As darkness falls . . .
So the sinister Len McCluskey has had his way. The Labour Party has committed electoral suicide by choosing a leader who commands the support of no more than ten per cent of his parliamentary colleagues.
I thought that Gordon Brown, old Captain Barbossa as I fondly nicknamed him when he was our unelected Prime Minister, was bad, but the idea of Jeremy Corbyn with his hand on the national tiller is incomprehensible. Apart from the fact that the man is a poor imitation of Michael Foot and peddles a brand of Marxist-lite politics that by comparison puts Nicola Sturgeon somewhere close to Maggie Thatcher in the political spectrum, there is this:
The next UK General Election is scheduled to take place on May 7, 2020. On that date, the new Leader of HM’s Official Opposition will be nineteen days shy of his seventy-first birthday. Today, I am just over nine months shy of mine, and while as far as I know I am in decent health, I would no more consider myself physically fit for the rigours of five years of national leadership than I’d offer myself as a replacement for Wayne Rooney should he fail his fitness test this afternoon. (Okay, I might step in as a sub for Motherwell, but they’re in another league altogether.)
Will Corbyn still be in office in five years? The smart money says ‘No’, but given that he secured 60% of the vote in a four-horse race, and presumably has no intention of changing the insane electoral system that put him where he is, it seems to me that he’s going to be bloody difficult to remove by anything other than Divine intervention.
As for the new Deputy Leader: who is he?
Quintin Jardine's blog 
Maybe the real question is “where are all the young, intelligent, dynamic, motivated and driven people with something new to propose?” I really don’t think they’re in politics, why would they be? You open your mouth to suggest something that may be good or, at least, worth a try (study) and you get instantly shut down if you’re not towing the party line. Emmanuel Macron (Ministre de l’Economie et des Finances – the Taxman) in France is a prime example; you might not like what he suggests but he’s young, full of ideas and not afraid to talk to anybody and, what’s more, explain what he wants to do and why. He gets shut down regularly and has to appear in the media saying “Sorry folks, if you understood it that way, it’s not what I meant to say.” Of course it was but he got the tawse for it. No faith, no faith; it’s a closed circle that doesn’t accept newcomers willingly, especially when they rock the boat with new ideas, which is really what we need; not stupid ones of course but then we can vote in an environment that resembles something less than complete fog.
Good morning. I love your comment regarding Nicola Sturgeon and Margaret Thatcher, spot on. You may indeed ask “Who is the Deputy Leader?”, I have been asking “Who is Jeremy Corbyn? If he has been on the back benches for over thirty years, what has he been doing and why have we not heard of him before? Is this the equivalent of a long service medal? To me (and I was in active national politics over many years) The whole of this election has had a very strong odour of fish, perhaps some will skate around that suggestion (sorry about that, couldn’t help myself), but the entire chaotic shambles would appear to have been invented to obfuscate dirty deeds and deals. It would never appear in one of your books, it has all been too contrived.