The bad smell that has been emanating from the Labour party for some weeks now has developed into a putrid stink. A Labour MP, Kevin McNamara, has claimed that Tory leader Michael Howard's proposals for action against illegal travellers' camps have 'a whiff of the gas chambers' about them. This hideous slur was echoed by Rodney Bickerstaffe, a trustee of the Labour party movement for travellers' rights, who disgracefully recalled the Nazi' 'solution' for gypsies in 1930s Europe. So what did Howard do to occasion such a smear? He merely argued that the rule of law should apply to everyone equally, and that therefore travellers should not be given carte blanche to bust the planning laws but should be bound by them like everyone else. For this, he is accused of being a Nazi. What on earth is going on here?

The principal explanation lies in the obscene moral inversion of victim culture. Travellers are held to be a beleaguered minority. Like other self-designated 'victim' groups, their behaviour is therefore considered beyond challenge, even when they are behaving antisocially or unlawfully, because 'victims' can do no wrong. Anyone who tries to hold them to account, therefore, is held to be a bigot or racist.

In addition, because gypsies were murdered in the Nazi death camps they are considered especially immune from condemnation (even though many travellers aren't gypsies at all, but simply itinerants). There is, however, one group that was murdered in the Nazi death camps that is not deemed immune from condemnation. This group is the Jews, who happened to be the principal target of the Nazi Holocaust. Despite the fact that the Jews have not behaved antisocially or unlawfully, and in Israel are the principal target of Arab and Islamic fascism which has caused thousands of innocent Israelis to be murdered over the past 50 years, those whose hearts bleed for travellers and other 'victim' groups now portray the Jews as Nazis. This both denies the Holocaust and demonises contemporary Jews -- all under the rubric of 'anti-racism'and other similar progressive sentiments.

So it is that Michael Howard, a Jew whose own grandmother was murdered in Auschwitz, can be accused by Labour apparatchiks of policies with 'a whiff of the gas chambers' about them. Would they have unleashed this astonishing smear against a non-Jewish party leader? I don't think so. Accusations of 'racism', perhaps; but the fact is that, for the left, 'Nazi' has become the smear of choice against the Jews.

And of course, this is but the latest in a whole string of similar recent Labour jibes against the Jews. There was London Mayor Ken Livingstone's attack on a Jewish Evening Standard reporter for being like a 'concentration camp guard'; there was Energy Minister Mike O'Brien's cynical exploitation of Muslim anti-Jewish feeling in a naked bid for Muslim votes; there was Labour's Fagin election poster; and there was Leader of the House Peter Hain -- the erstwhile anti-apartheid campaigner -- referring to Michael Howard as an 'attack mongrel', an astounding piece of venomous bigotry.

And still Tony Blair has said nothing. No apology. No explanation. Just silence. What can he say, after all? For the Labour party, and all points further left, have long since hitched their wagon to the star of anti-Jewish prejudice. On his own website, Stephen Pollard reports a remarkable speech delivered in the House of Lords last month by a Swedish antisemite, Joran Jeremas, at the invitation of Labour peer Lord Ahmed. According to Pollard, these are some highlights of this speech:

'“your newspapers belong to Zionists”

“in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East…in the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble - and that is Jewish supremacy drive”

“…the Jewish media-lords in the US and elsewhere. Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking; just last month a Rothschild bought the French daily Liberacion…”

“The Jews like an Empire…This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance…Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se…”

“Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England…they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important in order to turn the tide.”

“all the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.”

'It is, I suppose, possible that Lord Ahmed made a terrible mistake and had no idea that the man he invited was a rabid anti-semite - despite the fact that his views are freely available on his website. But the absence of an apology for such a mistake, or a condemnation of the views expressed by Jeremas, seems to indicate that Lord Ahmed sees nothing wrong with the views expressed in Jeremas' speech, and might even support the views outlined on his site, since he chose to invite him to speak. In which case, does the Labour Chief Whip in the Lords feel it appropriate that Lord Ahmed should still hold the Labour whip? And if so, why?'

The answer is that the Labour party is riddled with rabid prejudice against the Jews. Sheltering behind the convenient pretence that hatred of Israel is not the same as hatred of the Jews, they have pretended to themselves that they occupy the moral high ground by sanctimoniously railing against 'racism' and 'prejudice'. Well, that pretence is now well and truly over. The line between their Nazification of Israel and their Nazification of British Jews is unbroken. Whether consciously or unconsciously, in incident after incident they have been giving themselves away. They are bigots, mired in the moral squalour of the contemporary left.