Allegations of anti-Semitism have dogged Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his party for years, but now it might go beyond a merely political headache. London’s Metropolitan police commissioner today announced a criminal investigation into as many as 45 cases of anti-Semitic hate crimes by Labour Party officials. The case landed on Cressida Dick’s desk after a whistleblower leaked an internal dossier to a radio station:

Scotland Yard has opened a criminal investigation into allegations of antisemitic hate crimes linked to Labour party members, according to the commissioner of the Metropolitan police.

Cressida Dick said officers had reviewed a leaked party dossier detailing 45 cases of alleged antisemitism that was passed to her in September by the radio station LBC.

The UK’s most senior police officer told the BBC she believed there could be a case to answer and, as a result, the force was consulting with prosecutors on the next steps.

“We have been assessing some material that was passed to me, in a radio studio of all things, about two months ago and we are now investigating some of that material because it appears there may have been a crime committed,” Dick said.

Bear in mind that British law goes farther than does American law in defining speech as a hate crime. Most of these potential crimes appear to be statements on social media, such as one that read, “We shall rid the Jews who are a cancer on us all.” Another potential crime consists of linking to an anti-Semitic blog post.

Those would never get prosecuted as crimes in the US, although they would end any political ambitions for people hateful and stupid enough to write this nonsense in social media. One that might get law enforcement attention here is a social media post that referred to a member of Parliament as a “Zionist extremist … who hates civilised people, about to get a good kicking.” That certainly would interest police in terms of security, at the very least, on either side of the pond.

These examples, on the other hand, point to a more disturbing reality about Labour members that even goes beyond anti-Semitism:

The fourth related to a party member being accused of putting a child through “10 years of hell”, using racial slurs against him and referring to him as “Jew boy”.

It was also alleged that the member had chased a girl, aged six or seven, around with air freshener, saying she smelled of curry and calling her “a chocolate monkey”.

Good Lord. If readers find this shocking, not everyone agrees. It’s about time, said one British politician, that people stop denying that Labour has an anti-Semitism problem. The politician? Labour’s #2:

Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, said the announcement was “thoroughly depressing, although sadly I am not surprised. All I can say to you again, if people have committed hate crimes they need to be dealt with by the full force of the law.”

He added that he hoped the Met inquiry would “silence a very small number of people who believe that antisemitism doesn’t exist in my party, or in other parties”.

That’s one hell of an anti-endorsement. It calls into question, however, why Corbyn still leads Labour, especially when he’s been well-known as a terror apologist when its victims are Jews. As long as Corbyn’s leading Labour, the number of sentient beings believing his party doesn’t have an anti-Semitism problem will remain very low indeed.