No stone is left unturned in the Labour leader’s garden

Labour’s campaign strategists are worried that the electorate is not up to the task. You can see why. Voters insist on looking at Jeremy Corbyn and arriving at ludicrous conclusions. He only has to be mildly bedraggled (one told an interviewer Corbyn was “too idle to shave”) and they withhold their support. It’s as though appearances matter.

“Have you seen the state of his garden,” these so called voters cry. “Couldn’t run a bath, the scruffy sod.” It’s the merest leap from there to dismissing Comrade Jeremy as “a wet lettuce”. There’s no justice. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of policies to concentrate on, now that the manifesto has got such a wide airing. But somehow the voters keep coming back to Jeremy. A shambles, they are.

Thank goodness that, in three ruthless weeks of campaigning, Jeremy himself has managed to weed out thousands of the party’s feeblest backers, the kind who look at the party leader before making their ballot box decision. Of course, some may stumble blindly all the way through to polling day. But Jeremy will see to it that huge numbers of those not up to the task of supporting Labour don’t. He’s up for it, but it’s going to be a busy few weeks.

And it’s harder than you think. Many of the so-called “public” need careful prodding to see where their sympathies really lie. It took a well-publicised snap of Labour campaigners trampling on a war memorial to bring some unbelievers scuttling out of the woodwork. Helpfully Diane Abbott’s pledge to pay new police officers £30 a year tested exactly which public sector workers were of the true faith.

But it’s mostly Jeremy who is carrying the burden. It is he who has honed in mercilessly on confused voters, one minute raging on a campaign platform in Manchester, the next singing Stand By Me with a busker; one minute allowing a news outlet to interview him, the next banning them from campaign events for accurately writing it up.

And it is really with the media that Corbyn comes into his own – for too long Labour’s unworthier voters have been protected by a patina of positive coverage. Time for a purge. Having promised the BBC’S Laura Kuenssberg that she would, “in [her] heart of hearts” like his policies, he proceeded to run over her cameraman.

No stone is left unturned. Hence the campaign posters. The party’s first reads: “The Tories have held Britain back long enough”. It shows the Prime Minister’s hand seizing hold of Labour’s north eastern heartlands – Middlesbrough South, Darlington, and Sedgefield. This might strike some as basic incompetence. But it won’t matter to the voters Jeremy’s Labour really wants. This certainly does not include those seduced by celebrity. Just as well that when children’s author J K Rowling tweeted to encourage people to vote Labour, an online hate campaign swiftly shut her down.

So the Labour Party gets stronger, purer, sleeker. Those not up to the task have been forced to reveal themselves: not just millions of voters but also a dozen MPS with no mention of Corbyn on their campaign leaflets; Welsh Labour, quietly performing a Wexit.

It may take until June 8 to ensure that Labour is truly unsullied. It may take longer. Some worry that like many great men, Jeremy Corbyn will only be truly appreciated after his death – at which point he plans to stand down from the Labour leadership anyway.