An Open Letter to Liberal Democrat MPs – Why Are You Silent Over the Hunger Strikes? Have you lost your tongues as well as your conscience?

Despite Being the Third Largest Parliamentary Group with 72 MPs, only 4 Lib Dems have signed Early Day Motion 2386

An Israeli Calls Israel for What It Is - a State Resembling Nazi Germany

There was a time when the Liberal Party claimed, under Jo Grimond, to be a radical party of the left and a defender of civil liberties. With its marriage to the Social Democrats that went by the board.

In 2010 it got into bed with David Cameron’s Tories in the Coalition government and were virtually eliminated at the 2015 election after having gone back on their promise not to increase tuition fees. They also paved the way for Brexit.

Under Vince Cable, the Business  Minister, the Post Office was privatised and virtually given away to the private sector. Privatisation, which has transferred £200 billion from the public purse to the billionaire class since Thatcher pioneered it, was fully supported by the Lib Dems.

One thing is clear. The Lib Dems are not a left-wing party. Indeed the old adage holds that if you scratch a Liberal you’ll get a Conservative.

Under the lamentable Jo Swinson as leader they joined in the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against the Labour Left and Corbyn with gusto.  Their two most prominent pro-Palestinian figures – Baroness Jenny Tonge and David Ward MP - were both forced out of the party. The defeat of Swinson at the 2019 General Election by the SNP was the best result on a miserable night.

The Lib-Dems have an appalling record on Zionism and Palestine. They have given full support to the Apartheid, Jewish Supremacist State that has leading Jewish Nazis in the most powerful positions of Finance and Police. They have also been silent over the genocide in Gaza in contrast to Ukraine.

Jeremy Corbyn's Speech on the Hunger Strikes - Labour MPs Laugh as Young People Are Dying

A day ago I wrote to the 72 Lib-Dem MPs asking why only four of them have signed Early Day Motion 2386 calling on the government to intervene in the hunger strikes by 6  Palestine Action supporters to ensure that the Filton 24 are freed on bail. Andrew George was one of the original sponsors and the other three – Layla Moran (herself of Palestinian origin), Alistair Carmichael and Ian Roome signed very late in the day.

The Lib Dems have 11% of the total MPs in the House of Commons yet they only comprise 6.5% of the 62 who have signed. This for a party which purports to take a pride in supporting civil liberties.

The issues are quite clear. All the hunger strikers are unconvicted prisoners, charged with minor criminal offences such as criminal damage and yet they are being held under ‘terrorist’ conditions despite being completely peaceful. Bail has been refused repeatedly and one judge who did grant bail, Bobby Cheema-Grubb, had her decision immediately appealed to the reactionary Court of Appeal and found herself taken off further cases of this nature.

But then Liberals have always had a bad record in terms of basic democratic rights. It was a Liberal government under Asquith that gaoled the Suffragettes and passed the Cat and Mouse Act. MPs, including the wretched Yvette Cooper lionise the Suffragettes today but in their time they too were called terrorists. Indeed, in comparison with Palestine Action they were terrorists.

From 1912 to 1914 the Suffragettes orchestrated a widespread campaign of arson and bombings targeting churches, post boxes, railway lines, and the homes of politicians. This included an attempt to burn down the home of the Chancellor, David Lloyd George.

They invented the letter bomb, which injured several postal workers. They placed bombs on public transport and in crowded places like Westminster Abbey and the Theatre Royal in Dublin while audiences were present. Assaults on politicians and public officials with whips and other objects occurred and a fire at Portsmouth dockyard in 1913 killed two men, and other fires killed two men and several horses in rural Bradford.

According to the definition of terrorism in the Terrorist Act 2000 the Suffragettes were without doubt terrorists. But here is the strange thing. On the very day that the proscription of Palestine Action was voted on in Parliament, the Home Secretary, the vile hypocrite Yvette Cooper appeared in the Commons with other female Labour MPs in the purple colours of the Suffragettes.

And people still say we should respect the law that is passed by crooks and criminals like Starmer, Cooper and Lammy.

Ed Davey the Lib Dem leader is an Establishment politician from head to toe. As Post Office Minister he ignored the scandal of the Post Office workers, initially refusing even to meet Alan Bates their  organiser. Even after he met Alan he took the official view that nothing was wrong.

