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You know me, I have no sympathy for right-wing politicians who endorse an unregulated free market which has no protection for the majority. But having said that, and even though I’d never vote for them as they are, I can’t helping feeling a little sorry for the Labour Party.

Given that the national media setting our agenda is so right-wing it makes the jackbooted dullard Iain Duncan Smith look like a Communist agitator, it’s almost impossible for Labour to do the right thing.

The poor souls could pick Jesus Christ as their new leader, and the Daily Mail would run an article on his dad as ‘the man who hated Britain so much He flooded it’. Mother Teresa of Calcutta? ‘Labour chooses Albanian immigrant scrounger’. Winston Churchill? ‘Labour chooses obese, drink-sodden smoker who keeps switching parties and planned one of the worst disasters in British military history’ (Gallipoli, if you’re asking).

You get the point. But having shown sympathy and said all that: Can’t they see Ed Miliband’s useless to them? He’s so inept I can’t even be bothered to check whether he’s got one l or two any more.

I think Ed’s shown admirable ability, and commitment to policies that have a tinge of socialist social justice about them: capping energy prices, renationalising some industry and services. He hasn’t gone anything like far enough with solutions that will help the majority of people, rather than the minority of wealthy aristocrats, ‘celebrities’ and businessmen so beloved of the Conservative party and the media, but he’s tried a bit and he’s made convincing cases on a wide number of issues.

But it’s no good saying that, and it’s no good acknowledging that he has twice the intellect of a Cameron, Johnson or Osborne (not difficult, given that my cat has twice the intellect of a Cameron, Johnson or Osborne and is slightly less greedy). No, the media has decided Milliband is a joke, therefore the public in vast numbers has obediently agreed that he’s a joke. And Millliband himself has chipped in by behaving like a joke, showing the social skills of a St Bernard dog with learning difficulties.

Labour won’t win with Milllliband. Labour have had an open goal to aim at since 2010, given the austerity agenda, the broken promises, the missed economic targets, the increased borrowing, the profoundly damaging cuts, the tax breaks for millionaires, the pain and hardship caused by the hated bedroom tax, the torment of ATOS’s sadistic ‘work assessments’ of the disabled and the many other omnishambles serial disasters over which the laughable coalition has presided. And despite all this Labour barely lead in the opinion polls.

Look at Scotland. Look at the ferocity of the establishment’s attack, once there was the slightest hint of a vote going in such a way that society might be put ahead of the interests of the wealthy. Remember? The bribes, which have not and will not be delivered. The abuse.

Well, that was but a miniscule fraction of the ammunition lined up to protect the interests of the Conservative Party and its rich, male, public-school educated chums come general election time.

Everything the establishment has got  will be fired off in the interests of the Conservatives. After all, they’ve got whole boardrooms-full of private health firms, for example, depending on them delivering huge profits via the NHS. Enormous minimum-wage-paying private monopolies are relying on them giving public money to their shareholders when they outsource rubbish collections and school lunches. Private landlords are anxiously looking on them to keep shovelling public money their way in the shape of housing benefit subsidising exorbitant private sector rent bills.

How much faith will you have in Red Ed when the fighting turns dirty? Not much?

No, Labour will not stand a chance with Ed Millllliband. There is more chance of Iain Duncan Smith exhibiting the tiniest shred of human decency than there is of Ed getting to No 10.

So why can’t his colleagues see the obvious? I rather think it’s because they’re more interested in their own elite than they are in public opinion, just like the other parties. They all operate in an atmosphere of the utmost public contempt for the shape politics is in, yet none of them do anything about it. A party that listened might turn to a real person from beyond the political bubble. It doesn’t look like any of them will.

And for all the fuss about Nigel Farage and UKIP, it’s the Tories who stand to gain the most if nobody changes. The best thing Ed Milllllliband can do now for the majority of the people of this country, the majority who have never, do not and will never vote Conservative, is to step down.

Book news

Some people whose opinions I really value have said very nice things about my book (and if you haven’t bought it yet, why not? It’s very easy to do so on this very website). I’m grateful.

I’ve also been asked if there can be another gig for the reading held at the launch of the book because it was so good. Well, that was all down to Jonathan Lewsey and Elaine Humphries, the actors who performed it, and they’ve said they’re happy to go again – so watch this space for news of what, when and were.