Whatever interpretation is placed on this week’s events surrounding Jeremy Corbyn, one fact is clear: a disciplinary panel of Labour’s National Executive Committee decided that it is acceptable for party members to say that antisemitism has been “dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media”.

In other words, that the party rejects the very basis of last month’s Equality and Human Rights Council report. When the full NEC next meets, it will either uphold or overturn Mr Corbyn’s reinstatement.

Should it uphold it, it will quite literally make the party institutionally antisemitic. In lifting his suspension, the party has, in effect, chosen to support Mr Corbyn rather than its Jewish members.

This is the prism through which Labour must now be viewed. And it is the context in which Sir Keir Starmer’s decision not to resinstate the whip to Mr Corbyn has to be understood.

Clearly this was a welcome move. The former Labour leader is not fit to be a Labour member, let alone an MP. But while Sir Keir was right to act against him, he needed also to take on the party culture that reinstated Mr Corbyn as a member.

That showed that anyone tackling Labour antisemitism must take on the party itself. Sir Keir should, for example, have said that in the absence of expulsion, he was doing the next best thing — and it was to be regarded as a de facto expulsion.

Instead, he said that he will “keep this situation under review”, implying that the door is open to Mr Corbyn to regain the whip in some circumstances. There is still a long, long way to go for Labour to show it deserves to be regarded as decent once more.