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If Corbyn wins Labour Leadership we will get 2 parties- can I join both this is so much fun

Tom Winnifrith
Saturday 30 July 2016

Being a member of the Labour Party is so much fun. Seriously: it is the cheapest form of entertainment going. Okay, when I say entertainment, it is rather like having front row seats at an illegal dog fight where both contestants emerge bloodied and unfit for anything but, now that fox hunting is illegal, if you like blood sports join the Labour Party.

One of the joys are the almost daily emails from all levels of the party and from the competing factions. Each sender competes with his or her rivals or superiors and inferiors in the party hierarchy to be the most sanctimonious and pious on issues that no-one on this planet cares about, with an occasional undertone of sheer nastiness, sometimes about the Tories, but usually about fellow Comrades.

The other joy is, of course, what appears to be an annual contest to select our dear leader. I am obviously new to the ways of the People's Party but as I understand it, whoever wins is then baited and stabbed in the back by all the other MPs for a year before they announce that he is even more despised than Comrade Blair, and so have another leadership contest.

This time around the person challenging Comrade Corbyn, the man who inspired myself and many other folks who were, shall we say, not exactly tribal Labour, to join last year, is a fellow called Owen Smith. He appears to be an Olympic standard flip flopper and, having told the papers that he agreed with Tony Blair on everything in 2008, he now stands on a platform that makes Michael Foot look like your average Daily Mail reader. Owen appears to have had a personality bypass at an early age and so not only can one not believe a word he says but you will also sleep through most of his words anyway.

Smith is so utterly hopeless that I am sorely tempted to vote for him but, on balance, I think I should continue backing the man who has made Labour what it it is today, Comrade Corbyn. He is a proven winner, at least for those on our "wing of the party." But this brings up the prospect that if - as seems likely - comrade Corbyn wins, that Smith and others in the Westminster bubble will form a new party.

Smith et al will have no money, no Union backing and most members will regard them as traitors but until they are wiped out at the election they will have more "Labour" MPs. I wonder if it might be possible to join this party as well, at least until it is wiped out in 2020. Will it have the annual backstabbing and leadership challenge? Will its members all hate each other as with Labour Mark 1?

There is a suggestion that this new party will be lead by a man who got his job because his Daddy used to lead the party, who somehow wriggled off a tax evasion charge and who sends his daughter to a £29,000 a year private school while ranting about how others should not have that choice, Mr Stephen Kinnock. He sounds like a real winner too. Where do I sign up? Or, as a member of Labour (Real) will I get in to Labour v2 without paying on a Buy One (Membership) Get One Free, BOGOF basis? Whatever, count me in.

Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer we'll keep the red flag flying here. Exactly.

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About Tom Winnifrith
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Tom Winnifrith is the editor of TomWinnifrith.com. When he is not harvesting olives in Greece, he is (planning to) raise goats in Wales.
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