Many years ago when I was a Legal Aid lawyer in London I used to spend my days suing local Councils. It was illuminating. The Labour ones meant well but could not organise the proverbial piss-up. Even when your client had a very thin case it was worth pushing it because chances were the Council might be sufficiently disorganised and incompetent to give you what you wanted.
The Tories on the other hand were well run but tight as a gnat's chuff. If they said no, they meant no; and it was probably because someone capable had looked at the file and decided you had no case. My political sympathies didn't lie in their direction, but I came to develop a grudging admiration for their method.
In this context, and leaving aside the folly of giving non party-members a vote, I am still staggered by Labour's extraordinary election of Jeremy Corbyn. How could they have done such a thing?
Research carried out by Jon Cruddas confirms what many had suspected, namely that Labour lost the election because people didn't think Ed Miliband was an impressive leader and because they didn't think Labour was credible on the economy. So what does Labour do? It elects someone with a history of links to terrorists in both Ireland and the Middle East who has never run so much as Parliamentary committee. It elects someone who favours an economic policy founded on heroic tax raising assumptions and money printing which a majority of reputable economists (Richard Murphy, Corbyn's tax advisor, is an accountant, not an economist) think is dangerous.
I wrote recently about Robert Conquest's dictum that the behaviour of any large organisation may be explained by the hypothesis that it has been taken over by a secret cabal of its enemies. I suspect George Osborne has not in fact managed to infiltrate the Labour party, but if he had he would no doubt have been pushing for the Labour leader who would have least chance of becoming prime minister but would do most damage to the Party in the process of failing. Mr Corbyn fits the bill perfectly.
It's not just that the substance of Corbyn's policies have such a limited appeal in the UK. It's that he is uncharismatic, has a chequered past, showed repeatedly in his thirty years as an MP that he is incapable of loyalty to the Parliamentary Party and is unpopular with his colleagues at Westminster. He seems to have no concept of the need to co-operate with the press, already cancelling interviews and ducking questions.
He is also a truly terrible speaker. I listened to the results being announced on Saturday. The new Deputy Leader Tom Watson came over as a machine politician, unimaginative, tough, clever, the product of the Unions which have made him. But Corbyn sounded like one of those people you used to see trying to sell the SWP magazine outside Sainsbury's on Stoke Newington High Street. Rambling, bitter, obsessive. Come to think of it Corbyn probably was one of those people. Modern politics requires leaders who are articulate, measured and sound reasonable, at least in public. Corbyn was none of these things. How is he going to cope with the necessity of getting Labour's message across?
At this stage (Monday morning 48 hours in) Corbyn's shadow cabinet is not fully formed. But Oh Jesus the people. John McDonnell as Shadow Chancellor? Really? Diane Abbott? Hilary Benn? Yes, Hilary Benn - interestingly Benn said that Labour would be campaigning to stay in Europe, which is funny because Corbyn apparently told another former front bencher the opposite only yesterday.
Half the shadow cabinet have declined to serve under Corbyn. Two who haven't are Lord Falconer, an old chum of Tony Blair's, as Shadow Justice Minister, and Andy Burnham as Shadow Home Secretary. These men must be desperate. Andy Burnham argued against everything Corbyn stood for, at least until it looked as if Corbyn might win; then he trimmed his sails to try and catch some of Corbyn's votes.
The words Last Throw of the Dice spring to mind as far as Mr Burnham is concerned. He must have calculated that chucking his lot in with Corbyn is better than risking deselection and the wilderness. It is a calculation that has self-interest written all over it. Burnham may of course be right; but it's striking how many of his former colleagues thought the odds favoured the opposite move.
I think Corbyn is wrong about virtually everything - defence, taxation, the economy, foreign policy generally - but more importantly his views on these matters are at odds with those of most other people as well. He lacks the personal qualities good leadership requires, and is going to have a lot of trouble dealing with parliamentary colleagues, who on the whole despise him.
And yet in a way this isn't the worst news for Labour. Worse still is what the Tories will tell the rest of us about Labour. They will tell us that if we want to know what Labour would be like in power, they are the party which was daft enough to elect Jeremy Corbyn on a 60% landslide. And they will be right.
