YOU can tell Parliament is on recess – the newspapers are headlining stories that would otherwise be lucky to hit page five.

There are quite a few by-elections coming up.

Two this week, as a result of a couple of my colleagues stepping down (one through a problem, the other in disgust at a policy), are not looking brightly optimistic for my party.

But it is one later this month, due to the very sad death of much-respected Labour MP Tony Lloyd, that is filling newspaper pages.

The candidate selected to replace Tony for Labour, at his selection meeting, made an unfortunate remark about the Israeli government’s role in the Hamas attack in October.

He claimed it was set up by Israel to create an excuse to invade Gaza. Whilst certainly anti-Israel, the comment was not necessarily anti-Semitic.

But an emerging later anti-Semitic comment resulted in Keir Starmer sacking him from the Labour Party, leaving him as an unsupported candidate at the election (due to election rule peculiarities).

Since then, another parliamentary candidate has been sacked and there are question marks over a third.

Every political party has people with strong views – it’s the nature of politics. Robust debate is important and to have difficult propositions put forward is to explore areas where we know what is unacceptable and why.

I’ve certainly seen some suggestions with regard holding back illegal migration across the English Chanel that are profoundly unacceptable.

But, because the idea was put forward, I can now define clearly what never occurred to me as possible as unacceptable.

Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour was ruled by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to be anti-Semitic at its core.

Keir Starmer set about ridding his party of anti-Semitism and now most Jewish Labour MPs are more comfortable. That is a good thing.

The problem Sir Keir now faces is the strength of feeling that lies within his party, brought to the surface by the Gaza war.

The sacked candidate made the comments at his selection meeting for the by-election nomination.

So the challenge is discovering whether the local party selected him as their preferred candidate despite his views on Israel and Jews or because of them.

I don’t agree with Sir Keir’s policies but I do like him and respect him. He is a decent man. But he has a formidable challenge to keep his team on message.