Andy McDonald’s suspension from the Parliamentary Labour Party by Keir Starmer is absurd and insulting.

Absurd, because the allegedly offensive words he spoke at a Palestine solidarity demonstration – a call for “all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea” to “live in peaceful liberty” — could only upset a deranged warmonger.

And it constitutes an insult to the hundreds of thousands who have marched for a just peace, and to all Muslims in Labour and beyond angry about our ruling class’s indulgence of Israeli aggression.

It is a brazenly factional move, as confirmed by a “Labour source” claiming it would put the Socialist Campaign Group “back in its box.”

If ever there was a time for the Labour left, in Parliament as well as outside, to take a united and principled stand it is now. This latest outrage shows beyond doubt that the Starmerites will come for all serious left MPs sooner or later.

Diane Abbott remains suspended and “under investigation” many months after her suspension for a letter that she immediately apologised for. We know by now that there is no justice in Keir Starmer’s Labour.

But Starmer can be forced to retreat. Labour front-benchers are publicly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, a demand backed by nearly 90 per cent of Labour voters, without sanction. And the initial ban on addressing demonstrations has been broken.

But he will not back down without a fight. That needs to start in solidarity with Andy McDonald.