Hope for Labour comes from unexpected quarters. Momentum – previously portrayed as Jeremy Corbyn’s brutish private army, roughly equivalent to Hitler’s Stormtroopers – has suddenly been revealed as a left-wing version of the Rotary Club. Several journalists visited its gathering in Liverpool, held in parallel to the Labour party conference, and met Momentum members. The Times columnist Philip Collins, formerly an aide to Tony Blair, was particularly impressed. This “cavalry of idealists”, he enthused, was fresh, “technologically adept and energetic”.
Meanwhile, the reborn Ed Balls, whose lack of appeal to the electorate was once taken for granted, has won the popular vote on Strictly Come Dancing for his performance of the charleston, which a Daily Mail columnist described as “absolutely marvellous”. Although the judges gave him the thumbs-down, the people rejected expertise, just as they did in the EU referendum.
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