As a mild mannered sort of a bloke I seldom find my blood boiling with fury but if there is one thing that gets my goat it is the undiluted arrogance and overwhelming egomania of those people who gain election to the House of Commons entirely on the strength of the party rosette and then turn around and seek to make a career out of damning their former party and claiming some sort of moral superiority that makes them better than all the other 649 MPs.
They happily turn their coat but shy away from having the basic decency and courage to resign their seat, forego the £90,000 plus, and put their money where their mouth is and stand in a byelection.
Even more infuriatingly, they claim the moral high ground and, hugging their precious principles to their chest, they pour scorn on all those who do not claim to have the political purity and personal perfection that they so clearly enjoy.
One of the most sickening examples is the decision by the previously unknown Member for Coventry South - Zarah Sultana.
Zarah Sultana's bare-faced arrogance makes my blood boil. She has treated her voters with contempt - Stephen Pound
Getty Images
That fair city really only made it onto the national stage when Lady Godiva, in the interest of full transparency, rode naked through the streets.
Zahra Sultana has stripped herself of every shred of loyalty, and her bare-faced arrogance leaves you breathless. She has decided that although she owes everything to the Labour Party, she is better than it and has chosen to bite the hand that once so generously fed her.
It is one of the curses of politics on the left that splinter groups and malignant corpuscles abound in the outer darkness.
Ken Livingstone – who knew a thing or two about splitting from the mainstream – described the myriad self-satisfied factions on the crowded stage of the far left as “lice on the body politic” and Sultana’s current diva-like behaviour may well fall into this category.
It is the easiest thing in the world to demand endless expenditure on every aspect of social support without ever asking yourself the two key questions: is it really helping the nation or the national economy if over a thousand people a day join the swelling army of the welfare dependent and where is the money to come from?
Fortunately, Sultana’s army gives the very real impression of being unable to organise a booze up in a brewery. She blithely announced that the new breakaway party would be led by the Sonny and Cher of the far left – Jeremy Corbyn and her good self.
Unfortunately, she had not bothered to check with Jeremy, and reliable sources confirm that this normally most gentle of souls is spitting tacks.
Rather more thoughtful inhabitants of the Marxist world, such as John McDonnell, want nothing to do with the Sultana of Swing and must be weeping at the damage she is doing to the left in general.
Good old Neal Kinnock has addressed the issue accurately by referring to the fact that the new party has no actual leader, policies or even a name. He suggests, in as he puts it, a most comradely way, that they choose to call themselves FAG for Farage Assistance Group.
So, with Reform streaking ahead and Labour not enjoying the happiest of first birthdays, does yet another schism on the far left really matter?
Politically – probably not. Sultana may be raising hopes in some quarters, but most of the nation will yawn and turn away.
What does matter is the sheer insolence of those who show such contempt for their electorate that they refuse to do the decent thing and step down if they no longer feel a scintilla of loyalty to the party that they owe their career to.
Then there's the poor voters of Coventry South who voted for a Labour MP and now have a preening prima donna who cares for herself and herself alone and nothing for the people who put her in the privileged position that she now dishonours every time she skulks into the chamber.