Star Comment: A vivid red in a field of blandness
Those Labour MPs who backed the candidature of Jeremy Corbyn so that the leadership contest would have a wide spectrum of ideology to choose from have had their wish – and how.
The joke candidate has taken the smiles off faces by emerging as the most serious contender, miles ahead in the polls.
From Shropshire's point of view, he is our local man. He used to live in Pave Lane, Newport, and he and his brothers all went to Adams' Grammar School, where his father David was a governor.
While in Shropshire young Jeremy became politically active, standing for Labour in a mock election at the school (he lost), and holding various roles, including being a member of Wrekin Young Socialists, secretary of Newport Labour Party, and membership secretary of Wrekin Labour Party.
The prospect of him actually winning the leadership contest is causing something akin to panic among those clinging to the comfort of the middle ground and who think Labour's prospects are best served by not saying or doing anything that alienates middle class voters.
Their problem is not that Mr Corbyn is a good candidate, but that all the other leadership candidates are so colourless. While Jeremy is throwing around his vivid splashes of red, nobody really knows what the others stand for, and they do not seem to know themselves. So they resort to scary warnings of the consequences of what we might call the rise of Corbynism.
Supporters of Mr Corbyn like the fact he has principles and sticks to them, as if that was a good thing in itself. Labour's 1983 election manifesto under Michael Foot was a very principled document. Labour stuck by its principles as it languished in the electoral wilderness for many years. It only became a "people's party" again under Tony Blair. He reconnected with voters and won three general elections on the trot.
Should Mr Corbyn win, Labour faces the prospect of being torn apart. He is not a unity figure. He is a man who made his name as a rebel against the leadership. It is not impossible that moderates would break away to form a new party, just as happened in the 1980s with the formation of the SDP.
The Tories are loving it all. To the impartial observer, it is a fascinating spectacle of a battered and demoralised party grappling with the fundamental questions of what it actually stands for and who it represents.
