SINCE being first elected in 2017, Portsmouth South MP Stephen Morgan has shown little tolerance for those who disagree with or challenge him.

On and off for more than a year, pro-Palestine activists were gathering outside his constituency office calling for Morgan, a member of Labour Friends of Israel who received £1,700 from that group and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2018, to take a more ethical stand on Gaza.

In a December 2023 protest, campaigners stuck pictures of Gazans killed by the IDF on the office’s front window, about which the MP complained to local newspaper The News.

He raged about the “defacing” of his premises and the “intimidation and abuse” that his staff had allegedly endured. But the quiet gathering of 20-odd, which included OAPs and churchgoers, did nothing more intimidatory or abusive than hold handmade signs politely calling for Morgan to support a ceasefire.

On January 1 this year, a silent protest of even fewer people was ended abruptly by police who arrested a man for holding a sign reading: “Palestine Action are not terrorists.”

Belatedly realising that this did not amount to support for Palestine Action — as eccentrically now proscribed by anti-terror legislation — the police released the man without charge a couple of hours later without even caring to take down his name.

Other activists that day voiced concerns about whether this was the best use of austerity-reduced police time and resources given that knife and drug crime remain local scourges.

They also contrasted the heavy-handed approach of the police to this protest with the softer touch shown towards far-right demonstrators outside a local hotel housing refugees, where hate speech and the throwing of beer cans and stones at counter-demonstrators didn’t lead to arrests.

When asked if Morgan or any of his staff communicated with the police prior to the arrest on January 1, a spokesperson for Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary replied: “As part of normal policing activity across Hampshire and the Isle Wight, our district commanders and other officers and staff have regular contact with a range of stakeholders within their policing area. This includes local MPs.”

George Hibberd, a Portsmouth Palestine Solidarity Campaign member who was present at the New Year’s Day Palestine demo, speculated that the arrest “was Stephen Morgan’s doing. He’s clearly feeling the pressure of people standing outside his office holding him to account for being part of a government that has armed a genocide.”

If true, this is not the first time a critic of Morgan has been hassled by the police on dubious grounds. Another local pro-Palestine campaigner Linda Spence was visited by two officers of the Hampshire Constabulary at her home in July 2024, who accused her of potentially breaching the Representation of the People Act 1983 by distributing an election leaflet that didn’t contain information about who printed or promoted it.

Spence had done no such thing and asked who had requested the police to investigate her, if anyone. “Stephen Morgan’s office” came the officers’ reply. That the police took no further action against her led Spence to believe that their bothering her at home was a move designed to scare her and other critics of Morgan’s stance on Palestine. The police have declined to comment on the incident.

In that same summer, Morgan avoided scrutiny from Portsmouth University students by moving a “meet your MP” event online suspiciously soon after it became clear that some awkward questions about Gaza might be coming his way.

According to student activist Jeet Chatterjee, who was at the online discussion, the “multiple questions we put forward to Stephen Morgan about Gaza” were “never asked” by the moderator.    

Such slipperiness is nothing new: while he was standing in 2017 and benefiting from Labour’s late surge in popularity, Morgan’s name was on a petition calling for Jeremy Corbyn to resign.

It remained there while he served in two shadow ministerial roles under Corbyn. During the same period, Labour Friends of Israel, of which Morgan has been a member since 2018, organised a protest in which right-wing Labour MPs and others not only demanded Corbyn “go” but chanted that he was “a racist.”

Since then, Morgan has shifted his allegiance to Keir Starmer and loyally voted for all the policies that have shoved Labour to the right — including the clampdown on peaceful protest.

Tony Benn used to divide politicians into “signposts” and “weathercocks,” the latter being cynical, sometimes ruthless careerists who “spin in whatever direction the wind of public opinion might blow them.” Perhaps the moral of Morgan’s story is that the weathercock can only spin in so many directions before he starts to alienate almost everybody.