Brexit and Labour anti-semitism are reshaping UK politics

It was heart-breaking to listen to ex-Labour MP Luciana Berger explain her decision to leave (Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire)

At times this week it has felt as if someone has taken all the carefully numbered pages of a script and thrown them up in the air.

So far they are all still floating around up there while we wait to see where they will land.

The excitement is almost palpable. What will the new order look like?

Who will the main players eventually be and how will they line up, not just in parliament but across the country.

For many of us involved in politics this is the moment we have worked years, in some cases decades, to achieve.

The potential for change, positive change not just in politics but across society, is huge.

We could all contribute to the reshaping of British politics. Not just a realignment of the parties and ideals but real electoral reform for the first time since universal suffrage.

And with it is the opportunity for new radical ideas to emerge for our communities.

But it has also come at the moment of greatest danger for the country.

With the Brexit departure date now just over a month away, the pressure which had been building along the fault lines in both major parties has finally split them apart.

The signs of the pending earthquake were, of course, there.

Every prime ministerial statement since Theresa May first pointed the finger of blame at the Russians in the Salisbury poisoning to her most recent on the failing EU withdrawal deal have pointed out the problems.

On the day of that Salisbury statement even some of the longest serving MPs in parliament were taken aback at the visible chasm between the Labour front and back benches.

One remarked to me that in 40 years in politics he had never seen anything like it as Labour MPs lined up with comments welcoming the Government approach rather than the position of their own leader.

But that was a symptom rather than the illness.

Seven MPs quit Labour to form new breakaway Independent Group

Brexit has certainly been a major cause but there is another more sinister problem that has been eating away at the heart of a party that has, for the past century, been a force for progressive change. It was the Labour party that brought in game-changing equalities and anti-discrimination legislation.

The Race Relations Act, the Equality Act and, of course, the Human Rights Act were all introduced by Labour Governments who put fighting inequality, racism and prejudice at the core of what they believed in.

So how can it be that the same party is now struggling so badly to wrestle with the virus of anti-semitism that has somehow managed to infect its ranks from top to bottom?

How can it be that those values of equality, anti-racism and social justice have been so irreparably undermined by the party’s own leadership?

And let me be absolutely clear here: I’m not saying that Jeremy Corbyn or any of his front-bench team are themselves anti-semitic.

But the way in which the Labour leadership has seemingly stood by and watched as anti-semitism has crept out from the shadows into the full light of day is the real tragedy of this whole saga.

When good people stand by and do nothing, bad things happen.

Watching Luciana Berger courageously reveal to the world the pain she felt taking the difficult, but unavoidable, decision to leave a party she had joined almost 20 years ago because of that failure to tackle anti-semitism was heart-breaking.

In politics, your party becomes your family.

They are the individuals who go out in the cold and walk miles delivering leaflets and knocking doors for you.

They are the people who get you through the difficult times when your personal and political lives collide, and their shoulders are there to lean on.

And whether you win, or lose, they are the people who are there to share it with you.

For that relationship to be damaged to the extent that you feel you have no option but to walk away from it is so much more difficult than many of us can articulate.

For those leaving the Conservative party, the emotions will have been similar, although the reasons possibly simpler. Four decades of divisions over the EU have been eating away at their cohesion. Often it seemed the only thing that was keeping them together was the pursuit of power.

Then David Cameron made the mistake of opening up the wounds to try and cure them. Instead, all he succeeded in doing was giving them the oxygen they needed to thrive afresh.

But what next?

How do we ensure that we do seize that opportunity for change?

It will take courage and compromise, as politicians from all backgrounds and all walks of life, do what is expected of us – that is, to work together for the common good of our communities, our constituents and our national interest.

If we get it right, this is the chance to create real, progressive change not just in parliament but for the public.

As a Liberal Democrat, I see the opportunity opening up to work with like-minded people from other parties to achieve the open, socially mobile, fair society we all crave.

Ironically, by posing the great threat that it does, Brexit has also created the consensus not just to oppose it but to build something better.

Whichever way the pages eventually fall we now have the chance to order them as we wish.

To being to write a new chapter not just for politics, but for all of us.

Brexit and Labour anti-semitism are reshaping UK politics – Christine Jardine