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I am enjoying Jeremy Corbyn’s bid for the Labour Party leadership, I really am. I don’t know what I like the most:

• The Tories who registered as Labour supporters to vote for him and cause trouble, only to realise they were lending a helping hand to a burgeoning movement among young people who have been disenfranchised by gerrymandering southern English pensioners.
• Tony Blair, the man whose heart was cold enough to support ‘President’ George Witless Bush, telling us to get a heart transplant.
• Alastair Campbell predicting a car crash if Corbyn wins – presumably within 45 minutes of the result, Alastair?
• The oh-so-careful tentative smears of a right-wing press which really wants Corbyn to win so they can unleash the full majesty of their tired old class war clichés against him.

But actually, I think what I’m finding most hilarious is the Greek chorus from Labour in the centre and Tories on the right saying that Labour couldn’t possibly win an election if Corbyn was leader.

Of course it couldn’t! Labour will only ever be allowed to win an election with a Tory like Tony Blair as leader! At the moment, with business and media owners having invested so heavily in Cameron’s Conservatives, Labour couldn’t win if the lovechild of Nelson Mandela and Cilla Black was leader!

And it doesn’t matter if Labour can’t win with Corbyn as leader! There’s no point in a Tory Labour party winning, so we might as well plan how to oppose  properly the vile greed-mongering and sick bullying of this petty, tiny-minded, peevish, little English Tory party. A real Labour party could lead campaigns against such measures as cutting help for the disabled, or letting little children go hungry. A real Labour party could lead strikes, mount mass civil disobedience – make a difference by peaceful public protest. The vulnerable need somebody in the playground to stand up to the bullies. All the other candidates for the Labour leadership are campaigning against Corbyn. Corbyn is campaigning against the Tories.

It’s perfectly obvious that Corbyn’s humanitarian messages – put provision of services to the public above profit for the wealthy, for example, look after the most needy – have struck a real chord, especially among the younger generation who had nothing to energise them to vote at the last election.

The pensioners who formed the 24% who voted Cameron in – the ones who enjoyed the benefits their fathers and mothers fought for and then devoted their Thatcherite lives to denying to foreign, sick, disabled or different others –  will soon have had their day.

They are the lost generation, the generation that, for example, enjoyed free university education then voted to deny that opportunity to others. Before them came people brave enough to fight for freedoms, for shared benefits, for society; after them will come young people sickened by the selfishness and greed they have witnessed.

Between those two bookends sits Jeremy Corbyn, annoying everybody but those who believe in socially just suggestions.

Of course he won’t win a general election. It’s unlikely the media and the Conservatives will even permit him to win a democratic election as Labour Party leader.

But he has one victory already that nobody can deny him: he’s put the debate about the politics of decency back onto the public agenda and, rather like the SNP in Scotland, has energised people who thought there was no point fighting any more. Good on him.

Puppy class

Many of you have been kind enough to say you enjoyed my lecture on the pros and cons of snorting cocaine off the jiggling joggling puppies of a lady of negotiable affection. If this were a commercial blog – rather than a public service blog, free at point of need and shared equally – then there would be a riot of adverts and spam e-mails heading to your accounts right now, from Madame Bertha and her Bolivian Blow. Think yourselves lucky.

You will note that, as ever, I was right. The snuffling peer has shuffled off in embarrassed fashion, an orange bra trailing from his trouser pocket. And the House of Lords, the epitome of democratic corruption, continues unabated, bankers on its benches, aristocrats dozing on leather cushions. Nothing has changed, and for the next five years, nothing will change apart from the addition of a few wealthy Tory Party donors to the ranks.

It’s enough to drive anybody to drugs.

Ashes to ashes

How splendid to see England win the Ashes so convincingly – although, given all the years of cricketing humiliation at the hands of Australia, was I the only one to think England could still contrive to lose the Trent Bridge test right up until the last ball? I’ve followed England teams who would have been ahead on first innings, bowled out the Aussies before they caught up and still found a way to lose.