Corbyn - the losers' choice?

It is never easy to stir up much interest in the Labour party leadership contest, but Jeremy Corbyn has certainly managed to confound the expectations of the chattering classes. Perhaps they ought to raise their game or mute the chattering.

A short but interesting piece in politicalbetting.com by Keiran Pedley has this to say about the Corbyn phenomenon.

This week, a Labour supporting colleague that had seen my clip cornered me at work and said something that I thought was interesting:

“The thing you have to understand Keiran is that none of them can win anyway, so we might as well vote for Jeremy Corbyn”.

The Labour party has always seemed torn between the need to win elections and the sheer pleasure of letting its middle class malice and totalitarian silliness out of the bag. The days are long gone when it saw its role as promoting the interests of ordinary people. It never liked us much anyway.

Corbyn may not become leader of course, but the current situation is interesting and worth watching. Pedley goes on to make the point anyone with a modicum of foresight might make.

Labour cannot assume that because it got 30% of the vote in 2015 that the only way is up. Labour can lose votes too and the leader it chooses will be vital to whether things get better or worse.

Along with Pedley’s colleague and no doubt quite a few others, I suspect the Labour leadership choice really is so dire that the party is past caring. Not so very different from the general election then.