Mansfield Labour are having a hard time with their local Mayoral campaign for the May elections. Their initial candidate, Paul Bradshaw, quit in January, having been forced out by the hard left of the party. A new significantly less moderate candidate, Sean McCallum, was selected on Wednesday evening…

Guido can reveal that McCallum is the author of deeply anti-Semitic posts on his personal Facebook account. In a bizarre rant defending the comments that got Ken Livingstone suspended from the Labour Party, he equated the genocidal evil of the Nazi regime with the existence of Israel as a country “nazism & zionism are equally foul.” This is going even further than Ken Livingstone did…

He also declared that he “can’t see anything even vaguely anti-Semitic” about Naz Shah’s infamous Facebook post that got her suspended from the Labour Party. Shah herself later acknowledged that “the language I used was anti-Semitic, it was offensive… What I did was I hurt people and the language that was the clear anti-Semitic language.”

At the time Jeremy Corbyn said “What Naz Shah did was offensive and unacceptable. I have spoken to her and made this clear.” When even Jeremy Corbyn describes what you’re sharing as offensive you know you’re in trouble…

UPDATE: Guido understands that the Labour Party has suspended Sean McCallum pending investigation. A party spokesperson said:

“The Labour Party takes all complaints of antisemitism extremely seriously and we are committed to challenging and campaigning against it in all its forms. All complaints about antisemitism are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken.”

“I joined the Labour Party 50 years ago this month and in all that time I have never heard a single anti-semitic comment.”

"If all that's true, it would be appalling, but I have watched America impose sanctions… an appalling impact on their country" @ken4london on how Alan Johnson & Esther McVey reacted to his #bbctw film

"As we speak tonight, children in #Venezuela are starving to death" @afneil pic.twitter.com/Bl8zJfRZF7

— BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) February 1, 2019

Ken Livingstone made the brave choice of going on This Week to make a film explaining why “my friend Hugo Chavez” wasn’t responsible for the economic misery that has been wrought upon Venezuela and it’s all America’s fault instead. It’s almost worth watching just for Ken’s opening line of “Remember me? I used to be Mayor of London”…

Predictably, Ken’s bogus arguments were completely torn apart by Andrew Neil afterwards, with a hapless Livingstone reduced to saying: “I don’t know, I’m a retired pensioner, I don’t have staff providing the information”. His only defence after that was that the Venezuelan ambassador had told him it was true. At least he wasn’t quoting the anti-Semitic historical revisionist ‘UN rapporteur’ that Chris Williamson is so keen on…

Brillo then did the public service of explaining to Ken some of the real reasons why Venezuela is a basket case, including decades of self-enriching dictatorship, random confiscation of private property, price controls, and putting a loyalist army General in charge of the national oil company. Ken’s probably wishing he’d stayed in retirement…

“Let me suggest some other reasons why #Venezuela is a basket case” @afneil

“Decades of dictatorship” says @ken4london on previous US involvement in Latin America #bbctw

Here’s Ken’s film: https://t.co/38CNrnTNai pic.twitter.com/zTKxkdCmi5

— BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) February 1, 2019

Perhaps the only thing more predictable about a socialist government than brutal crackdowns on civil liberties and economic collapse is the UK’s hard left coming out in solidarity with it. Sure enough, the usual suspects are out in force in the Guardian, with numerous senior Labour MPs including John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Richard Burgon, Chris Williamson and Clive Lewis co-signing a letter along with Owen Jones condemning the “US attempt at regime change” in Venezuela and instead calling for “dialogue”. Classic…

Never mind the fact that it’s millions of ordinary Venezuelans who are taking to the streets to demand regime change after seeing their lives ruined by the crippling socialist policies of successive dictators Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro – obviously they’re just part of a grand “far right” US conspiracy which must be resisted to keep Maduro in place.

At least they’ve got some renowned moral authorities on their side, the letter was also signed by antisemitism scandal-ridden Pete Willsman and the disgraced Ken Livingstone. When you’re on Ken Livingstone’s side of history you know you’re on the wrong one…

UPDATE: Labour MP Angela Smith has condemned the letter as a “disgrace”, as well as the fact that Baroness Massey’s name was wrongly attached to the letter.

UPDATE II: Labour peer Baroness Massey insists her name was wrongly included in the list. “I disassociate myself from this letter,” she told PoliticsHome, “I know nothing about it. My name is Doreen E Massey and I’ve never heard of this letter – it’s nothing to do with me. They have pursued this in a very unprofessional way. It’s crazy.”

That’s it, the Boris story has surely peaked…

LBC’s Theo Usherwood has the transcript of Ken’s Labour Party disciplinary hearing. It is fair to say they did not exactly give him a tough grilling. Panel member Russell Cartwright instead blamed Guido and the media for the scandal in a series of pathetic softball questions. Seriously, the state of this…

“Naz Shah possibly didn’t see that [calling for Jews to leave the Middle East] was attempted humour, but it was picked up nearly two years later by Guido Fawkes. So what political current does Guido Fawkes normally represent, or is seen to represent?…

It was Iain Dale who was the interviewer on LBC, was it? And which political party has Iain Dale stood for as a candidate?

… A Telegraph editorial, the Telegraph is obviously a paper of the right and normally referred to as the Torygraph?

The Daily Politics show, which is hosted by Andrew Neil. And I would have thought there would have been – is there a consensus, do you think, in the Labour Party that everybody in the Labour Party thinks Andrew Neil is of the right?

Your interview on 30 April is with David Mellor, and obviously it’s common knowledge that he was a Conservative MP who was disgraced…

All select committees would have a government majority on them, regardless of who chairs it, so Tim Loughton was in the chair, the draft would have been under his name, and so – well, should we be surprised it made the conclusions it does about anti-Semitism in respect of the evidence it took from you? It’s another Conservative Party-dominated publication.”

Tell us again, Labour, how you’re taking anti-Semitism seriously…