RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Whoever wins the Labour leadership election - I predict a bloodbath
Until now, I've pretty much steered clear of the Labour leadership contest, largely because out here in Daily Mail Land nobody seems to give a monkey's who wins.
That's why I've been content to sit on the sidelines and chuckle as the comedy candidate Jeremy Corbyn built up what appears to be an unassailable lead.
The Boys In The Bubble seem to be convinced that Corbyn will romp home, and some of the bookies have already paid out.
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![These days the unions with clout are all in the public sector and dominated by hardliners who back Corbyn](http://web.archive.org./web/20170714180808/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/08/01/2C08D00200000578-0-These_days_the_unions_with_clout_are_all_in_the_public_sector_an-m-38_1441670957668.jpg)
These days the unions with clout are all in the public sector and dominated by hardliners who back Corbyn
Then again, if we'd listened to the experts in May we would have put money on a minority Labour government led by Ed Miliband, propped up by Wee Burney and her gang.
So it's still possible, given the eccentricities of Labour's voting system, that Yvette Cooper could sneak over the line with the help of second preferences.
Even if that happens, it will be a pyrrhic victory. The damage has already been done.
Don't get sidetracked by the arguments over a few mischievous Tories who have bunged Labour £3 just so they could register to vote for Corbyn. What we should be worried about is all the other Corbyn supporters who have either crawled out from under their stones or 'come home' to Labour.
They are the real face of the New Left in Britain, a rancid collection of single-issue nutcases, 'anti-austerity' mentalists and Toytown Trots. If Pixie Cooper — or Andy Burnham, the Grim Reaper of Mid-Staffs — does manage to pull off a surprise win, they're going to have one hell of a job trying to put the Corbyn rabble back in their boxes.
Whatever happens, I predict a bloodbath. And even if the new leader attempts to steer the party back on the path to sanity, the overwhelming impression which will linger is of a divided opposition stuffed with extremists who wanted to put forward a bearded Bolshevik as our next Prime Minister.
If Corbyn wins, where's the fightback going to come from? In many respects, the Blairites were as much of an entryist faction as Degsy Hatton's Militant Tendency. Most of them have moved on.
![Whatever happens, I predict a bloodbath. And even if the new leader attempts to steer the party back on the path to sanity, the overwhelming impression which will linger is of a divided opposition](http://web.archive.org./web/20170714180808/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/08/01/2BF3317300000578-0-image-m-40_1441671267582.jpg)
Whatever happens, I predict a bloodbath. And even if the new leader attempts to steer the party back on the path to sanity, the overwhelming impression which will linger is of a divided opposition
In the Eighties, the party still had a patriotic, moderate core, grounded in the ranks of trades unionists like the engineers and electricians, who were prepared to use their muscle to defeat the Hard Left and pave the way for Blair.
Neil Kinnock's famous speech attacking Militant was two years overdue and happened only because he was personally provoked and embarrassed by Hatton's antics.
Gullible fools may believe Peter Mandelson's boast that he pretty much reinvented Labour single-handed. But it was union leaders such as Terry Duffy, Bill Jordan, Brian Nicholson and Eric Hammond who did the heavy lifting and the hand-to-hand-fighting. Mandelson merely arranged the flowers and plumped the cushions.
Tom Watson, the Nonce Finder General, who seems to be nailed on as Labour's next deputy leader, has an old-fashioned engineering union background, as did Duffy and Jordan, and certainly possesses the combative personality to take on the Hard Left.
But he seems mostly obsessed with shackling the free Press and hunting down Tory paedos in high places. He'd also find allies in short supply.
These days the unions with clout are all in the public sector and dominated by hardliners who back Corbyn. And somehow I can't see moderate metrosexuals Tristram Shandy and 'Britain's Obama' Chuka Umunna getting into any fist-fights at booze-fuelled branch meetings in Bolton on a wet Wednesday night.
But that was how the Labour Party was taken back in the Eighties — branch by branch, ballot by ballot.
![f Pixie Cooper — or Andy Burnham, the Grim Reaper of Mid-Staffs — does manage to pull off a surprise win, they're going to have one hell of a job trying to put the Corbyn rabble back in their boxes](http://web.archive.org./web/20170714180808/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/08/01/2BE1A25F00000578-0-image-a-41_1441671320027.jpg)
f Pixie Cooper — or Andy Burnham, the Grim Reaper of Mid-Staffs — does manage to pull off a surprise win, they're going to have one hell of a job trying to put the Corbyn rabble back in their boxes
How do I know this? Because I was there, and played a minor walk-on part in Labour's battle for its soul in the mid-Eighties. I've never been a member of the party, but as a young labour and industrial correspondent I helped expose Communist and Trotskyite infiltration and wrote in support of moderate candidates who were wrestling control away from the Hard Left.
Like most of you, I'd have been horrified if Miliband had moved into No. 10. But I genuinely believe that governments need a credible opposition.
I've never been a member of the Tory Party, either. Or any party, come to that. When it comes to politicians, I have always maintained that the job of a columnist is to sit at the back and throw bottles.
While I acknowledged that many of Mrs Thatcher's reforms were necessary — especially when it came to facing down revolutionaries such as the miners' leader Arthur Scargill — I thought it would be bad for democracy if she didn't have a sensible Labour Party holding her to account in the Commons and the country.
