tolerate language which makes members of any minority uneasy and fearful is hardly challenging for a Champions League place.

Yet, somehow, Corbyn has allowed it to become a huge distraction from flaying this catastrophically clueless government alive over Brexit and so much else.

Since there are only about 300,000 Jews in Britain, and a majority of us vote Tory now anyway, the displeasure of the Jewish community is an exceedingly low tariff threat to Labour’s electoral chances. But there are several million goyim in marginal seats whose voting intentions will be shaped by the osmotic impression of which potential prime minister can best be trusted to sort out more colossal problems than this. The ceaseless background screech generated by this ridiculous row – one so preposterous that Boris Johnson saw fit to give Corbyn a kicking over antisemitism while consorting with, the, Lord have mercy, Steve Bannon – can only steer them in one direction.