ISLAMOPHOBE! Anti-Semite! Fascist dog-whistler! Jew-hating wreath layer!

The pot-versus-kettle war of hyperbole has been raging across Labour and the Tories throughout this long hot (and now not-so-hot) summer. It reminds me of the bickering rows my children used to have, where one of them would quote distorted versions of remarks made by another and tearfully demand that I agree about their brother or sister’s manifest perfidy. To which you could only say: I’m sure he/she didn’t mean it, so let’s just try to enjoy the film.

The same goes for the deranged culture wars breaking out all over social media. The howls of contrived outrage go right over most people’s heads. Voters are not as stupid as the politicians, and their social media fan clubs, think they are. Everyone knows that there are some dodgy people in and around the Tory Party, but they also know that it is not a racist organisation and that Boris Johnson is not a proto-fascist. Similarly, they know that some of Labour’s Muslim supporters don’t like Jews much and that Jeremy Corbyn supports the Palestinian cause. But they also know that he is a life-long pacifist and anti-racist. He may be Mr Bean, but he’s not a Nazi.

We saw all this back in the 2014 independence referendum when attempts were made to portray the Scottish National Party as anti-English and the Yes campaign as extreme nationalism. It didn’t work. In fact, the more Unionists fulminated about cybernats and JK Rowling’s Twitter feed, the more support for Yes grew. It was doubts about the economic case for independence that ultimately won the day.

Almost every week a new tale merges about Mr Corbyn endorsing people who are offensive to Jews – such as his hosting an event in 2010 when Israel was compared with Nazi Germany, though on that particular occasion it was a Jewish holocaust survivor who made the comparison. This week, we have proof positive of Mr Corbyn’s anti-Semitic tendencies, say his detractors, with the revelation that he laid a wreath at the grave of one of the terrorists responsible for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Black September in 1972. Shock. Horror. Resign.

Mr Corbyn insists he wasn’t aware that there was a commemoration of any Black September militants nearby, and thought he was laying a wreath on the grave of the civilians killed by the Israeli raid on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation HQ in Tunis 1985. In his typically bumbling fashion he managed to boost the story by being vague about whether or not he was even holding a wreath, and where it was subsequently laid. He “doesn’t think” he was involved in any ceremony that might have related to a terrorist.

But confusion aside, most of us know that the idea Mr Corbyn would knowingly lay a wreath on the grave of a mass murderer is just not credible. He was in Tunis, typically, at a peace conference. His traducers are trying to trap him verbally, using his own mangled rebuttals, into admitting that supporting the Palestinian cause also means supporting hatred and murder of Jewish people. Many Palestinians do hate Jews, of course. Many of those at the 2014 Tunis peace conference were probably anti-Semitic, and may even have supported attacks on Jewish civilians.

It is of course essential for senior UK politicians to make absolutely sure they don’t inadvertently allow their opposition to Israel’s policies to stay into hatred of Jewish people. But when he was in Tunis as a back-bencher, Mr Corbyn probably never imagined he would become Labour leader, let alone a possible prime minister, and he was not as careful as he should have been. If The Thick Of It’s Malcolm Tucker had been there he’d have put him in a discreet arm-lock and steered him well away from any graveyard.

But today’s voters are wise to the politics of spin and understand how smears work. Mr Corbyn’s detractors in and out of the Labour Party may think they’re hastening his demise, but they’re almost certainly wrong. Just as the stories about his alleged links to the IRA did him little harm in the 2017 General Election, so attempts to portray him as an anti-Semitic terrorist wreath-layer will likely be so much chaff come the party conferences.

For most people under 40, Black September, like the IRA, is grainy, ancient history. Moreover, voters understand from the Good Friday Agreement that politicians usually end up talking to terrorists in the end. The Troubles would never have ended if Tony Blair hadn’t attended peace conferences and shaken hands with former IRA militants. Alistair Campbell attended the funeral of the former IRA chief of staff, Martin McGuiness. I sometimes wonder if the Good Friday Agreement would have happened at all had social media been in existence in 1998.

Mr Corbyn’s left-wing agenda appeals to younger people who are locked out of the housing market, burdened with student debt (in England) and losing hope of a secure pensionable job. They’ll continue to support him for these reasons, viewing attacks on his alleged anti-Semitism as character assassination by right-wing media plutocrats. His long-time support for the Palestinians is actually a side issue – though many younger (and older) supporters probably agree that Israel’s conduct under Benjamin Netanyahu has been reprehensible.

Increasingly, voters tend to approve of political figures who step out of the identikit, suit-and-tie image, and say what they actually believe. We are living in the age of authenticity, which values leaders who are prepared to take moral positions that may cause them presentational difficulties. This can be good and it can be bad. Donald Trump has been a beneficiary of this trend in America. Compared with him, Mr Corbyn’s populism is surely mercifully benign.

What we don’t need are the hyperventilating tribunes of left and right. They aren’t helping their respective party’s electoral chances, are doing damage to political discourse, and are exposing the political class as a whole to ridicule and contempt. The voters are simply tuning them out.