Call Me Dave and his crew can be prone to arrogance, particularly now that Labour is tearing itself apart. That's not healthy.
Plenty of pundits are warning that Corbyn would take us back to the Eighties. And in a sense we are already seeing it.
Those rallying to the Corbyn flag don't honestly think he's ever going to become Prime Minister. Most of them have already given up on Parliamentary democracy.
Like Scargill, the modern Left think they can win the arguments on the streets, through violent demonstration; and through their shock troops in the unions bringing public services to a standstill.
These are the people for whom Corbyn is a convenient figurehead — soak-the-rich anarchists, anti-capitalists, anti-Americans. You name it, they're anti-it.
Even if, by some quirk of Labour's voting system, Corbyn is pipped at the post, they're not going away in a hurry.
Just because they'll never achieve power in Parliament, it doesn't mean they're not mad, bad and extremely dangerous. Many of them are already deeply embedded in the public sector — a process that dates back over 30 years.
You don't even need to scratch the surface to work out where they're coming from. Corbyn, a lifelong IRA stooge, is even suggesting that taxpayers should be allowed to opt out of funding the Armed Forces.
How crazy is that?
But hang on a minute. He might be on to something. Does that mean we can all opt out of paying for 'services' we don't want?
Will I be able to refuse to pay for wind turbines, traffic humps, insane recycling schemes, the Barnett Formula, Operation Yewtree, diversity programmes, legal aid for illegal immigrants, fat salaries for quango chiefs, windsurfing holidays for young hooligans, breast enlargement for strippers on the NHS . . ?
The list is endless. I wonder if I've still got time to pay my three quid and Vote Corbyn!
Ecuadorian officials are so sick of the sight of WikiLeaks fugitive Julian Assange they considered smuggling him out of their London embassy in fancy dress.
Not very dignified, is it? Going in as a world champion of free speech and coming out as an Oompa Loompa.
Actually, there are so many people wandering about in fancy dress these days, he might have got away with it.
![Ecuadorian officials are so sick of the sight of WikiLeaks fugitive Julian Assange they considered smuggling him out of their London embassy in fancy dress](http://web.archive.org./web/20170714180808/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/08/01/2C0DE13E00000578-0-image-a-51_1441672869970.jpg)
Ecuadorian officials are so sick of the sight of WikiLeaks fugitive Julian Assange they considered smuggling him out of their London embassy in fancy dress
They also considered taking him to a nearby helipad where he could be airlifted away. Somebody else suggested smuggling him across the rooftops of Knightsbridge to Harrods and letting him melt away into the crowd.
I don't suppose they ever thought about handing him over to the police.
But there is a simpler plan. Kit him out in a hi-viz jacket and clipboard and send him on his way. I guarantee no one would bat an eyelid.
Fancy a Post-Neoclassical bacon banjo?
Since Friday, I've been inundated with emails from readers about the dead Syrian child washed up on a beach in Turkey.
Thanks. I'm sorry I can't reply to you all personally. But I have read most of them and I was interested in your comments. While displaying the compassion I would expect from Mail readers over the loss of innocent life, you agreed with me that the political reaction was bonkers.
On Friday, I refrained from monstering the father. He had just lost his wife and two young children. But his story doesn't entirely add up. He was already safe in Turkey after fleeing his homeland, first from government forces, he says, and then from ISIS.
So why did he take his family on such a perilous journey in an attempt to reach Greece? And if Syria is so dangerous, why did he go back there to bury his dead?
Furthermore, as so many of you have written to say: if any of us had packed our wife and two young children into an overcrowded dinghy without life-jackets and then put to sea in pitch darkness, resulting in their deaths, we wouldn't expect sympathy. We'd expect to be arrested and charged with manslaughter.
Oh, and when I suggested on Friday that Yvette Cooper might like to offer a bed to a migrant family, I was only joking. Now she says she will take in someone from Syria. I wonder how that's going to work out.
Who in their right mind would want to flee across Europe only to end up sharing a bacon banjo with Ed Balls while listening to a diatribe about the merits of Post- Neoclassical Endogenous Growth theory?
I was amused to learn that in his younger days, Jeremy Corbyn was known as 'Jelly' to friends and family.
Curiously, that was also the nickname of the insanitary Detective Constable Jellineck in The Sweeney.
Come to think of it, they do look a bit similar.
![Jeremy Corbyn looks a bit similar to Detective Constable Jellineck in The Sweeney and they were both nicknamed 'Jelly'](http://web.archive.org./web/20170714180808/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/08/01/0001E37F00000258-0-image-a-58_1441672949400.jpg)
![Jeremy Corbyn looks a bit similar to Detective Constable Jellineck in The Sweeney and they were both nicknamed 'Jelly'](http://web.archive.org./web/20170714180808/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/08/01/2C0C63A200000578-0-image-m-57_1441672942428.jpg)
Jeremy Corbyn looks a bit similar to Detective Constable Jellineck in The Sweeney and they were both nicknamed 'Jelly'
It's a bit rich of St Bob Geldof of Boomtown to attack Britain's treatment of migrants. After all, we let him in.
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