THE Labour Party is consuming itself. The fratricidal row over anti-semitism is something the party can ill afford at a time when it has lost much of its working class base, has split over Brexit and faces evisceration in the forthcoming council elections. There is a political tragedy taking place on the UK left, and it affects everyone in Scotland whether or not they support Labour.

The lack of an effective opposition in Westminster is allowing crucial decisions to be taken over Brexit without the Government and its legislation being held to account. A right-wing Eurosceptic faction,which barely represents the Conservative Party let alone the UK as a whole, has been allowed to run riot with the UK constitution and jeopardise our economic security.

The character and destiny of Britain is being altered as a result in ways that most civilised voters find abhorrent. In this once-tolerant country, immigration is now the defining issue in UK politics. The recent sabre-rattling over Gibraltar has revealed disturbing neo-imperialist passions released by Brexit. The project to turn Britain into a low-tax, low-regulation haven for exploitative capitalism is finally being realised.

It is the job of the opposition to challenge this, and Labour has failed in this duty. The SNP group in Westminster may punch above its weight, but there is no way 56 MPs can perform the role of opposition in a legislature of 650. Yet Labour and the SNP could have united to provide an effective challenge to Brexit. After all, the Tories only had a 12-seat majority in the 2015 General Election, and there is almost certainly a pro-Remain majority in the Commons. Instead, Her Majesty’s Opposition is preoccupied with tearing itself apart over ludicrous allegations of anti-semitism.

This has little to do with hatred of Jewish people and everything to do with Labour’s passion for factionalism. No one seriously believes that Ken Livingstone is an anti-semite who believes that Jews collaborated with the Nazis in their own oppression. Mr Livingstone is a silly man – an attention seeker who thrives on making and defending controversial remarks, such as his claim that “Hitler supported Zionism before he went mad” on the Vanessa Feltz show two years ago. He did not say, as his critics claim, that “Hitler was a Zionist”, but the remark was sufficiently ambiguous for him to be under an obligation to undo the confusion and apologise for any offence.

The former London Mayor was referring to the well-documented Haavara agreement in 1933 when some Zionists collaborated with some in the Nazi government to assist the emigration of some Jews to Palestine. Persecuted groups often have to do deals with the devil in order to save lives. This did not mean that Zionists are or were Nazis, or that Hitler was personally in league with Zionism or sympathised with its aims. German intelligence arranged for the transportation of Bolsheviks, including Lenin, into Russia in 1917, but that doesn’t mean that the Kaiser was a marxist.

A strong Labour leader would have waded into this dispute – as Tony Blair did into the row over clause 28 that split the Scottish Labour Party so disastrously in 2000 – and told a few home truths. No, Ken is not an anti-semite, but he should apologise. Yes, Jewish groups are offended, but the party believes in freedom of speech. Finally: both sides should damn well pipe down.

This is elementary party management. You don’t get fights like this breaking out in the SNP or the Conservatives because party discipline is intact. There are divisions on issues like the role of monarchy in the SNP, or over hard Brexit in the Tory Party, that could easily blow up into major media shouting matches. But passionate though those disagreements are, they are kept within the bounds of party unity. Both sides realise that they hang together or hang separately.

Regrettably, it seems that Labour would prefer to hang separately. The factions are so far apart that they would rather fight than pull together, even if it means mutually assured destruction. The right, and the anti-Corbynite grouping, believe that they have nothing to lose in stoking the fires of anti-semitism because they are doomed if they remain in the party under Mr Corbyn’s leadership. They believe they will either be deselected by local party memberships which have been taken over by Momentum, the pro-Corbyn grass roots movement, or that they will lose their seats at the next election as Labour is reduced to a rump by alienated voters.

For their part, Momentum supporters believe the right is using the Livingstone affair to demonise the left, destabilise the Labour leadership and effect a restoration of Blairite pro-market policies. They see Mr Livingstone as a cypher for Mr Corbyn, who has also been accused of tolerating anti-semitism. Momentum sees this as an existential fight not least because the anti-semitism smear was directed at its members when Jewish groups attacked remarks made by the former vice chair of Momentum ,Jackie Walker, last year.

A Jew herself, Ms Walker was recorded in a closed party session saying “it would be wonderful if Holocaust memorial day was open to all people who experienced holocaust” and saying that she “hadn’t seen a definition of anti-semitism that she could work with”. No reasonable person would regard these as anti-semitic remarks in themselves, but reason doesn’t come into it. The level of offence registered by Jewish groups, endorsed by Labour right wingers, led to her resignation as vice-chair of the movement she helped create.

It is of course quite in order for Jewish groups in and out of the Labour Party to express offence or to question whether Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups are insinuating anti-semitic memes into party debate. But it is up to the party leader to impose order on his party. Labour’s tragedy is that it has elected a leader in Jeremy Corbyn who has transformed Labour into the largest mass membership political party in Europe, but who simply lacks authority over the party organisation.

Say what you like about Tony Blair, and I’ve said a very great deal about his many mistakes, but at least he had control over the party. Labour must find someone, preferably of a more radical disposition, who has the charisma, will and intellectual weight to save Labour from itself. And save Britain from hard Brexit.