A few days ago, I received an email from a friend of mine who works with Sir Keir Starmer.
He wanted me to know that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission was taking the Labour Party out of special measures.

I was struck by the tone of the message and his motivation. He wasn’t telling me because I was a journalist.

He wasn’t boasting to me about the political success of his leader.

He was writing to me because I was a friend and I was Jewish and he felt moved and happy at the progress they had made, moved by his party’s gradual emergence from a state he had seen as shameful.

And I was happy for him.

The thing that was most painful about Labour’s disastrous descent was watching good people struggle with it, unsure quite what to do.

And having Jewish friends who would usually be on the left, unable to find a place in their natural home.

I cried when Luciana Berger was forced out of the party, odd though it may seem to say it.

And I don’t think they will have put the whole thing entirely behind them until she feels that they really have.

Here are a few of the lessons I have learned during this. It’s not an exhaustive list just those things at the top of my mind.

First, as bad as the antisemitism itself was the denial.

The suggestion that the problem was exaggerated was itself an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
It remains infuriating.

Keir Starmer was only able to tackle the problem by going after the people who denied it was a problem.

These people haven’t gone away, of course, but he made it clear they weren’t welcome in the Labour Party.

Second, people do care about antisemitism.

The issue contributed to Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat.

We were not on our own, and that was very encouraging.

Some people within Labour were very brave about it and opposed it because they found it morally unconscionable.

And this is true of some voters too.

But I think the main reason it proved a problem for Labour is that, without understanding the issues all that much and without having a great deal invested in it, many voters just thought it an indication that Labour under Corbyn was a bit weird.

A bit extreme.

The whole Zionism thing seemed like an oddball preoccupation. This isn’t quite the same as feeling upset about racism towards Jews. But it was certainly a helpful sentiment.

Third, one of the reasons why people on the left got so angry about being accused of antisemitism is that some of them genuinely didn’t realise they were being antisemitic.

This may seem odd to us, since we are all so familiar with the tropes.

But very early on in the row, I had an interchange with someone who genuinely didn’t realise that the Rothschilds were Jewish and thus didn’t understand what it meant when they started talking about “Rothschild Zionism”.

I was wary at first, but came to believe them.

They also couldn’t see why ascribing the ambition of world domination to Zionists, or saying that Zionists fund Starmer, is not the same as criticising the actions of the Israeli government.
One of the reasons that Dave Rich’s excellent new book, Everyday Hate, is so valuable is that he exposes antisemitic assumptions in everyday life which people often overlook.

We still have so much work to do explaining to people things we think are obvious.

I have begun to start conversations assuming this ignorance and very often this assumption proves correct.

Very often, but certainly (very certainly) not always.

Sadly, the idea that Jews are one of the primary capitalist and colonialist barriers to socialism remains a tenacious idea on the far left.

They never express it, using the term Zionist instead. But it is there.

And, unfortunately, the biggest lesson of the Labour antisemitism crisis is that these people will not give way or compromise their rhetoric in any way.

So the only solution is greater vigilance and resistance than was previously necessary.

And our only true friend in this campaign of resistance is liberal democracy. The only truly successful tactic is to defend moderation and the rule of law against populism and extremism of both left and right.

Daniel Finkelstein is Associate Editor of The Times