Diane Abbott is now at that stage in her career in which she has run out of f**ks to give. Hence her reassertion in an extended BBC radio interview that she thinks the prejudice experienced by Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers is different from that experienced by Black people.

It is not for me to speak about how Jewish people experience antisemitism. Some in her constituency dress in a way which makes them very obviously Jewish and many others do not. I would struggle to distinguish a member of the latter group from anyone else in Mare Street or Stoke Newington.

As an Irish person who has lived in Britain for a very long time, I can say with absolute certainty that my experience of racism as a white person is very different from that of Black people. The one common feature is that most of it was at the hands of the police. Any journey which involved a port or an airport almost invariably used to mean getting pulled over by Special Branch as part of an intelligence gathering operation and you would kill time hoping you wouldn’t be that year’s version of the Birmingham Six. That does not happen anymore. Fingers crossed.

However, other than one early job where the least objectionably racist person was a member of the National Front (sic), the racism I had to deal with was very low level stuff – unamusing attempts at mimicry or a certain standoffishness in a couple of posh places.

Abbott tells a story in the interview of her early days in Parliament. Tony Banks, a decent leftish Labour MP, took her into one of the bars to celebrate with a bottle of champagne. As they were leaving, he told her that all the Tories had been staring at the sight of a Black woman in territory they considered their own. That does not happen to White people.

According to the British Medical Journal  Black women are still twice as likely as White women to die from pregnancy related causes. This is also true in the United States. The Mental Health Foundation reports that Black people are four times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than White people.

Even the Home Office acknowledges that Black people are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than Whites. The Office for National Statistics data show that Black households have significantly lower wealth (median wealth of £73,000 for Black Caribbean households vs. £234,000 for White British households).

And then there are the things that cannot be quantified. The looks Black people get when they are in the English countryside or the professionals who “hear colleagues muttering that we have filled some quota, sometimes we’re ignored” and have “problems getting into the building.”

It is self-evident that Diane Abbott is not antisemitic. The Labour right have long wanted her out of the party and have confected an excuse for a public hanging because Diane Abbott has pointed out what everyone knows to be true. These lies and slanders don’t work anymore. As I have observed before, the party’s right wingers are some of the most unpleasant people you will ever have the misfortune to meet in real life. Starmer and McSweeney seem to have decided to press the Labour Party’s self-destruct button. I can but wish them well.