983 sub-postmasters were falsely convicted. A quarter, 236, were gaoled. The only thing that can be said in Davey’s defence is that the Judges who sentenced the sub-postmasters never once asked how it was that there were so many dishonest postmasters still less questioned the ‘computer is right’ law that led to their convictions. At least 13 involved in the affair took their own lives.

Secret tape reveals Paula Vennells was told of faulty Horizon software | ITV News

However the Lib Dems have denied any responsibility at all. After all Ministers were lied to by their officials and that absolved them of any need to have made further enquiries.

One thing that the Lib Dems emphasise is that unlike the Conservatives and Starmer Labour, they are committed to civil liberties. Policy Paper 44 on their website is titled ‘Protecting Civil Liberties’ and it has this to say:

Liberal Democrats believe that everyone, whoever they are, should have civil liberties. Civil liberties are rooted in freedom of speech and expression, freedom of association and freedom of movement. They depend on equality of treatment before the law.

Yet this a lie. We have seen the Police banning demonstrations, rerouting them away from the BBC on the pretext that a synagogue was nearby, on the assumption that Jews support Genocide, and it would now seem the Met are banning repeat demonstrations with legal powers that they don’t have.  We have seen the Police conducting dawn raids on Palestine solidarity activists on the pretext that they have supported a proscribed organisation, Hamas. Yet throughout this wave of repression the Lib Dems have said nothing.

When it came to the proscription of Palestine Action, the first protest group to be classified as a ‘terrorist’ group the Lib Dems excelled themselves. The official party position was to abstain but 6 MPs Andrew George, Tom Gordon, Tessa Munt, Manuela Perteghella, Al Pinkerton, and Luke Taylor voted ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Their reason for doing so was that Starmer Labour, in its normal dishonest way, bundled the proscription with two neo-Nazi groups thus depriving MPs of the opportunity of voting for each group specifically.

Of course the principled thing to do would have been to vote ‘no’ to the bundle, as the purpose of the proscription wasn’t to outlaw groups which don’t even operate in the UK but to proscribe Palestine Action. But this is typical of the Lib Dems. When it comes to radical or uncomfortable groups they abstain or simply go absent.

It is clear that there has been political intervention at the highest levels in this matter. We know for a fact that the Israeli Embassy has intervened and been consulted on the whole question of Elbit prosecutions and on the banning of Palestine Action.

We also know that The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and the Proscription Review Group were both against the proscription of Palestine Action. So the internment of the hunger strikers and the Filton 24, because that is what it is, is completely unjustified yet the Lib Dem MPs have sat on their hands.  Why?

Because the Lib Dems are committed as a party to supporting the Apartheid State of Israel. Israel is a state that has an official policy of using torture against Palestinian detainees, which is in illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is at the present time incarcerating nearly 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, a third of them without even a trial, before a military court. The military courts themselves have a 99.74% rate of conviction.

Even the Nazi Peoples’ Courts, which were explicitly political, acquitted more defendants than Israel’s military courts. The acquittal rate in 1940 was 7.3%. It then fell to around 5% until 1944, when it rose to almost 12%. This is the state that the Lib Dems support uncritically, a racist police state and a Jewish supremacist state with ethno-nationalism at its heart.

That above all is why the Lib-Dems have been silent over the Genocide in Gaza and the Hunger Strikes in particular.

Tony Greenstein

Lib Dems for Free Speech Demand Free Speech on Palestine Inside the Lib-Dems

Asking for democratic rights in the Lib-Dems is like asking Donald Trump to speak the truth

I have to confess that I’ve told Jonathan Coulter, who is a good comrade and one of the signatories to the leaflet below that was distributed at the big anti-Brexit march at the weekend, that trying to obtain justice or freedom of speech in the Lib Dems is like climbing Mount Everest on your hands.

The leaflet says that ‘It is time our party returned to our core values and policies’ but in fact it never had any core principles or values that it wouldn’t sell out at the earliest opportunity. It is a free market party that jumped into bed with David Cameron and passed the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which began the privatisation of the NHS in earnest.

The Lib Dems were born of a shotgun wedding between the old Liberal party and the Social Democratic Party, who were the equivalent of Tom Watson and co. today (though not quite as right-wing).

