EVERY WEDNESDAY

THIS is confession time: As a member for 20 years until I joined the Civil Service, I am ashamed of what the Labour Party has become.

What possessed it to elect a leader in the Marxist Jeremy Corbyn, who condones Venezuela’s devastating socialism, consorts with terrorists, would consign our nuclear deterrent to the dustbin called Sellafield, leave our military impotent and fracture the democratic Western alliance?

He is an indictment of all that is wrong with the modern Labour Party.

It has always been prey to the hard left who worship only totalitarian political power. What is more, it should know it. Trade union leaders in the 1950s-70s flocked by invitation behind the Iron Curtain.

Some were later accused of being Soviet agents or were, like Frank Cousins (TGWU), leading advocates of nuclear disarmament – as if nuclear technology could be disinvented.

Then there was Derek Hatton, the Liverpool Trot. He was the nastiest piece of work I have encountered on Merseyside, including the free range potato that clipped my ear on my way into his poisonous meeting with Margaret Thatcher.

That was when militant “entryisim” of the party was at its height. The hard left were sent packing by Neil Kinnock whose erratic nature may not have been prime ministerial material but he had the guts to save his party from the totalitarians.

It seems to have learned nothing from all this. And so we have a great party under the control of the undemocratic hard left.

Never under-estimate its dedication to power and its manipulation of the system to perpetuate it. Now moderate Labour MPs are so terrified of losing their seats to extremists that they have gone along with Corbyn’s regime in the Micawberish hope that something will turn up.

By then it may be too late. The Labour Party could be lost to democracy when our nation, in the throes of Brexit, needs a credible Opposition ready to govern. Instead, all it can offer is the terrible trio of Corbyn, John McDonell and that onewoman car crash, Diane Abbott, with Len McCluskey (Unite) pulling the strings to the greater damage of the economy.

All this begs two questions: why did it occur and how, if at all, is the Labour Party to be rescued?

What has happened to the production line that gave us Clement Attlee, Hugh Gaitskell, Harold Wilson, John Smith (for whom I worked) and Kinnock, if only for his rescue of the party for democracy in the 1980s?

Instead we have had only liabilities starting with Jim Callaghan who scuppered Barbara Castle’s courageous attempt to complement union power with responsibility. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown then blew the heavensent opportunity of inheriting a solvent economy by going to war under false pretences and through financial incompetence.

Next came another liability – Ed Miliband – who facilitated another bout of militant entryism by introducing a £3-a-year membership. This is not to mention the moderates who actually encouraged Corbyn to stand for leadership to widen choice.

The hard left seized on this gift. It was helped by Labour’s ambivalence about the class war, disillusion with Blair and Brown, the politically corrupting internet, the hard left’s seizure of the education machine and political correctness which, in seeking to destroy society, even wants to abolish boys and girls in favour of some curious neutral gender.

It is easy to put down Corbyn’s garnering of votes at the last election to youthful idealism and the appeal of something for nothing – student fees and accumulated debt.

But no young thing with an ounce of savvy or realistic upbringing – still less mature democrats – could conceivably have been conned by a terrorist hugger who knows neither the value of money nor the need to deter potential aggressors.

Election lies and Corbyn’s refusal to condemn the Venezuelan meltdown offer the moderates an opportunity to rescue their party – and the nation – from a fate worse than death: a Corbyn/Momentumfashioned Britain.

It will need exceptional leadership. Does it exist? Can you see Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, Dan Jarvis or Chuka Umunna rising to the occasion? Or Stephen Kinnock heeding the call to repeat his father’s service to democracy? Don’t hold your breath.

It unfortunately follows that, if you are sceptical about the rise of a saviour, there will be no breakaway Democratic Labour Party to offer a moderate political alternative to the Tories who will consequently muddle along.

The outlook is dire unless Labour moderates either fight or form a new party.