BY ROB BROWNE

Paucity of Talent

Since the Gordon Brown Premiership there has been an exodus of quality from the Labour Party. In the past Labour could call on safe hands like John Reid or wordsmiths like Jack Straw to face the music when a crisis hit. Now? The Shadow Cabinet is an abuse of the historical eminence of its offices. Titles like Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Home Secretary used to be prized and respected monikers. Now who holds them? Emily Thornberry & Diane Abbott. Having a larf ain’t ya? Shadow Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens just resigned…. Jo who? More reshuffles than a game of Musical Chairs.

Relationship with the Unions

Not since the 1970’s have so many of the key unions been run by far left wing radicals. Their power over the Labour Party was highlighted by the election of Red Ed Miliband to Leader in 2010 when his brother David would have been a far more palatable choice for the UK electorate. With the likes of Corbyn fan Tosh McDonald running ASLEF and wildcat strikes back in the headlines, Labour cannot demarcate between the radicals and an electable image. Allied to these reactionaries, Labour is no more than a protest party.

John McDonnell

At first glance he may seem to be a jumper-wearing softie – a Catholic priest type who offers you a hug and a sherry. But scratch under the surface and the man’s an extremist. Supporter of Occupy and street protest to bring about revolution, McDonnell’s Who’s Who entry states his pastime as “generally fermenting the overthrow of capitalism”. McDonnell argues for the nationalisation of banks, railways and utility companies, along with a 60 per cent tax rate for high earners. Speaking at an event to commemorate IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, the MP once said: “It’s about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table.” You’d be hard pressed to find such high-grade voter repellant in any of the other parties, save perhaps the SNP.

Anti-Semitism

The Labour Anti-Semitism crisis rumbles on. Liberty’s justice warrior Shami Chakrabati was brought in to firefight it and then made it worse by accepting a peerage from Jeremy Corbyn after producing a report which declared there was no crisis. There’s still an obvious anti-Semitic undercurrent in the Labour Party which revolves around the Left’s Black-Red Alliance and even Holocaust denial. For a political party to be having an antisemitism crisis in 2017, when the facts are there for all to see and read about the Holocaust, beggars belief. Yet Labour’s ranks are seemingly disgraced by people like MP Naz Shah – as many as 20 Labour Party members had been suspended or expelled for alleged anti-Semitism by mid-2016. And Jackie Walker who was suspended from Labour when leaked footage showed the campaigner saying she had not found a definition of antisemitism she could work with. As the Guardian notes, the footage also showed her questioning why Holocaust Memorial Day was not more wide-ranging to include other genocides. Disgusting.

Ken Livingstone

That Livingstone is still anywhere near the Labour Party shames the party. Livingstone was widely reprimanded just last year after he stated that Adolf Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”. Livingstone was subsequently suspended from Labour Party membership “for bringing the party into disrepute”. Livingstone was sacked in the Spring of 2016 by LBC. Just recently Country Squire Magazine highlighted what a rabble Livingstone had working with him at Mayoralty House in London including two women who celebrated 9/11 as it was happening.

Momentum

The public perceive Momentum as a bunch of Trotskyite crazies. Momentum perceive themselves as a bunch of Trotskyite crazies to such an extent that Momentum’s leader Jon Lansmann attempted a purge of the Trotskyites in the grassroots movement a couple of times in the last few months. Trotskyite is a not a word that goes down well with the electorate – again, voter repellant of the highest order. Yet Momentum still exists and its coterie of hard left agitants continues to be the driving force behind Corbyn’s Labour. Scratch under the surface of Momentum and there are tales there which will bring the Labour Party down in a weekend. Something, presumably, the Tories, UKIP and the Lib Dems are saving until the run up to 2020.

Seamus Milne

Formerly of the Guardian and ex-business manager of Straight Left, a monthly publication produced from 1979 by a pro-Soviet faction in the Communist Party of Great Britain, Seamus Milne is the Labour Party’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn. Aside from looking like the personification of evil looming around Corbyn and his Bolshevik henchmen, Milne has form for espousing Britain-hating opinions and pro-communism, anti-capitalist views which are beyond quirky and verging into the realm of sinister. Along with the journalist John Pilger and Andrew Murray of Stop the War, Milne has been accused by Michael Mosbacher, writing for Standpoint magazine, of being one of the “leftist apologists” for Vladimir Putin’s government in Russia. The lunatics are running the Labour asylum.

Keith Vaz

Whether he’s (allegedly) demanding Let’s get this party started with Romanian male escorts or getting suspended from parliament, Teflon Vaz has repeatedly bounced back from scandals that would have finished off less robust politicians. But the British Public are not stupid and of late other MPs have publicly admitted that something stinks about this particular Labour MP whose private life is surrounded by lurid speculation. Vaz is a liability for the Labour Party – a bomb about to go off under it. They know it. Voters know it. Eventually this volcano of slime will erupt and splatter all over Labour. The most likely scenario: Teflon Vaz loses his seat in 2020. Whoever takes over should use bleach on it.

Tony Blair

The ghost of Tony Blair does not seem to go away. Possibly the most disliked politician in the UK, Bliar – and his oily sidekick Peter Mandelson – make even George Osborne seem as loved as Prince Harry. If it’s the Chilcot report and Iraq, cosying up to foreign dictators or making millions from a position of privilege the country gave him, Blair can’t help but haunt UK Labour and stinks of the most rancid of manures. Which is a big shame really, as back in 1997 he promised so much and could have been a really popular PM. Will Labour ever escape Blair? The public is not ready to forget him (or his wife’s ear to ear smile) – many would like to see him jailed for war crimes. And even when he’s out of power, he’s  still there. Blair has split the Labour Party right down the middle and is guilty as charged for making Labour unelectable.

Jeremy Corbyn

Steptoe was never going to escape this list. Let’s be honest, Corbyn is an unmitigated disaster as Labour leader. Corbyn makes Foot seem like Superman. The hashtag #savejez only exists to placate Tories and UKIP – that is how bad a leader of the Labour Party he is. “Ah, but what a nice man,” people say, “don’t be mean to him!” Nice? Look at Corbyn’s links with the IRA, with tyrants in Venezuela, his thoughts on Fidel Castro’s passing (presumably into the fiery depths),  his “doing nothing” over child abuse in his own constituency during the 1970s and 1980s … the list of Corbyn’s misjudgements is interminable. The scary thing is, even if a new leader took over tomorrow, Labour would still be just as screwed. Anyway, who would that be? Keir Starmer in his lifts? Inexperienced Clive Lewis the Goat Sex Joker? Former military man Dan Jarvis – he with the charisma of a lamp post? Lady Nugee? Diane Abbott? Yvette Cooper? How about that pound shop Machiavelli, Tom Watson?

Not a chance.

Labour is monumentally screwed.

Doomed.

Last one out turn the lights off.