The conservative defectors made a political decision. The labour defectors made a moral one | thearticle

It’s hard not to side with the three women who have taken on the Tory party. Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston were justified in feeling ill-treated and in leaving a Conservative

Party that they felt was no longer the one they had joined. It is understandable that they see their predicament as equivalent to that of the eight MPs who quit the Labour Party. These were

both rare cases of politicians acting on principle. But there is a vital difference — one that the media have contrived to obscure. The three Tories disagreed with their party over a

political question of supreme importance: Brexit. They say they walked out because they had nothing in common with the hard Brexiteers of the European Research Group (ERG). They say they

have left to be free to fight for a second referendum to reverse the result of the first one. Unlike their colleagues who voted Remain but accept that result, these three refuse to accept

Brexit at any price. Theirs is an honourable decision. But they were not forced to make it. They had not been coerced or threatened by their party leadership — although some of their local

activists were hostile. The Prime Minister has sought to keep both wings of the Conservative Party represented in the Cabinet. Most Tories who share their view that Brexit is an unmitigated

disaster have not left. Soubry, Allen and Wollaston have resigned because they feel they have a better chance of stopping, sabotaging or reversing Brexit outside their party. That’s

politics. What motivated their Labour counterparts was something else. They too disagreed profoundly with Jeremy Corbyn’s line on Brexit. But that policy disagreement was not the only or

even the main reason for their departure. They broke with the party they loved because it had become institutionally anti-Semitic. That’s not a political issue. It’s a moral imperative.

Anti-Semitism is not just a policy, let alone a principle. It isn’t even a mere prejudice. It’s a philosophy — albeit a delusional, even diabolical one. It is not susceptible to rational

debate. You can argue with an anti-Semite, but you cannot hope to persuade him. His mental universe is comprehensively conspiratorial. Any evidence you produce, any logic to which you

appeal, anything you say, in fact, will merely reinforce his suspicion that you are part of the conspiracy. Anti-Semitism is infinitely adaptable; it mutates over time and space, filling the

vacuum created whenever reason and morality desert the field. This nightmarish mindset is what the eight MPs were up against inside Corbyn’s Labour Party. There is nothing remotely

comparable in the Tory split over Europe. Decent men and women can and do differ over Brexit. That is entirely legitimate and indeed necessary in a democracy. It is in many ways unfortunate

that the British party system does not correspond to the battle lines on Europe. Tory and Labour Europhiles have a fair complaint that their views are inadequately reflected by their

parties. There are, however, parties that do reflect those views — most obviously, the Liberal Democrats — and it should not be forgotten that for many years after the the 1975 referendum,

Eurosceptics felt unrepresented too. Sometimes politics is a matter of patience. But there is no point in waiting for an anti-Semite to change his mind. Nothing short of the catastrophe that

befell Germany in 1945 would have cured the German people of the _Weltanschauung_, the world view of the Nazis. The Labour MPs who left could not stomach the toxic atmosphere of intolerance

created by those who hate Israel so much that no means is so foul that it will not further their end: the replacement of the Jewish state by a Palestinian one. There is no conceivable

compromise between those who see anti-Zionism as the great cause of our time and those who see it as a warrant for genocide. The sight of former members of both main parties sitting together

in the Commons has reinvigorated British politics. The Independent Group has promised to practise a new kind of politics. Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young — even if

only in spirit — was very heaven. Yet the ex-Tory members should show a little more understanding of the ordeal their ex-Labour colleagues have been through. They may talk of a “Purple

Momentum” or “Blukip”. They may believe that the ERG is the equivalent of the Corbynistas. In reality, there is no comparison. Wearing a double-breasted suit is not the same as laying

wreaths on the graves of terrorists.