LABOUR'S right will make the most of the stunt by maverick Tories who say they want Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party.

Supposedly, the aim of these Conservative creeps is to get Labour to elect someone "unelectable" to bolster their party's fragile grip on power.

Strange thing, this "unelectable" status that has been bestowed on a man who has won eight successive elections, most recently being returned to represent Islington North with just 60 per cent of the vote and a mere 21,194 ahead of his nearest Tory rival.

Members of the Labour tribe like to pontificate about electability, too, with Bassetlaw MP John Mann, who like most MPs - but not Corbyn - failed to win the backing of a majority of the electorate in his constituency, claiming those of us who want the Islington North MP to win feel "a desire never to win again."

That is a slander on the millions who fought hard for a Labour victory and were devastated by the Tory win in May - but who back Corbyn because they understand that the party needs to mean something, both win to in the first place and if the win is to be of any value.

Harriet Harman might speak to people being "secretly relieved" that the Tories got back into government last month. No-one on the left could share such sentiments.

It's true that the Blairite undead showed a lack of zeal for victory over the course of the last parliament. Some openly suggested that, since cuts were "inevitable" and would be unpopular, it was better to let the Tories inflict them.

And the party did show some kamikaze tendencies, as with the bizarre choice of Jim Murphy as its leader in Scotland, where a pro-Trident, pro-tuition fees, pro-Iraq war career politician who had spent his entire working life at Westminster was a sitting duck for the Scottish National Party.

Then there was shadow chancellor Ed Balls, who presented the electorate with inspiring offers such as sticking to the Conservatives' spending plans and freezing child benefit.

But the "let's lose and make the Tories do our dirty work" mentality rests on the assumption that Labour and Tory governments will do the same things - something that may be acceptable to the Blairite right but is anathema to the socialist left.

As Corbyn has consistently argued, there is nothing "inevitable" about the savage cuts being inflicted by the Con-Dem and now true-blue regimes.

They have done irreparable damage to many of this country's most vulnerable, exacerbated a longer depression that that of the 1930s, shrunk the incomes of the majority of Britain's households - and for what? Higher borrowing and more debt under George Osborne than Labour ever managed.

Accepting the "there is no alternative" Thatcherite mantra is not a recipe for success. It does not win over Tory voters. It simply loses Labour ones.

We know that Labour got more votes in England under Miliband in 2015 than under Blair in 2005, and we know its obliteration in Scotland came from a party that vocally opposed austerity. 

We know that Labour surged in the polls when Miliband promised to tackle sky-high energy prices, attacked the press tycoons who distort our national debate and opposed war in Syria. 

The talking heads in the liberal press - Guardian sages Martin Kettle and Andrew Rawnsley have been at it of late - opine that Corbyn could never win and is out of touch.

Because, unlike the other candidates, he doesn't want to replace Trident? Newsflash - neither do most people in Britain.

Because he'd kick the privateers out of our health service, bring transport and energy back into public hands? Most people want that too.

The reason Corbyn provokes such ridicule on the right is because he has far more in common with ordinary people than they do. He is dangerous.

More power to his elbow.