Although I would probably never again vote for the Labour Party, I have to admit that it’s never good for there to be an absence of an effective opposition in a Parliamentary system. Opposition parties provide a counterbalance to governing parties and can in certain circumstances act as a brake on over-mighty and over-confident governments.

It’s this need for an effective and sensible opposition to government in Parliament that makes me concerned about the current state of the primary opposition party in the House of Commons, which at present is the Labour Party. However, I cannot see Labour becoming a half decent opposition party with the sort of characters who have so far stepped forward and expressed an interest in becoming leader. They are a collection of freaks, misfits, self-agrandisers and traitors, few of whom will inspire much confidence in the voters or bring back those voters who abandoned Labour in favour of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. They are even less likely to succeed if Boris Johnson’s government honours its promise to those who in the words of the Prime Minister, ‘loaned’ the Tories their votes at the 2019 General Election.

Rebecca Long-Bailey for example easily slips into the category of ‘freak’ being as she is the favoured candidate of the far Left, Britain hating Corbynista wing of the party. She’s little more than Jeremy Corbyn with a vagina and in my opinion is likely to rub a lot of voters up the wrong way. Her Corbynista associations will also open her up to attacks from the Tories for her previous support of policies that caused Labour to have its worst electoral loss in 80 years. Boris Johnson would rhetorically flatten Long-Bailey as effectively as Margaret Thatcher flattened former Labour leader Neil Kinnock back in the 1980’s.

Another candidate, Lisa Nandy, could quite easily be described as one of Labour’s ‘misfits’, but not in any nice meaning of the word. Despite serving as MP for Wigan, one of the parts of Labour’s ‘’Red Wall’ that didn’t crumble, she is basically a ‘metro-leftist’ with metro-leftist concerns that would not inspire either loyalty of confidence in the electorate. A brief look at her biography for instance shows that Nandy is overly obsessed with the issue of ‘refugees’ and has worked for organisations in the past that have facilited the entry of some of these potentially dangerous ‘refugees’ into the United Kingdom. Because of this background she is not a person I would trust to defend either the nation or its borders. I can well imagine that if Nandy wins the leadership, then her background will be none too popular in those areas of the country where ‘refugees’ have worn out their welcome because of the stabbings, theft, drug crime, rape and terrorism that they’ve brought with them.

As for ‘self-agrandisers’ then the MP for Birmingham Yardley Jess Phillips is a prime candidate for this particular label. Variously described as a ‘Brummie gobshite’ and by some commentators on here as an ‘unf***able lard bucket’, Phillips is no stranger to either controversy or mockery. She also seems to want to make every issue about herself, which instead of giving her a ‘woman of the people’ appeal, just makes her look self obsessed. Her record of making outrageous allegations, which have not been properly proven in my view, that she received rape threats, doesn’t exactly endear her to the public either. She also proved herself to be very naive and silly on the issue of Islam when she presumed to lecture a group of Muslims protesting against enforced LGBT education in primary schools about the nature of Islam. Phillips is also notoriously thin skinned and although she dishes out insults to her opponents, she doesn’t seem to like it when insults are dished back to her. Her obsessive hatred for the Tories does not bode well if we in future come across an issue that requires cross party support. Would she work with the Tories on, for example, an issue of national security, or would her hatred for the Tories prevent her from doing so? She also wants to make Labour into a ‘rejoin the EU’ party that is likely to make Labour about as popular as a pork chop at a Barmitzvah.

Unfortunately for Labour, the category of ‘traitor’ contains more than one name. Former Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry are both notable ‘Remainers’ and are unlikely to have much appeal in those former Labour areas of the country that voted Leave in the 2016 Referendum. As with Nandy, both these MP’s come from the ‘metro-left’ part of the Labour Party which is a type of politics that was soundly rejected at the recent General Election. Starmer has a lot of background baggage such as his initial refusal to prosecute police who unlawfully killed newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson in 2009. It was only after being pressed by Mr Tomlinson’s family and the unlawful killing verdict of an inquest that Starmer relented and allowed a manslaughter prosecution that eventually cleared the police officer concerned. He’s also got a background in the sort of ‘human rights’ cases that the Left seem to love, but which have done little to inspire confidence in the justice system among the general public.

Emily Thornberry also has baggage but it is not as heavy as that which burdens Starmer. Like Starmer she comes from a background of ‘human rights’ law and has worked in the same radical Left chambers as high profile HR lawyer Michael Mansfield. She also has a reputation for snobbery as we saw during the 2014 Rochester byelection when she sent a text that gave the impression that she was mocking working class people who chose to fly England flags. Thornberry who is MP for Islington South is the very model of a modern metro-leftist and woefully out of touch and out of sympathy with many working class Britons and their concerns. She is a pro-EU type at a time when pro-EU attitudes are not in favour among the electorate. She would mould Labour into a party in her own image and therefore would not appeal to the type of Briton who has had enough of the damage done by Labour’s obsession with metro-left causes such as enforced equity, ‘green’ issues and migration. If you wanted to kill the Labour Party then electing either Starmer or Thornberry would be the way to go about this aim.

Sadly for both the Labour Party and the nation, the one candidate who is remotely ‘normal’, Clive Lewis, I don’t believe stands much of a chance. Lewis, a Territorial Army infantry officer who was brought up by a single father and was a former candidate for leader of the National Union of Students, could be a potential compromise candidate with less background problems than some of the other characters in the race. Unfortunately, he’s not a ‘big beast’ when it comes to internal Labour Party politics and will be countered heavily by the Momentum blackshirts who now seem to run a lot of the Labour Party’s management systems. With his military and ‘school of hard knocks’ background, Lewis could appeal to ordinary voters better than some of the other candidates for leader may do. But, without a strong base in the party, either among the metro leftists or the Momentum thugs, I believe it would take a miracle for Lewis to be elected leader.

Unless some moderate compromise candidate steps forward and Labour shows some common sense in throwing away the far left and Islamopandering policies that have turned ordinary people away from Labour, the party looks like it is heading for a period in the political wilderness. This time out of power could be as long or even longer than that suffered by Labour under Messers Foot and Kinnock. What Labour needs if it is to recover its position as a potential party of government, rather than a party of the spoilt middle class Left, is a person of moderation, a person of the calibre of the late former Labour leader John Smith, who could rebuild the party. Sadly I do not see how such a leader could emerge as the party has thrown away its foundation in things such as the Christian socialism that built it and instead replaced it with an adoration of Marxism, Muslims and the sort of metropolitan Leftism that was thoroughly rejected in 2019. There is no place in today’s Labour Party where such a moderate compromise candidate could come from so thoroughly has the party been ruined by the bullying Corbynistas and the North London Left. If Labour want to see their future then they need only look at the fate of the Liberals who were replaced as both a party of government and primary opposition by the Labour Party in the early part of the 20^th century. If Labour don’t want to suffer the sad end which the Liberal and latterly the Liberal Democrats have suffered then they need to get their act together, but such is the state of the Labour Party at present, I really cannot see them doing this at least in the near term. Democracies need opposittion parties but Labour are at least for foreseeable future, incapable of taking up that role. Maybe, as happened in the early 20^th century to the Liberals, Labour will die and be replaced by a new opposition party but what this party will be or where it will come from or what will be its policies is beyond any abilities of myself or others to predict.