Served By The Programme

If Christian Wakeford is such a warrior against anti-Semitism, then why has he joined a party that supports the Azov Battalion? Yes, he has also left one. But even so. Indeed, Liz Truss has not been over there to express support in person. David Lammy has.

Wakeford's new party, like his old one, also supports the Saudi war in Yemen, and indeed most or all other things that Saudi Arabia ever does. Despite the immensely long history of Jews in the territory that is now covered by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, they are forbidden to enter it. Antony Blinken, think on.

Wakeford voted for the Borders and Nationality Bill, under which the Home Secretary will not even have to give notice when, entirely at her own discretion, she revoked the British citizenship of anyone whom she merely considered might be eligible for any other nationality. That includes all British Jews. Of course, Wakeford's new party has no policy of repealing that provision.

On what issue, exactly, has Wakeford changed his mind? He has yet to state one. He just thinks that Keir Starmer would be better than Boris Johnson at running the same thing. Sadly, he is right. Wakeford does indeed share the values of today's Labour Party, just as the 150,000 people so far whom Rachel Reeves is glad to see leave it do not.

"They should never have joined," says Reeves. "We joined before you were born," counter many of them. They disagreed profoundly with Tony Blair, but they could stand him, and he could stand them. Yet they cannot stand Keir Starmer, who joined the Labour Party no earlier than December 2013, and he cannot stand them, either.

It has been 45 years since a Labour MP last joined the Conservative Party, and that was only the third time that it had ever happened. Both earlier cases had been in 1948, and both had been over the nationalisation of steel. By contrast, Wakeford is the sixth Conservative MP to have joined the Labour Party in the last 27 years alone, an average of one every four and a half years.

If it is entryism that you want, then there it is, because none of them has ever professed to have changed his mind. He has merely seen Labour as a more useful vehicle for his existing position, usually including his personal ambition. In every case, he has been right, including a deviser of the Poll Tax and a man who had served in the Shadow Cabinets of Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard. Both of those are now Labour Peers. Why is "my party has left me" never challenged in defectors? That is a reason to leave a party, but how is it a reason to join another one in particular?