Ellie here, like many left-wing commentators desperate for respectability in the mainstream, falling prey to an attitude she so succinctly described in another thread. https://twitter.com/elliemaeohagan/status/1322143880679182337

I get it. You don't want to be seen as a "crank" and a cultist. Or you might genuinely believe that there are more important things at stake than the reputation of one man. Fair. But do you seriously not see the sheer injustice and contradiction at the heart of this suspension?

And there is also this: there are thousands of people who joined the party with enthusiasm and good faith. We do not make our living from politics, we actually do this in our free time, while juggling full-time jobs and children. And the party has treated us with contempt.

From day one it has attempted to shift the responsibility for its historical/institutional failings onto us. And under Starmer this has intensified. I get that there are larger things at stake here, but we are also people with self-respect and the party has trampled all over it.

And even if I believed that there is a larger anti-racism cause here that is damaged by stating the obvious fact that some of the claims against the Labour membership were exaggerated or that the need for a Labour government trumps all else, I am tired and demoralised.

Maybe one day there will be a next wave of people who want to work for the *possibility* of an alternative (I mean, realistically, that was the extent of our ambition) and are tempted to try via Labour. I can hope that the party will treat them better, but I wouldn't count on it.