AFTER the soul-shuddering mess that has been Corbyn, Labour and antisemitism, I found it sweet relief to read the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report on the issue – all methodical and calm. Some chapters even begin with trigger warnings for “offensive content herein”.

The indictments it brings are specific and well-substantiated. Two “agents” that the Labour Party could be deemed responsible for – the infamous maverick Ken Livingstone and the considerably less well-known councillor Pam Bromley – are tightly nailed for “unlawful harassment” of the party’s Jewish members.

Both of their public comments conformed to some of the most obvious tropes of antisemitism: a Jewish conspiracy, political and/or economic, behind the scenes.

The EHRC specifies two further illegal acts. One involves “political interference” by the leader’s office in antisemitism complaints brought to the party, particularly those regarded as “politically sensitive”.

The other involves the party’s failure to “provide adequate training” to those handling complaints. Whether caused by the Labour Party’s intent or incompetence (or both), each of these failures of practice are taken, by the EHRC, to be acts of “unlawful indirect discrimination”, perpetrated on those making complaints of antisemitism.

The EHRC certainly lays out an exacting task list of improvements for Labour on how to handle these issues. But the report stops short of defining the party as “institutionally racist” (the famous charge laid on the London Metropolitan Police after the killing of Stephen Lawrence).

Indeed, read on its own terms and by comparison to the febrility of the last four years on this topic, one might have imagined the Labour Party not quite dodging the bullet but at least foreseeably surviving this hit. The justiciable culprits are few, and the remedies suggested are mainly organisational and educational.

This is why Thursday’s shoot-out – Corbyn’s statement about the “exaggerations” of complaints, Starmer’s suspension of his former leader from the party, Corbyn’s defiant comeback – seem to be as much driven by emotion and character than by cool strategy.

I’ve no doubts that the last chapter of the report is what triggered Corbyn’s swingeing first response. Again quoting how effectively Labour deals with sexual harassment by comparison, the EHRC writes: “ ... it is hard not to conclude that antisemitism within the Labour Party could have been tackled more effectively if the leadership had chosen to do so.”

In his response, Corbyn’s story is that from 2018, his team “acted to speed up, not hinder the process”. A very large internal party report, leaked last March, tried to show that the Corbyn office’s efforts were being deliberately impeded and subverted by other forces within the Labour Party. Many commentators thought this was a massive exercise in self-exculpation.

However its account was backed up in the book written by two Times journalists, Left Out: The Inside Story Of Labour Under Corbyn. During the 2017 election, Pogrund and Maguire write that officials like Sam Matthews – who was in charge of the disputes team that dealt with complaints of antisemitism – were covertly “funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds of resources into the seats of devout opponents of the leadership.”

So Starmer’s immediate kickback repays a little more Kremlinology. One of his explicit reasons for suspending Corbyn is that the latter blames “factions” within the party for the poor handling of antisemitism complaints.

This seems to have allowed Starmer his Neil Kinnock moment. I’m referring to when the former leader cast out Militant Tendency at their 1985 conference – a far-left group headed by the leader of Liverpool council Derek Hatton. The act is often seen as establishing the centre-ground unity that New Labour was subsequently built on.

Is Starmer really trying to just eradicate the Corbyn era – its hundreds and thousands of new members, its alternative media and policy organisations, its activist organisations like Momentum?

And to do so in a way which will make the party even more factional? My bottomless popcorn box is at the ready.

Starmer’s second charge against Corbyn’s response to the report is that anyone who believes that anything in these claims were “exaggerated … has no place in our party”. Corbyn should really have specified his means of exaggeration. Establishment tabloids with a capitalist agenda are one thing, but thousands of supporters jabbing away intemperately at their networked devices is another.

To remind you, the EHRC report is precise about its remit – determining where the Labour Party was “legally responsible” for harassment, which was two out of 70 cases it considered. But it also mentions that 59 out of the 70 files involved social media. And that “many more files” involved objectionable digital material from “ordinary” (but not legally responsible) Labour Party members.

The full range of the old rubbish seems to be there. “Diminishment of scale or significance of the Holocaust, expressed support for Hitler or Nazis, comparing Israel to the Nazis, Rothschild conspiracies, British Jews more loyal to Israel than Britain…”

I have only a glancing experience of the Corbynista party culture within this period (I quite liked the techno-eco-socialism espoused by their youthful policy communities, and still do). But I’ve noticed over the last few days how many of its former votaries aren’t immediately lining up with the thesis “antisemitism was used to smear the radical left”.

THE writer and activist Paul Mason described the report on Radio 4 as “measured, forensic and just”. Another Labour left communicator, Rachel Shabi, described it on Twitter as “a strong, solid document. It shows that the issues Jewish people and others were highlighting as problems within the Labour Party were, in fact, problems. Please read it”.

Shabi makes a fair point of comparison. The long-standing internal report into Islamophobia in the Tory party, urged on by forces like the Muslim Council of Britain and Baroness Warsi, has still not been published. Indeed, the EHRC pressed pause on its own investigation until the Tories had concluded their private business. Don’t hold your breath.

Can we all learn from this? I used to have a line which went something like “I’m a deep and reverent lover of Jewish civilisation, and an implacable critic of right-wing, Palestine-incursing Israeli governments”.

Both statements are still true for me. But I have come to recognise that even regarding Jewish realities as “exceptional” and “unique” is part of the underlying problem. Fair and rational treatment for all polities, citizens and their behaviours, serving universal values and rights, should be the number one rule.

I still shake my head at this stramash. How did an eco-socialist Labour Party, with a mobilised generation before them and a raft of radical policies (nukes and indy Scotland excepted) that would have genuinely prepared us well for a tough century, blow it so badly? Overwhelming establishment opposition, sure. But tripping over this stupid old canard?

This robust report will doubtless help those who, in the future, ever find themselves harassed by antisemitism in the people’s party. But what it says about the culture of radical politics is, I think, pretty damning.