A new biography of a man who was arguably Labour’s most antisemitic leader has provoked something of a discussion about the roots of imperialist ideology in the British Labour movement. The twice turncoat Lord Adonis, now readmitted to the parliamentary Labour Party after a mid-career defection to the Coalition Liberal Democrats which torpedoed a Labour election bid, is the author of Ernest Bevin, Labour’s Churchill. Bevin was a key figure in the building of the Transport and General Workers Union and was minister in the wartime Churchill government and in the postwar Labour administration of Clement Attlee. As leader of one of Labour’s most powerful affiliates Bevin was a power in the land and in Labour’s affairs. His brutal 1935 conference execution of Labour’s left-wing pacifist leader George Lansbury finds an echo in Starmer’s present day assault on Corbyn’s moral standing.