Diary – 14 February 2019

‘You OK?’ was the message I sent to Luciana Berger last week. As I scroll back through our previous WhatsApp chats I can see that I’ve sent this same message painfully frequently. I’ve sent it each time someone is jailed or charged in court for abusing her and threatening her for being Jewish. I’ve sent it every time the anti-Semitic abuse she receives reaches fever pitch, such as the time last month when she asked for our party to put down a vote of no confidence in the Tories. After which she was attacked as ‘the member for Liverpool Haifa,’ an ‘Israeli shill’ and more merciless racial abuse. We live in backward times. Luciana has by no means been the only MP to criticise Labour’s position on Brexit, nor is she alone in standing up against racism. So it’s funny how she seems to receive the lion’s share of Labour abuse (by ‘funny’, I mean anti-Semitic). On Friday, when I should have been giving my constituents my full attention, I ended up on the phone to Labour women and the party HQ, trying to put a halt to an attempted motion of no confidence in a pregnant Jewish MP — a motion, what’s more, that had been laid down by a man who had seemingly written anti-Semitic comments about Luciana in the past. But yeah, I’m sure it’s nothing to do with her being Jewish. Nothing at all.

In my constituency in Birmingham Yardley, I’m visited by a bloke asking for a food bank voucher. His family, he tells me, are without any resources. Why? He had been 15 minutes late for his meeting at the job centre, so he was sanctioned. He has two kids, who I am sure have learnt a valuable lesson of punctuality.