I SUSPECT that I and others will reply to the Stroud Labour Party activist’s letter of January 13.

Dr Richard House is a regular contributor to SNJ letter’s page and one must admire his pluck in continually advocating a losing political position.

He champions the ‘Jeremy Corbyn phenomenon’ which all agree has ignited a bush fire amongst the Labour hard left.

He neglects to mention that for every new member that his party gains they will almost certainly lose that many and loads more ‘middle of the road’ Labour supporters – think of the SDP era.

Dr House maintains that it is the BBC, liberal-left-wing newspapers and an orchestrated campaign of the right wing press who are seriously questioning serial back-bencher rebel Corbyn’s credentials as a party leader when he has never held any office of state.

Wow!

A conspiracy from the Guardian reading editors of the BBC to the right-wing press.

I somehow don’t think they can all be wrong.

Dr House is a bit premature in being cock-a-hoop with the Oldham by-election victory.

The only real opposition was Ukip and they are on the point of imploding.

Labour’s first real test will come in May with the local elections.

Opposition parties always do well mid-term and that is the time to access the new direction Corbyn is taking his party.

Oh yes, Dr House uses the analogy of 1945 when Labour secured a spectacular election victory.

The situation in the country then was totally different to now.

The country had been at war for six years under a coalition government in which Labour leader and deputy prime minister Clem Atlee had been running domestic affairs.

Corbyn doesn’t seem able to run his own shadow front bench.

A better analogy is the leadership era of Michael Foot, also from the hard left as Corbyn, when many dissatisfied Labour MPs joined the newly formed SDP and Foot led Labour to a disastrous election defeat. In fact the Labour Party has gone so far backwards that it will be at least three general elections from now before they will even be considered fit for government by the British public.

Tom Newman

Stroud