To find the truth about the Labour Party..

[threegee]

...don't look in The Guardian, read the Daily Express!

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AT FIRST glance it seems impossible. How could anyone have sympathy for the rigidly hard-Left views expressed on a regular basis by Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell?

After all, this is the man who has been dogged by claims he had offered support to the IRA and who appears to be on the verge of being an anarchist up for a revolution in a minute. 

That was until he labelled the people trying to depose hapless and hopeless Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as being “****ing useless”. Suddenly he had nailed it. 

The botched attempt to dump a leader of the party who makes Neil Kinnock look like a master tactician was as ham-fisted as Roy Hodgson’s football management tactics. The Labour Party was founded on glorious traditions. 

It was the party for the working man and woman, and enjoyed a history of striving for the worker. However, in recent months it has been hijacked by a group that appears to have quite a sinister side to it. The chasm in the Labour Party grows ever wider. Corbyn supporters understandably point to the remarkable increase in party membership since Corbyn came to power (about 250,000) and talk of a political revolution.

Meanwhile, opponents point to the undeniable fact that a whopping 80 per cent of the MPs who serve under Corbyn conclude that they have no confidence in his leadership. This is, by any measure in Westminster or anywhere else in the world, a stunning turn of events and the latest gruesome spectacle of Labour’s death throes is a leadership contest. 

The farcical nature of that is heightened by the fact that the “unity” side of the party has managed to produce two candidates! It is therefore increasingly likely that this supposed unity has the potential to destroy the party. 

The whole saga can be tracked back to party leadership, or rather a distinct lack of it. Corbyn refuses to quit because, as he reminds us, he has a powerful mandate from his party members. He is not wrong. The power that mandate wields could demolish the party. 

An insight into Corbyn’s thinking was provided by the good-natured clash between him and David Cameron during the latter’s final Prime Minister’s Questions. When challenged by Cameron to explain why he is clinging to power, he declared: “Democracy is an exciting and splendid thing and I’m enjoying every moment of it.”

He is enjoying the demolition of his own party? When pressed further about the simple truth that he has lost so much support and those he is supposed to lead are in open and tumultuous revolt against him, he dismissed that as being merely the “Westminster bubble”. 

Surely that is an extraordinary way to view the parliamentary process? However, it would seem this is someone who is more at home with the Red Flag than he is with the national anthem. His unswerving belief that he is in the right is breathtaking. 

As the moderate wing of the party struggles to regain control of an organisation that is as meaningless as it is rudderless, Corbyn and his cronies employ lawyers to ensure his name is automatically put on the ballot paper for the forthcoming leadership fight, despite it seeming to be in breach of procedure. 

The fractures of this Labour crisis run deep and whichever way the vote goes it is no over-estimation to suggest it will end in the collapse of the party.

If Corbyn wins, how can any of the 172 MPs who have revolted against him really be expected to serve under him? 

They either continue to mount leadership challenges or investigate the possibility of splitting. Equally, if he loses, the Momentum group and others who are brimming with revolutionary zeal are highly unlikely to just walk away. 

They will go for mass de-selections and if that fails they will look at the idea of splitting. The ultimate irony is that the man who never actually wanted to lead the Labour Party will be the man who oversees its destruction.