How Dare the Left Lead the Labour Leadership Race

Incredible. Corbyn gets onto the leadership ticket as a makeweight for the debate, in order to mollify the Left, but allowing for one of the right of centre, or blatant right-wing, contestants to win the leadership contest; and the future of Labour Party is in question.

If Cooper, Burnham and Kendall were making the front running we’d not hear rumblings of discontent about the direction of the leadership race; there wouldn’t be calls to stop the contest on the grounds that the wring candidate is in the lead.

The right is complaining that it suspects that many of the 140,000 newly joined members to the Labour Party may have only joined so they can vote for Corbyn. That’s like the management of the National Lottery complaining that people are only buying tickets because they want to win a lot of money.

Corbyn is being blamed for embarrassing the party in its recent voting performance on welfare reform. Heaven forfend that a Labour MP should ignore the whip and vote against a policy that only serves to impoverish millions of poor people.

Yes, the Labour Party is in crisis. And it’s a crisis created by the right wing of the party. It is not a situation created by the one leadership candidate who is adhering to what can only be described as traditional Labour values.

Corbyn has reignited a belief that Labour can and should resort to acting like a party of the workers. A party that gives succour to the disenfranchised and the poor. A party that looks to governing for the majority; not merely pandering to the banks and big business.