The Liberal Party itself was not a radical party and it barely tolerated the Young Liberals ‘Red Guard’ such as Peter Hain and Louis Eaks who led the campaign against the South African Springboks in 1970.  The late Louis Eakes went on to edit Free Palestine and was one of the forerunners of the Palestine Solidarity Movement.

However if the Liberals were never a party of principle the Lib Dems were even less so.  The Liberals were more typified by Jeremy Thorpe, who was acquitted of trying to murder Norman Scott after a blatantly biased judge summed up in his favour. It was a Liberal Party that was typified by David Steel’s cover up of the child abuse and paedophilia of Cyril Smith.

But if the Liberals could at least claim to have a radical fringe, the Lib Dems has never had anything.  Hence my advice that trying to reclaim a tradition that never existed is a task worthy of Hercules!  It is a party that all but expelled Jenny Tonge and did expel David Ward. The latter was carried out by homophobe Tim Farron, who was leader of the Lib Dems.

Nonetheless, despite the impossibility of their task, one cannot but admire the tenacity and determination of those behind this leaflet. This despite the impossible odds of succeeding in getting justice and fairness from a party that is wedded to the worst aspects of British capitalism.

This is a party which had no hesitation in getting into bed with David Cameron and George Osborne whilst placing Jeremy Corbyn beyond the pale. It is a party that has taken to its bosom the execrable Luciana Berger, the Zionist bigot and former Director of Labour Friends of Israel who has spent a lifetime accusing anti-racists of anti-Semitism.

Jonathan Coulter (on right)

I found the debate on the welcome of the Lib Dems for Luciana Berger most interesting, not least for the way even former radicals like Lord Tony Greaves have queued up to welcome this opportunist.

I can only wish them good luck as the signatories to this leaflet will need it!

Tony Greenstein

Britain’s unaccountable press and broadcasting media are at the root of both Brexit, and “antisemitism” smears

We are a group of 13 Lib Dems, some of who are here to demonstrate against Boris Johnson’s Brexit, an absurd and damaging proposition, largely rooted in press misreporting in the early 90s, when the self-same Boris was The Telegraph’s correspondent in Brussels and using his position to propagate a series of Euromyths^[i].

At the same time, we are concerned that many politicians, including our own Lib Dem leaders, have embraced an unfounded proposition that there is rampant antisemitism in the Labour Party.

A very obvious smear campaign that involves media collusion

and false personal attacks

British politicians, including many leading Remainers, have repeatedly ignored hard statistical and other evidence showing the antisemitism proposition to be wildly exaggerated and based on misinformation^[ii], and in so doing, have aligned themselves with an even more tendentious media-orchestrated campaign than the one behind Brexit. It diverts attention from Israel’s indefensible settler-colonial project which involves, inter alia:

1.      Depriving 200,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the Negev desert of fundamental rights (electricity, water, medical care, roads, education).

2.      Subjecting West Bank Palestinians to military law, while stealing land and moving in illegal settlers subject to Israeli civil law, contravening the Geneva Convention.

3.      Turning Gaza into a vast open-air prison for 2.2 million Palestinians, without access to clean water, proper nutrition, medical care, travel and other rights

4.      Controlling the supply of Palestinian water resources, with the Palestinians getting 13% of the total mountain aquifer water^[iii].

5.      Controlling the lives of 5 million Palestinians who have absolutely no say in the affairs of the Israel, and risk losing their right to return if they go overseas

6.      The recent Nation State Law (2018) which further entrenches the supremacy of Jewish citizens; 50 discriminatory laws already grant superior rights to Jewish population.

At the same time pro-Israel lobbyists meddle in our internal affairs^[iv], with a view to manipulating public perceptions about the situation in Israel and Palestine.

In March, the Party wrongfully suspended Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine (LDFP), and only ended this in June under conditions that cripple this body’s ability to speak truth to power.  The Party has moreover unwisely adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism (along with its 11 “examples”), which Israel and its advocates use to conflate legitimate criticism of Israel with genuine antisemitism.  

We have repeatedly sought to draw our party’s attention to the issue, but the response is totally unsatisfactory

On 31st May, we raised it with party leaders in an “open letter”, but got no response^[v].  We then tried to have it discussed with ordinary members, but much to our disappointment, found ourselves shut out of one internal policy forum after another, as if the topic were taboo.  In cases where we have managed to post something, we have at best been dogged by unwarranted censorship, and at worst subjected to vile troll-like abuse from party activists. 

