Luciana Berger, the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, knows what it's like to be on the receiving end of abuse. Some people have, thankfully, been jailed after harassing her with the most disgusting anti-Semitic hate filled abuse (including death threats) that no-one should have to endure. Now she faces another fight - a fight that will define what the Labour Party is and what it will become.
Her Constituency Labour Party (CLP) has been taken over by the hard-left Corbynites of Momentum. These knuckleheads worship at the feet of Jeremy Corbyn, and will do anything (and I mean anything) for their man. They don't care for democracy; that is something they can use and then discard at some point in the future. Their initial aim is to rid the Labour Party of moderate centre-left MPs and replace them with carbon copies of their dear leader. We can then 'look forward' to the transformation of Britain into something resembling Venezuela.
Roy Bentham, who led the campaign against her in her constituency, is, according to the Jewish Chronicle, "linked to a Trotskyist organisation run by notorious anti-Zionist conspiracy theorist Gerry Downing". He is certainly as sinister a character as you are likely to meet in politics. After the Momentum takeover, Bentham said:
"She will now have to sit round the table with us the next time she wants to vote for bombing in Syria or to pass a no-confidence motion in the leader of the party – she will have to be answerable to us."
In a democracy, MPs are answerable to their constituents. They have a duty to act on behalf of all constituents, not just those who have voted for them. But Bentham thinks it is people like him who matter. Forget that Berger romped home at the general election last month with a massive 79.5 per cent of the vote and a whopping 29,466 majority. Bentham, like all his Momentum comrades, isn't interested in things like that. Momentum has stated that he is not a member. Not officially, maybe, but as Momentum was behind the coup in Wavertree, taking nine out of ten places on the executive committee, and Bentham is one of those elected, it doesn't really matter.
I know that many other moderate Labour MPs are in the same position as Luciana Berger. They fear that their CLPs will be taken over by the hard-left, and that to keep their jobs, they will have to dance to Momentum's tune. This can be the only explanation for the silence on the Labour backbenches. Apart from John Woodcock, not one of Berger's parliamentary colleagues has leaped to her defence. But fear, or the thought that you can bury your head in the sand and hope it will all go away, is not good enough.
Depite opinions polls to the contrary, I still don't think that the voters will elect a Corbyn led Labour Government. I know Labour polled 40 per cent of the vote at the general election, but there are a variety of reasons why Labour did so well. There are strong personal votes, such as the one Luciana Berger received, to take into account. The Conservative Party's manifesto was poor, as was the campaign. But if Corbyn was elected, the country would be run by revolutionary Marxists, and those moderate Labour MPs would be out on their ear faster than you can say comrade.
Cometh the hour, cometh the men and women. Instead of praising Corbyn, they should be looking at the future of not only their party, but their country. If neccessary, they should form a parliamentary group and become the official opposition. When it comes to the next general election, let them stand on their record and face down the hard-left. They need to trust the good sense of the British people.
Momentum is one of the biggest threats to freedom and democracy this country has faced in decades. If Labour MPs just sit back and do nothing, Momentum will crawl all over them. As Churchill would have said, action this day.