Keir Starmer’s team attempted to rescue the political career of a 7 October “truther”, because he belonged to his faction. Cut out all the noise, and this is the core of the scandal involving Labour’s belatedly disowned candidate Azhar Ali in Rochdale.

Ali had, after all, told Labour members that Israel “deliberately took the security off” to knowingly allow the 7 October attack to happen to “give them the green light to do whatever they bloody want”. When these comments were leaked to a newspaper, Ali apologised, which the Labour leadership presented as a retraction and thus the matter was settled. This is an insult to any reasonable person’s intelligence.

After much uproar and further comments emerged, Labour belatedly withdrew support from his candidacy. This is an episode that offers profound lessons about the leader’s operation.

Starmer told broadcasters that he had taken “decisive action” by withdrawing support for Ali. The facts tell us otherwise. Hours after this apology, shadow cabinet minister Lisa Nandy was dispatched to campaign alongside him. Meanwhile, her colleague Nick Thomas-Symonds took to the airwaves to make a passionate case of mitigation. He emphasised how apologetic Ali was, even making a plea for sympathy on the grounds that “people can get things very wrong” and that the candidate had fallen for an “online conspiracy theory and that does not represent his view”.

The former Labour MP Louise Ellman condemned Ali’s “outrageous and deeply offensive conspiracy theories”, but added she had “known Azhar for over 20 years and he consistently supported me when I was subjected to antisemitic attacks”.

Here was an obvious operation by the........

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