It'll take more than suspending vampire Williamson to rid Labour of antisemitism

There’s something foul in the Labour Party. That much we’ve known for some time. But just how insidious and entrenched it was, perhaps, we didn’t quite get until now.

Lord Falconer certainly didn’t know. He has taken a stand today, saying he hadn’t realised until asked by General Secretary Jenny Formby to oversee the complaints procedure on it the true scale of anti-semitism, and that he believes Jeremy Corbyn will never enter Number 10 until the foulness has been dealt with.

There is some creaking change. Chrisferatu has finally been banished. Cast back into the inky depths from whence he came, sealed in his tomb of cold hard stone, never more to stalk the dark halls of Westminster. Well, at least for a few weeks – he’s only had the whip withdrawn, which is hardly a stake through the ribcage. In the modern Labour Party, that’s barely even a whiff of garlic, all things considered.

But it’ll take more than seasoning, or indeed, seeing off a sucker like Chris Williamson, to diffuse the stench of anti-semitism on the left. What caught the Derby MP out in the sun was a video of him claiming, in front of an audience, that Labour had been ‘too apologetic’ over the issue. I’d not previously been aware that it was possible to be ‘too apologetic’ for refusing to confront racism. Someone should really tell postwar Germany, it would have saved them an awful lot of angst.

Sadly for Williamson, he isn’t actually a vampire, or presumably the camera wouldn’t have recorded his image, or the rapturous applause from the his suggestion was met with.

Nor is he, necessarily, an anti-semite. Neither is Corbyn, as Falconer has stated. But he is at the very least an enabler of the parasitic views that now permeate through the party. All the wretched, palid old creatures atop Labour are. They aren’t the demons themselves, more the crooked henchmen, who turn a blind eye to the awfulness they ally themselves with in order to survive.

They are beholden to their anti-semitic masters. They are the ones whose presence facilitates and supports its existence. And this foul curse won’t die until they are gone.

Williamson became bolder in his attack on the ‘smears’ of people trying to defeat anti-semitism in the Labour Party precisely because of those whom he served, sure in the knowledge that certain members further up the food chain, and indeed, the wider party, would protect him. On this occasion, for the time being, he was wrong, but that’s not to say he won’t be brought back from the dead at some point.

The current party has form. Derekula Hatton was hiding in the shadows for 30 years before his sarcophagus creaked open last week. Ken Livingston keeps popping up for another bite at the media circuit. There have even been whispers that George Galloway has been seen lurking around the graveyard shift TV studios of London, cunningly disguised as a Professor Van Helsing. Williamson himself was caught trying to resurrect Jackie Walker, another the party suspended for her less than progressive views on Jews.

No one would willingly invite a vampire into their home. So why would anyone invite a multitude into their political party? These creatures don’t care about winning elections or improving people’s lives. All they care about is keeping themselves and their ideology, complete with its racist undertones and conspiratorial mutterings, alive. They need a host in order to feed off, and that host is the Labour Party. How long will the cowering creatures, formerly known as the PLP, continue to tolerate these blood-sucking parasites? Some have already jumped ship, and if the others don’t seek out the rot, sooner or later that ship will be left adrift with no souls left aboard at all.

Lord Falconer, and deputy leader Tom Watson, have taken a stand. More need to join them if Labour is to repel the nightmare of anti-semitism.