We formally complained about this situation, only to find that our complaints remained unanswered for months, raising serious questions about the efficacy of the complaints process, even after July 1st when we were told it had inaugurated a new improved system.

It is time our party returned to our core values and policies, which involve:

1.      telling the truth, and checking our arguments against objective evidence;

2.      ensuring that party members have space for unfettered debate on Israel, Palestine and alleged antisemitism in internal discussion forums;

3.      ensuring the complaints process is fit for purpose, and;

4.      refocusing on our policy of reforming the British media landscape, much evident when, in 2018, we joined the Labour Party and some dissident Tories in demanding full implementation of Leveson II and associated reforms.

If you require further information, please write to:

Peter Downey                         peterofbath@gmail.com

Jonathan Coulter                     jcoulter287@gmail.com

Pamela and Hugh Manning    pamjomanning@gmail.com

LibDems4freespeechgroup, 19 October 2019

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[i] See https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/07/boris-johnson-peddled-absurd-eu-myths-and-our-disgraceful-press-followed-his

[ii] See https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/check-evidence/ and https://www.plutobooks.com › bad-news-for-labour

[iii] See https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/israel-water-tool-dominate-palestinians-160619062531348.html

[iv] See Al Jazeera documentary, “The Lobby”, Jan 2017: https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/

[v] See also on: https://mondoweiss.net/2019/06/reinstate-suspended-criticism/

Tim Farron – Christian Bigot Sacks former MP David Ward for Calling Israel an Apartheid State - The Truth is Anti-Semitic

Liberal-Democrats Demonstrate that they are neither Liberal nor Democratic

Tim Farron is probably the most lightweight leader that the Liberals/Lib Dems have ever had, despite pretty strong competition.  He is also the most right-wing and again the competition is pretty stiff.

Over 4 years ago David Ward, the then MP for Bradford East had the whip withdrawn for 3 months for asking "Am I wrong or are am I right? At long last the Zionists are losing the battle - how long can the apartheid State of Israel last?"  Lib Dems withdraw party whip from MP David Ward over Israel comments   

people wanting Farron to be honest

Since Israel rules over 4.5 million Palestinians on the West Bank and operates two sets of laws and legal systems it is difficult to know how else to describe Israel other than an apartheid state.  In Israel itself the Arab minority is largely segregated from the Jewish population, for example there is a Jewish and an Arab education sector.  48% of Jewish Israelis want, according to the most recent Pew Research Centre Poll Israel’s Religiously Divided Society to physically expel Israel’s Arabs from the country.  Israel is a state which in January demolished a Bedouin village in the Negev, Umm Al-Hiran to make way for a Jewish town.  Quite how else would one describe that other than as apartheid?

David Ward - former MP deselected by bigot

Ward’s other offence was to have said that he was:

‘“saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps, be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”

There is nothing anti-Semitic in this.  Israel calls itself a Jewish state so it’s not surprising that many people therefore ascribe its actions to Jews per se.  Of course David Ward should have said Zionist or Israeli Jews but there was nothing anti-Semitic in what he said.  It is a fact that most people confuse the actions of Israel with Jews and ask why it is that Jews who were one the victims of anti-Semitism are now the perpetrators of racism.  Their confusion is due to Zionist propaganda. 

My letter defending David Ward when controversy broke - Guardian refused to publish similar letter this time around

However for Christian bigot and leader of the Lib Dems that was too much.  When another racist bigot, Eric Pickles the Chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel asked what is known as a planted question in the House of Commons about David Ward’s selection as a Lib-Dem candidate, Theresa May insinuated that David Ward was anti-Semitic.

Tim Farron immediately jumped when May barked and David Ward was peremptorily sacked as a candidate despite having been democratically elected by members of the Bradford East CLP.  I am pleased to hear that he is now standing as an Independent and I wish him the best of luck.  Tim Farron sacks Lib Dem candidate for 'offensive and antisemitic' remarks 

This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with a patently false and distorted definition of anti-Semitism, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which conflates anti-Zionism and opposition to the Israeli state with anti-Semitism and is therefore itself anti-Semitic.

