A NOT unexpected letter from Labour Party supporter Dr Richard House (SNJ October 26) in which he congratulates Jeremy Corbyn on winning second Labour leadership battle.

His joy is shared by other political parties who would also have cherry picked him as Labour leader.

Labour is now unelectable.

In fact there is a distinct possibility that the Labour Party is heading towards political oblivion.

Corbyn is treading an identical path to that of Michael Foot in the 1980s, where the far left took over the Labour Party and were soundly thrashed in the 1983 General Election.

Unlike Corbyn, Foot was respected by both supporters and opponents.

Subsequently within a few years of this setback Labour regrouped by expelling the hard left elements from the party and subsequently won three General Elections.

This time the mechanism to expel extreme hard left activists from party has been closed.

Now this leaves a dilemma for Corbyn who will see those of the soft or middle-left desert the party in droves.

Last time they moved to the SDP and eventually to the Liberal Party.

I suspect this time they will go straight to the Lib Dems who will see a resurgence of their fortunes.

Dr House brags that Labour have created the largest mass membership of a current political party in Europe.

Possibly but many of these new members are people of the extreme hard left, previous banned from party.

Besides history shows this phenomenon abates within a short time.

The SDP and Ukip had at one time enough support to become the second Parliamentary party. The SDP disbanded and Ukip are in terminal turmoil!

Dr House and Corbyn are both desperately trying to plaster over the deep divide within Labour by demonising the Tory Party. Corbyn’s tactic is to claim that the Tories will call a General Election early next year. But the Conservatives would be daft if they did. They would win easily but the timing would come back to haunt them in later elections.

Teresa May would be better advised to wait until 2020 when Corbyn’s shortcomings become self-evident but also by then the size of House of Commons will be reduced to 600 seats and Labour will lose up to 30 seats that the current parliamentary boundaries unfairly gifts them.

Because there is not a competent Parliamentary opposition to the Conservatives (SNP excepted), they will be repeatedly returned to power no matter what.

They will continually be seen as the least worst of the two main parties.

Good government needs good opposition.

Readers of Stroud’s papers know that Dr House is probably the most active political letter writer to all the local newspapers and will undoubtedly reply in support of his leader.

His regular tirade against the right-wing newspapers, which has been totally debunked, possibly forces him to write to the local press.

And despite being knocked back by correspondence with different and informed opinions, Dr House keeps bouncing back with his OTT forecasts of a Labour resurgence.

I guess it’s because he can have his views reprinted to acclaim from Corbyn’s supporters.

Those of other parties will ignore his letters while wavering Labour voters will tire of reading the same rhetoric and sadly for the Dr and Labour switch off at next election.

Tom Newman

Stroud