BIG events in Britain are often accompanied by ritual denunciations of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn: when the Times editorial accused Keir Starmer of “vacillation” and “panic” over Labour’s Gaza policy, they had to preface the criticism with a swipe at Corbyn, under whom they claim Labour had “plumbed” into “squalid moral depths.”

This is a pretty common phenomenon: when the current, centrist-dominated political scene comes up with more austerity, hunger and war, the centrist pundits have to spit out a ceremonial denunciation of Corbyn before they start to worry about whether the system is really working.

Haunted by the fact that an alternative, socialist response to these crises was recently popular, they feel they must exorcise the ghost of Corbynism before admitting the system isn’t working.

But when it comes to Gaza, allied hopes for a solution rest heavily on the very people they denounced Corbyn for hanging out with.