Sue Perkins of Bakeoff calling out Farron's weasel words

For a good explanation of why the IHRA definition of is bogus see the article by Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal Judge, in this months London Review of Books.  Stephen Sedley, former Judge at the Court of Appeal Criticises the IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism

For a good explanation of why Farron, despite attacking David Ward for fake anti-Semitism, is a bigot see Lib Dems' Tim Farron regrets abstaining in gay marriage vote.  Still the Tory Telegraph came to his defence when Farron refused to answer a question on whether gay sex was a sin! Lib Dems' Tim Farron regrets abstaining in gay marriage vote

I therefore decided to write a letter to Tim Farron and Naomi Wimborne-Iddrissi has penned a good article below and on the Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods site.  The Orwellian defenestration of David Ward

One hypocrite calling out another hypocrite

Dear Mr Farron,

I write, as someone who is Jewish, to protest your recent decision to prevent David Ward from standing as a Lib Dem candidate for Bradford East. 

I must confess that I don't and never have supported the Lib Dems as they have always appeared to me to be a party without any principle.  Your coalition with the Conservatives when you presided over the reorganisation of the NHS, whose only purpose was to hasten its privatisation, is a case in point.  Your breaking of the promise not to raise tuition fees is another as was your collaboration in the cutting of benefits. 

David Ward is one of the few people in the Lib Dems who has stood up against the tide and given his support to the real victims in the Middle East, the Palestinians.  When Israel rules, as it has done for 50 years, over millions of people and refuses to accord them the same rights as its own Jewish citizens, whilst claiming their land as part of the biblical 'Land of Israel', then that is apartheid.  To stand up against that is not anti-Semitic, it is basic anti-racist solidarity. 

David Ward asked '“Am I wrong or are am I right? At long last the Zionists are losing the battle – how long can the apartheid State of Israel last?”  There is nothing in the least anti-Semitic in what David Ward said.  Israel is an apartheid state, even for its own Arab citizens.  Everyday legislation is passed which is targetted at Israel's minority Palestinian population, a population which is considered a fifth column by Israel's rulers.  A population that is considered a demographic threat to the majority Jewish population, a majority of whom favour the physical expulsion of Israel's Arab citizens. 

You said in your response to other people when attempting to defend your decision that 'I have been clear that I believe in a politics that is open, tolerant and united.'  Leaving aside your Christian Evangelical views on abortion and gays, which are anything but open and tolerant, your removal of David Ward as a candidate proves that you are a nasty and vicious McCarthyite, an insubstantial pipsqueak unfit to lead any political party, even one as reduced in circumstances as the Lib Dems 

Yours sincerely, 

Tony Greenstein

The Orwellian defenestration of David Ward

The moral panic about antisemitism rumbles on, crushing pro-Palestinian voices such as that of Malia Bouattia, former President of the National Union of Students, and taking its first general election scalp with the dumping of prospective parliamentary candidate David Ward by Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron. See below the full story originally published by Free Speech on Israel.

We would like to be able to share with you the refreshing viewpoint of Jewish Bath University politics student Joanna Phillips, but we have not yet managed to obtain her permission to republish her piece in full. Read it here on the Jewish News website.

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

The Orwellian defenestration of David Ward

It was inevitable that antisemitism smears would be deployed against supporters of Palestine at some point during #GE17. Even so it was a surprise to hear Tim Farron, Liberal Democrat party leader, cornered by pro-Israel lobbyist Eric Pickles in the House of Commons on Wednesday, appeasing the witch hunters by declaring that one of his own parliamentary candidates would be banned from standing.

The language used to denounce David Ward, former Lib Dem MP for Bradford East, as in so many of the cases we have seen in the Labour Party, the National Union of Students and elsewhere, takes us deep into Orwellian territory.

While Ward could probably sue the Jewish News for calling him “the Israel-hating, Jew-baiting former MP David Ward”, other media have been less hysterical but equally dishonest.

The Guardian’s coverage referred back to 2013 when it called Ward the “Liberal Democrat MP suspended by the party after questioning the continuing existence of the state of Israel”.

What had Ward actually written on his Twitter feed in July that year?

“Am I wrong or are am I right? At long last the Zionists are losing the battle – how long can the apartheid State of Israel last?”

It must be clear to all but the most partisan that Ward is talking here about the continuation of apartheid, not of Israel itself. It may be controversial to refer to Israel as an apartheid state, and it makes some people very cross, but it is decidedly not an expression of hatred of Jews.

