Ya basta, enough is enough.

This column has remained mostly quiet on the Labour leadership tussle for three reasons…

One, it is not a member of the Labour Party.

Two the “Labour Party” has not been the Labour Party since 1983.

And three because the endorsement of a perpetual shit-stirrer and sarky bugger like me would do little for the furtherance of my candidate of choice.

But seeing as every shameful hack in the country has seen fit to chip in with their vital “opinions” on the issue — and, yes, I mean you, Toynbee — what is laughably called balance has been somewhat skewed, not to say stitched up, by the fourth estate so I feel obliged to respond.

In your scribe’s humble, if antiquated, view it is not the job of the media to attempt to influence the opinions of their viewers or readers, although everyone does it to one degree or another.

Slanted news pieces, either subtle or blatant, are food and drink to the fourth estate.

And it is inevitable. The role of a journalist is to attempt to establish the truth as they see it, hopefully but by no means always supported by facts.

What an honest journalist — if that is not an oxymoron in this day and age — must never do is twist the facts to suit their own argument. But sadly many do.

Opinion pieces are a somewhat different bundle of chip wrappings. They are by definition the views, whether sincerely held or expressed for money by the likes of Richard Littlejohn and Jeremy Clarkson, of the individual battering them out.

Or, in a lot of cases, ghostwritten for them by a junior hack.

However, in many ways the same rules apply.

Exaggeration for satirical effect is one thing, as one would have to be pretty stupid to take it at face value — but you can’t just make stuff up.

Yet that is exactly what the self-appointed paladins of the press have been doing for the last few months with regard to the Labour leadership race.

This is character assassination not just by hacks but in recent weeks by Labour MPs such as Alan Johnson attempting to sow seeds of division and fear to further their own agendas.

All of which brings me back to Polly Toynbee’s farcical and entirely self-serving claim this week that if dreams came true she would be far to the left of a certain candidate while at the same time urging her readers to back a different candidate who wouldn’t know where left of centre was if you handed them a compass and a map.

Her specious arguments barely warrant examination, except perhaps to point out a few blatant facts.

Fact one: even though she is a media commentator not a politician and therefore could say what she wants, Toynbee to my knowledge has never come out with anything that fits that bill.

Second, her claim that a vote for this candidate would split the party, much spouted by the other candidates and their stooges, is somewhat undermined by the fact that she was among the faction that supported the SDP split from Labour in the early ’80s.

Toynbee is just one of many, quite a few of whom should have known better.

Voters will, of course, one hopes, vote with their consciences and not be swayed by such pathetic smears.
And certainly not by this column’s comments.

I mean this column could point out that one of the four candidates has done more backflips that Beth Tweddle on speed, another appears to have no policies at all and yet another is patently in the wrong party.

In fact it could go further and argue that there is only one candidate that has set out a comprehensive plan for what they would do if they attained power.

Indeed it could be tempting to argue that only one candidate has stayed true to their principles and, despite severe provocation, refused to rise to the snide tactics of the others in attacking their opponents.

It would be possible to posit the theory that if you are, or claim to be, a socialist, which I assume many Labour members and supporters do, there is only one option.

However, I would never be so arrogant as to seek to influence your opinion one iota.

Make up your own minds…