There is an emerging cover-up regarding Labour’s “Islamophobia” definition. This deeply controversial new framework, now relabelled as “anti-Muslim hostility”, seeks to establish a definition of actions or behaviour towards Muslims specifically which is not allowed. It has been criticised severely by free speech groups, the Conservatives and the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission as a fundamental threat to freedom of expression.

But who created it, who influenced it, and why?

Last year Angela Rayner launched a Call for Evidence and established a Working Group on “Anti-Muslim Hated / Islamophobia Definition.” This has long been a Labour talking point, seeking to create a definitional parity between criticism of Islam and anti-Semitism. Of course these two things are not the same, since Jews are a people, subject for centuries to racist intolerance and persecution, while Islam is a system of religious belief. One is a group of human beings, defined by ancestry and history; the other represents a set of theological and moral claims about the world.

Read more: Labour’s Islamophobia cover-up