Yesterday Jeremy Corbyn produced his best performance at PMQs. You don't have to take my word for it. Even Laura Kuenssberg was impressed and we all know how pro-Corbyn she is. Later the same evening he faced the smiling Babe Magnet of Barry Island (sorry that alliterates better than Pontypridd) that is Owen Smith in the last of what has become an increasingly irrelevant, irritating and bad tempered series of hustings. Jeremy Corbyn sets out his vision for how we might change the way we do things in this country and outlines some of the reasons for this. Owen Smith says 'Yes, I agree Jeremy, but you cannot do it.'
When pressed as to why Corbyn can't do it he says that it is because he, Smith, has no confidence in Corbyn as a leader, in fact he doesn't believe that Corbyn wants to win at all. 'Unite behind me,' he says. 'I am the only person who can unite the party,' he says.
When further pressed for evidence of any sort to back up his beliefs he is less vocal. Indeed he can cite none of any substance. What we are experiencing here is 'the leap of faith'. The leap of faith is an essential part of any religion. All religions require a belief in a higher being, usually a deity. There is never any direct evidence to prove the existence of this deity and therefore believers are required to make a 'leap of faith'. Belief without proof.
What is odd here is that, firstly we are not dealing with the otherworld which is religion we are very much dealing with the real world. The world of food banks; homelessness; zero-hours contracts; exorbitant rents; transport chaos; a health service starved of cash and being dismantled before our very eyes; a welfare system in which the safety net it represents is so ripped that in most cases it no longer catches those it it is designed to protect.
And secondly it is not we the public who are being asked to make the initial leap of faith, it is Smith himself. We are being asked to make a leap of faith over a leap of faith. Owen Smith does no know the things he asserts are true, he just believes them and then we are being asked to believe in his beliefs, unlikely though they are.
On the surface I find very little to argue with him in the policies he is espousing. Two major stumbling blocks for me would be Trident and a new EU referendum.
I have always been opposed to nuclear weapons, and the idea of a deterrent is to my mind utterly futile. If at any point international relations were to break down to such an extent that either side would contemplate using nuclear weapons, then us having a few of our own will make not the blindest bit of difference. We do not need to be part of this charade but the more nationalistic among us look back to that glorious time when Britain ruled the waves, or at least those bits not ruled by the Dutch or the French, and go all moist at the thought of Vanguard class submarines ceaselessly patrolling beneath the waves, Trident missiles primed to see off Johnny Foreigner. God help us.
The other stumbling block as I have said is our response to the result of the EU referendum. I have already made my views clear on what I think about the Boy David and his reckless gamble. We lost. Get over it. I believe above almost all else in democracy. Let the people choose although it is not easy when the public is self evidently so stupid that it votes differently from me.
A genuine democrat cannot choose which decision he accepts and which he rejects. It is a bitter pill and to sweeten it we need to do a lot of work with our electoral system. There is absolutely no reason for rejecting proportional representation as a much fairer method. And I speak as someone who voted to reject AV when it was offered to us. I did not want AV because I think it is, to use current terminology, PR lite. It was more of a nod towards the demands of the Lib Dem part of the coalition than a serious attempt to make our system fair. If one of the consequences of PR is a greater representation in Parliament of UKIP then who can dispute the fact that they won enough votes to justify a larger voice. It would also give seats to the likes of the Greens, another party sidelined by our current system.
In the case of the referendum however there was no voting system to blame. It was a binary choice, in or out and every vote counted. To come running, saying we were lied to is no excuse. The remain side had ample opportunity to point this out. That they failed to do so is no reason to re-run the vote.
The fact that Owen Smith bases his entire campaign on borrowed policies, a flawed leap of faith, a blatant disregard for simple democratic choice and an unbelievably inflated opinion of his own abilities, mean that I would not support him whoever he was standing against. There is much rumour that he is a stalking horse for David Miliband. We shall have to wait and see.
There is already much evidence that Mrs May's safe pair of hands may not be as safe as was first claimed. Again we shall have to wait and see. It is an interesting thought though that at PMQs she made much of her own grammar school education. It is true that she attended Holton Park Girls' Grammar School in Holton, Oxfordshire. What she failed to mention was that in 1971 at which time Mrs May or as she was then Theresa Brasier was fourteen years of age, it became a co-educational comprehensive school, so, unless she was some sort of incredibly precocious child genius Mrs May took both her O and A levels at a comprehensive school. Despite this obvious handicap she still made it to Oxford, albeit to read geography, the last refuge of the desperate, at least in those days. She got a second class degree. Whether it was a 2:1 or a 2:2 is not clear.
To finish, it seems that somebody has decided to leak a list of those Labour MPs who have been attacking Mr Corbyn in public, both in print and in social media. There is much wailing from those named. This is frequently the response of playground bullies who are caught in the act. If they have behaved in a manner which is entirely honourable let them come out and demonstrate it, for they can have nothing to fear. If there is truth in the allegations implied in this list, and I am making no judgement, and have not seen the list, then what are they complaining about? Anybody can make a list. I don't doubt that those opposed to Mr Corbyn also have their own lists. We, my wife and I, make a list before we go shopping. It means we do not forget anything.
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