KEIR STARMER’S suspension of Jeremy Corbyn for daring to tell the truth that Labour’s anti-Semitism problem was exaggerated for partisan political purposes reveals that his reputation for a forensically sharp legal mind is a confection. Either that or he is an unprincipled schemer.

The issue here is not the present LOTO’s maladroitly managed disciplining of Corbyn: Starmer and official Labour’s crude disregard for due process — and the brazen indifference to the EHRC’s own prescription for how such matters should be dealt with — were all priced into the political costs that this exemplary action entails.

Rather than a mild-mannered, non-confrontational leader who goes along with his nominal opposite number in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, Starmer is suddenly transformed into an avenging angel — a resolute crusader consumed with righteous fury not at a government that has hastened the deaths of as yet uncounted thousands — but at his predecessor who is to be cast into the darkness.