Further yet, taking into account the legal opinion of Hugh Tomlinson QC on the definition of antisemitism adopted last December by Theresa May’s government, if Ward had in fact questioned the “continuing existence” of the state of Israel, that in itself could not be used to prove his antisemitism, since he has expressed no hostility to Jews as Jews.

This view has received a ringing endorsement in the pages of the London Review of Books from former Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Stephen Sedley (who happens to be Jewish).  Sedley wrote that the inadequacies of the definition so ardently embraced by Pickles and May allow “perceptions of Jews which fall short of expressions of racial hostility to be stigmatised as anti-Semitic.”

Exactly so.

The Lib Dem’s Farron said at a rally in St Albans on Wednesday that he found comments David Ward has made in the past “deeply offensive, wrong and antisemitic.”

So what has Ward said, apart from talking about apartheid Israel, that Farron might think fits this description?

According to LBC, “Mr Ward also caused controversy in 2013 when he wrote on his blog accusing ‘the Jews’ of atrocities against Palestinians. He was condemned by politicians, Jewish groups and Shoah survivors when he equated Jewish suffering in the Holocaust with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.”

This is another example of Orwellian word games. What Ward actually said on his website – and credit is due to the Spectator for taking the trouble to quote him in full – was that he was “saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps, be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”

This is not “equating” Jewish suffering with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, it is lamenting the fact that one has followed historically upon the other. It is not “accusing” the Jews of atrocities, it is regretting that those who have suffered injustice in the past are now inflicting it on others.

I have, in discussions about the Middle East where my Jewish heritage comes up, heard countless questions worded almost identically to David Ward’s statement. It is an almost constant refrain – “How is it possible that people who have suffered so much can cause so much suffering to others?”

I recognise these questions for what they are – expressions of sincere concern and bafflement at a seemingly inexplicable state of affairs. They are based on the understandable misapprehension that the Israeli state, which calls itself “the Jewish state”, represents all Jews. They usually lead to productive discussions about the history of Israel and Palestine, offering me the opportunity to explain that – despite the claims made by and on behalf of state of Israel – very many of us do not identify with Israel and resent the erroneous assumption that we all share its ideology.

Ward would have done better to avoid using the problematic pair of words “the” and “Jews”. As Oxford philosopher Brian Klug has explained, a negative stereotype of “the Jew” is at the heart of antisemitism, projecting an illusory malign and mysteriously powerful figure onto individual Jews and Jewish organisations.

Ward apologised as soon as he realised how his words might be misread. After being dumped by Farron, he offered a creditable account of himself on his Facebook page, indicating that he well understands what antisemitism truly is and realises that generalisations about all Jews are unacceptable.

But he is hardly alone in making unwarranted generalisations. They come most often from people claiming to speak for “the Jewish community” as if this was an undifferentiated mass with no individual opinions. Now that is antisemitic!

If people making comments like David Ward’s express any hostility to Jewish people or give any hint of harbouring hateful feelings against us, I have no hesitation in chastising them for their antisemitism. But there is nothing in Ward’s comments of themselves that even hints at hatred of Jews – and this, as Sir Stephen Sedley reminds us, is what antisemitism is.

I have written to Tim Farron asking him to explain why he has departed from Nick Clegg’s view in 2013 that what David Ward said then was neither racist or antisemitic.

Maybe part of the answer lies with the extreme Zionist Campaign Against Antisemitism, which claimed that it had “worked with outraged Liberal Democrats to raise the issue with Mr Farron when news of Mr Ward’s selection broke.”

The CAA continued gleefully:

“The knockout blow was delivered by Sir Eric Pickles and the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s Questions. Sir Eric praised the Prime Minister for adopting the International Definition of Antisemitism on behalf of the government, and asked whether she felt that all parties should “not just pay lip service to it, but to actually do something about it”, before attacking Mr Ward’s views.”

Farron obligingly caved in.

I will await with interest the Lib Dem leader’s response to my personal letter, which concluded:

“We are on dangerous ground when we allow proponents of a partisan political (in this case pro-Israeli) stance to determine what may and may not be spoken about. Freedom of expression is seriously at risk here and you, as a Liberal Democrat, should be defending it, not conniving in its demise.”