Labour is doomed if Corbyn really is the answer

After last night's LBC Radio leadership debate I am starting to think that the UK Labour Party is doomed. Perhaps the best hope is the proposed party reform to trigger a new leadership election with a small amount of MPs' support (and possibly some members' backing too)....but only if the party thinks about the need to build a national (UK) coalition to win a general election and about who has the personality and intellect (gravitas even) to do it. This possibly means persuading/begging a few people to leave the back-benches/semi-retirement including Alan Johnson and David Blunkett. It certainly means thinking seriously about people like Hilary Benn. 

Corbyn "won" last night's radio debate because even a bearded prig from the old People's Republic of Islington (who like the other 3 hasn't had a real job in his life despite what they all claimed last night) can "do human". The other 3 forfeited their claims on this test, and confirmed that after the public revulsion at spin and expenses they still don't "get it", when they wouldn't answer whether they'd give Ed Miliband a job in the shadow cabinet that one of them will have to put together in 2 months time. 

I screamed at the radio at this point and almost voted for Jeremy on the spot. God help us (and I mean that).

There is a wider revolt going on and it's affecting the leadership election. The most democratic one ever (and perhaps that needs to be changed in the future too). Many of the new and old party members, quite a few of those who have bought their vote at £3 a pop in the appalling "registered supporters" scheme brought in by right-wing Labour lovers of US primary style elections, and no doubt a large number of the 50,000 plus trade union members (whose unions contribute to the Party) who are registering to vote individually, are in revolt. They are UK Syriza/Podemos/English SNP, and they aren't going to take it any more. And the three "serious" candidates still don't get it......

The Destruction of the UK State: Betrayed by Ignorance and Miscalculation

The seeds were sown in 1978 when the SNP and Welsh Nats blackmailed Jim Callaghan and his minority Labour government to hold a referendum on devolution. Those in favour couldn't muster 40% of registered voters in Scotland, so it fell by the wayside. Devolution was clearly rejected in Wales. The SNP's representation collapsed in the May 1979 UK General Election, but the idea of home rule for Scotland was there.

If the Labour Gov't ('74-'79) had given two fingers to the petit tribalists of the British Isles (including trying to please both Ulster Unionist and SDLP MPs at the same time) and gone to the country in 1978, they would have won with a workable majority. We all know what happened next. Perhaps the decline of the post war UK political, economic and social order, and specifically of subsidised Scottish steel mills and coal mines, was inevitable, and would have fed deep frustrations north of the border. However the personality and ideology of Margaret Thatcher, and limited Scottish support for the Conservatives under her, helped bolster the SNP. Then comes wise Mr Blair and devolution for Scotland and Wales, arrogantly thinking that a semi- federal arrangement eternally steered by Labour politicians on the ground, buoyed by grateful celtic clients, would keep the UK settlement intact.

In 24 hours a bunch of kids and some older political illiterates will probably break up the UK state. A tribal war has been successfully waged, as if Westminster was the headquarters of the English Colonial Administration. Westminster is so loathed - by all quarters of the UK - that the fact that its MPs were elected by us, including Scottish residents, seems somehow to not be understood. A "democratic deficit" is one of Salmond's rallying cries, yet every UK subject determines who forms the UK Government. Unless they can't be arsed. 

The trouble is that if there is a narrow "No" vote tomorrow then a belated attempt to fire up enthusiasm for the political process in all parts of the UK will see devolution across its countries and regions. Scotland's nationalists may not be satisfied. The English rejected regional governments in the late 1990s (except in London). If they're offered their own national parliament then they will probably secede from the Union themselves, after the UK (possibly minus Scottish votes) comes out of the EU in 2017. We're doomed...