Andrew Murray even supports the North Korean regime

For all its faults and idiosyncrasies, the Labour party has important accomplishments to its credit. None has been so historically vital as the role of Clement Attlee’s postwar government in establishing Nato, which bound the defence of western Europe to that of the United States. It strains credibility that Attlee’s modern-day successor as Labour leader takes advice from people who, in the struggle between constitutional democracies and communist autocracies, supported the wrong side. But that’s how it is.

Jeremy Corbyn’s inner circle includes Andrew Murray, a longstanding member of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB). Mr Corbyn and his close allies met three weeks ago at a country house in Surrey owned by the Unite union. Their discussions centred on Mr Corbyn’s next steps if, as is almost certain, he is re-elected Labour leader this week. Mr Murray is chief of staff for Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite. He stands to gain from a mooted purge of Labour’s staff by Mr Corbyn, being in pole position to become the party’s next general secretary.

Mr Murray isn’t even a member of the Labour party for the very good reason that his politics are alien to everything it stands for. In a slim volume entitled The Communist Party of Great Britain: A Historical Analysis to 1941, published in 1995, Mr Murray writes: “That things happened in the USSR which were inexcusable and which ultimately prejudiced Socialism’s whole prospect is today undeniable. Whether Communists in the capitalist world could or should have done more than they did is much more contentious.”

In short, Mr Murray believes that British communists in the 1930s were justified in backing the Great Terror, the Moscow Trials and the Ukraine famine. Mr Murray predictably supports the most nightmarish totalitarian state in the modern world. In a report to the executive committee of the CPB in 2003, he declared: “Our party has already made its basic position of solidarity with People’s [ie North] Korea clear.”

Labour upholds parliamentary democracy. Mr Corbyn’s team believe, by contrast, that Attlee was wrong to ally with the US and that Soviet communism represented progress and civilisation. Even Mr Corbyn’s alliances with antisemites and terror groups are outstripped in ignominy and disgrace by his reliance on Mr Murray’s counsel.