It is healthy to retain scepticism about the activities of the so-called Deep State, that is the security and intelligence establishment. In the run up to the Iraq War, mistakes aplenty were made at the urging of politicians and political advisors in Britain who brazenly, now when it comes to Brexit, have the cheek to accuse others of operating without a coherent plan. Earlier, during the Cold War, MI5 and MI6 made mistakes – and were penetrated by Communist agents in several notable and embarrassing cases. Authors and historians have charted those mistakes and made the case that we should be vigilant. The Deep State must remain under democratic control and parliamentary oversight, they say. Quite right.

But in the broad historical sweep, in a complex world, the UK’s security and intelligence establishment has done a pretty good job. Looking at the security picture now, with Islamist plots being thwarted daily, they and their teams are clearly working round the clock and get little credit.

Still, Andrew Murray, a leading advisor to Jeremy Corbyn, suggests in the latest New Statesman that they have other more important things to do, that is working against Corbyn and the election of a Corbynite Labour government. He had his application for a parliamentary pass rejected. Good, I say.

One of the major mistakes made by Labour moderate MPs, and by people who don’t realise how bad Corbyn would be for the economy and institutions of this country, how inimical to freedom, is to assume that the Labour party as we understand it – mainstream, anti-Marxist, believing in a mixed economy and the defence of the West – still exists but is just going through a bit of a wild phase.

No, the Labour party as we have understood it since the 1920s has ceased to exit. It is in the hands of people like Murray, who is a Communist – albeit a very posh Communist, as leading British Communists often are. Murray hardly keeps it a secret. He was in the Communist Party until recently. His writing is fascinating, and Communist, and terrifying. Read his chilling essay on Lenin and leaps, explaining how to co-opt the mainstream in pursuit of revolution. Murray doesn’t even have the excuse of being a Communist in the 1930s, when without the benefit of hindsight it was plausible if wrong to see it as the only alternative to the rise of Fascism. Murray is a still Communist now, after we’ve seen it tried time and again resulting in tens of millions of deaths.

As a British citizen who values Britain’s institutions and political freedoms, I sincerely hope that the Deep State is working against Corbynite Communists to save the country and keep it free. But I suspect, as I said earlier, that they are far too busy defending us from the terrorists who draw inspiration from the pro-Iranian regime, death to Israel, “thinkers” that Corbyn likes to hang out with.