When Ehud Barak defeated an ultra-nationalist coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s 1999 general election, there were whoops of joy, a collective sigh of relief and dancing in the streets.

Ten years on, as Mr Barak tries to bolt his Labour party on to an even more rightwing coalition led by Mr Netanyahu, there is little more than a collective sneer. What happened in between was the slow-motion suicide of Labour, the party of Israel’s founding fathers, which now has so little influence on Israel’s future.