In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Cheryl Hines who plays Larry David’s wife, is frequently so flummoxed by her husband’s behaviour that “Larry, why would you do that?” is almost her catchphrase. Larry has his own mental library of unwritten rules that make sense to him because, though he means well, he is at heart selfish and egocentric.

Cheryl’s question came to mind when I saw that someone who was briefly involved in Tower Hamlets Momentum was part of a Labour Friends of Israel parliamentary delegation which met the Israeli president Isaac Herzog. He’s the one who said “it is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved”, thereby implying that every Gazan is responsible for killings committed by Hamas and thus legitimising his state’s campaign of genocide against them.

Back in the early part of the Corbyn era, when local networks were being formed by people who hadn’t known of each other’s existence weeks before, I have a vivid memory of Kevin McKenna, who owes his election as Labour MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey solely to Reform winning 10 000 Tory votes, energetically doing something with a flipchart and sticky notes as the local Momentum group worked out its ultimately unsuccessful plan for world domination.

There was a falling out over something or other, probably a mix of personal and political conflicts I was dimly aware of and don’t remember the details of. People with better memories than me paint a very uncomplimentary picture of his motives and behaviour.  However, with one or two other exceptions, everyone who was on the left at that time has remained so and all the individuals I am aware of can recognise a genocide when they see one and know which side to pick.

As I have observed before, I never really worked out where the real power lay in the local Labour Party. Kevin did though and sharpishly aligned himself with the right to begin an ascent through the bureaucracy. The kindest interpretation of his professional rise, or if you prefer, moral descent, is that his new friends saw someone who was really one of the gang all along.

 In much the same way that Japanese gangsters have to chop off a bit of a finger to show unconditional loyalty, Labour’s right demands ostentatious expressions of support for Israel. You must admit that meeting the political leaders of a state at the very moment they are imposing a famine on two million people and not uttering a critical word about it is really above and beyond anything even the Yakuza would demand.

An odd thing about Kevin’s appearance on the world stage is that he hasn’t mentioned it on his social media account nor even issued a press statement. Considering the trivialities MPs feel obliged to share with the world you would almost feel that he is slightly embarrassed by it, albeit not embarrassed enough to have refused to go. He makes up for it with lots of union jacks and the odd anti-migrant snippet.

There are bound to be dozens of Kevin McKennas on the Labour benches. They had their ten minutes of homeopathic radicalism before working out that there isn’t much of a career in it and are now facing the certainty of being on the job market come the next election. From that point of view, a bit of career advancing networking with people conducting a genocide and their supporters is probably a smart move. Who are we to judge?