SOME demonstrations have a significance way beyond their numbers.

Thus, a few hundred far-rightists assembling menacingly outside the Labour Party conference may not seem very significant. They posed no serious menace to those within.

Yet it has not happened before, meaning it meets the journalism school definition of news.

For all the decades this reporter has attended Labour conferences, demonstrations outside have been organised by those challenging the party from the left on one issue or another.

New times. Another non-momentous but indicative incident: walking to get a train late at night in a well-favoured part of north London, five young men proceeded along the parallel pavement.

They were chanting “Oh, Tommy, Tommy” in honour of their leader before turning still darker, with one incanting “the Jews are bad, we’ve got to deal with the Jews” ending up with a rousing “we love Adolf Hitler.”

In Portsmouth, a meeting to launch Your Party locally was beset by a mob of around 40 fascists.

And the former Tory and Ukip MP Douglas Carswell, hitherto concerned to present himself as not remotely racist, recently tweeted “from Epping to the sea, make England Abdul free,” which may be the most overtly hateful slogan used by a supposedly mainstream politician since Peter Griffiths won Smethwick for the Tories in 1964. If you don’t know what his cry was, look it up.

None of these things would have happened a few months ago. By every metric, the far right is emboldened, flexing its muscles publicly, breaking previous taboos and indulging views it would have striven to conceal not very long ago.

This is the work of many hands and, despite the banality of the sloganising cited above, no little political sophistication.

For example, in the far-right crowd in Liverpool, Sarah and Mandy from Aberystwyth disclaimed any idea of being right wing at all. They were upset about digital ID cards, an opinion shared by much of the left.

Yet they could not be induced to see any connection between their cause and the peaceful Defend Our Juries protesters being arrested a few yards away. It was axiomatic for them that Palestinian supporters were the violent “others.”

Mandy and Sarah had been to London for the huge Robinson protest, at which point digital ID was not an issue, so they were clearly selling themselves short.

But they dismissed the notion of the new scheme being anything to do with migrant control as Keir Starmer avers, pointing out accurately that it was first promoted by Tony Blair, who was — right again — a war criminal.

Julie from Liverpool claimed she was only there to voice support for farmers over inheritance tax, although to the naked eye, the protest seemed to include about as many farmers as you would expect to see at Albert Dock at lunchtime.

Tax arrangements for farmers are not, in any case, an inherently far-right issue, although farming can invoke a certain blood-and-soil mistiness in those so inclined.

But Julie was glad that others were there too, raising other issues. And what issues! The most popular chant concerned neither farming nor ID. It was “Keir Starmer’s a wanker,” which invoked little dissent from the Defend Our Juries protesters and others nearby.

Among the apparent leaders of the enterprise was a man who would not give his name, no doubt feeling that the sulphurous air of menace he exuded was sufficient. His claim was that this was the Peasants’ Revolt all over again.

Your reporters’ nerve failed at the point at which it could have been pointed out that said revolt did not end well for the peasants, most especially their leaders.

Later, he berated a line of police separating him from the pro-Palestine contingent as “doing the dirty work of a communist government,” before urging them to “stand with us.”

Later still, he could be seen advancing towards a public house in the company of a woman carrying a bundle of The Light newspapers, a far-right, anti-semitic conspiracist journal.

Some argue that there are decent people involved here, not all fascists, etc. At one level, this is merely wrong — it is just that some of the far-right are not necessarily self-aware to that extent.

They deny a racism they share because of a fear of doing something socially unacceptable. Even Robinson is reluctant to embrace the designation. And the boundaries of acceptability are now moving fast in any case.

At another level, it is irrelevant. This is led by the far right, and if you rally behind them, like Mandy and Julie, you are doing the Devil’s work even if you count yourself as part of an angelic host.

The issues they lash together include some, like the ID cards, on which they share common grounds with those they wish to destroy and others, as in protecting farmers, which have broad popularity. They knit together apparently disconnected matters in a stew of discontent.

Their stated enemies, like the ghoulish Blair, now to be disinterred for a gig as colonial governor of suffering Gaza, are indeed the enemies of all decent people.

Yet this is a force which would destroy all freedoms for those that disagree, suppress the labour movement, annihilate those who first branded Blair as the criminal that he is, while leaving the real authors of our misfortunes in undisturbed enjoyment of their riches.

Its enablers are numerous, particularly among those who anticipate marshalling its energy for their own advantage. Step forward, Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick, the latter leading the Tory Party closer to fascism than it has ever been.

Hat tip too to the pundits and commentators in the Telegraph, Spectator and beyond, now comfortable in discarding the pretences, the covering phrases, which once of necessity were required to mask their support for the most reactionary authoritarian measures.

And the Starmer government too, which has left the political field open to the far right for a year and more by practising a Trappist silence on its evident racism, while embarking on an authoritarian agenda of its own.

Why could the fascists in Liverpool urge the police to arrest the pro-Palestine protesters? Only because the Starmer government has criminalised the latter.

The need to enthuse his own party and stop the haemorrhaging of votes to others to Labour’s left has now led the Prime Minister to find his voice and finally condemn some of Reform’s policies as racist, while hedging even that with numerous qualifications.

Will this turnabout assist? It is hard to see when Starmer himself plumbs fathomless depths of unpopularity, and he seems more genuinely agitated by Andy Burnham.

And who can tell where Starmer’s heart really lies anyway? He does not support fascism obviously, although a little authoritarianism — maybe quite a bit — is to his taste, and he is not averse to fishing in nativist waters.

But anti-fascism does not float his boat, compared to other matters. We should all be fortunate enough to have someone who speaks about us the way the premier does about his fiscal rules.

Fascism will not be beat by prioritising the hedge funds and speculators. If Labour really wants to join an anti-fascist front, it should change the Prime Minister and Chancellor without delay.

If not Andy Burnham, who could take the prize?

WOULD Burnham, bringing death and bane, indeed advance on Dunsinane, or at least Downing Street?

No question was being debated as hotly in Liverpool this week.

Starmer, in blood stepped in so far that returning were as tedious as to go o’er, is fighting back furiously at his rival, invoking the Truss trauma to confine the “king of the north” to his purported realm.

But it seems that the mayor is not for turning. He has maintained a spirited criticism of both Starmer’s policies and his party regime in spite of the heavy return of fire from an infuriated No 10.

Yet Burnham is presently in no position to strike, lacking the prerequisite of a Commons seat. His very public campaign for the top job has likely made finding one the harder, since it gives the Labour right the excuse they need to wield veto power on any by-election ambitions.

The deputy leadership race, pitting Burnham ally Lucy Powell, recently exiled from the Cabinet, against Starmer trustie Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, seemed to attract less attention.

Yet if Powell wins the prize, will she not herself be better placed than her soi-disant mentor? Surely few deputy leaders have not aspired to remove the first word from their title.

Powell has little of Burnham’s electoral appeal. But when you’re drowning, anything can look like a lifebelt. And Labour is rather shame-faced that it has never chosen a female leader yet…