The Corbynistas are not a joke – they are Stalinist true believers

So farewell then, Frank Field. Or perhaps not: the possible permutation of options being considered by the honourable member for Birkenhead – calling a by-election, sitting as an independent MP, contesting the next election as a Labour candidate (despite being deselected by his constituency party) – reflect a state of confusion that epitomises British politics at the moment.

The central feature of the Field case, however, is straightforward. Frank Field signed up to represent his constituents as a traditional tribune of moderate Labour, not to take orders from a coterie of militant Marxists acting with all the transparency of Lenin and his comrades on their sealed train.

Corbyn’s Labour is a Marxist party. Why does that not ring more alarm bells with the electorate? Because all the mainstream political parties in Britain today are culturally Marxist: the difference with Labour is that it is also economically Marxist. That terrifies the elites who are perfectly happy to virtue signal over PC absurdities, but who howl with anguish at the thought of paying higher taxes, of seeing railways and other utilities renationalised, of witnessing investment and capital vanishing offshore. As indeed they should.

The mainstream media, probably the sector of society most removed from any awareness of what is happening in the real world, treated Corbyn as a joke until the last election. So, for that matter, did Frank Field who was one of the 35 signatories who gave Corbyn the minimum number of sponsors he needed to stand in the Labour leadership race. Establishment politicians viewed Corbyn almost affectionately as a poor man’s Dennis Skinner. That reflected the club-like character of the House of Commons, one of the features that has made it the most hated and despised institution in Britain.

Jeremy, love him or loathe him, was one of the boys. He deserved a sporting chance. After all, he was hardly deficient in qualifications to become prime minister. Geopolitical expertise? It should not be forgotten that Corbyn was “chair” of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Chagos Islands. His media skills were also well documented: from 2009 to 2012 he had hosted a call-in programme on an Iranian government television channel for which, according to the House of Commons register of members’ interests, he earned up to £20,000.

In the event, Corbyn won the Labour leadership with just under 60 per cent of first-preference votes. It should be noted he would have done so even without the votes of people who paid £3 to vote as “registered supporters”. The consoling myth that Corbyn was somehow foisted on the Labour Party is nonsense. His advent as leader was uncongenial to the parliamentary party, but not to the overall Labour movement, of which he is emblematic.

Corbyn’s leadership is the reverse image of Theresa May’s. He is disliked by many MPs but supported by Labour in the country; May is supported by a majority of MPs but loathed by the main body of the Conservative Party. That makes Corbyn’s position more secure than May’s.

On the other hand, the Stalinist climate of Labour today does not imply that Corbyn enjoys the autocratic hegemony of Stalin. Just as Kremlinologists used to study the line-up of “collective leadership” atop Lenin’s tomb on May Day, to try to discern the pecking order in the Politburo and Central Committee, the Labour Party today presents a similar opacity. The roles of John McDonnell and Seumas Milne “…the number of victims of Stalin’s terror has been progressively inflated over recent years…”), as well as a cohort of shadowy figures behind them, remain ill-defined.

The damage to Britain represented by a Corbyn government cannot be exaggerated. The overt intentions of any Marxist party invariably account for only a small fraction of its real agenda. Even the tip of the Corbyn iceberg is alarming, but any government led by him would devastate the economy, dismantle our nuclear defences and generally reduce us to Third World status. Anyone who doubts that should review the plaudits Comrade Corbyn has lavished on Chavez’ Venezuela.

The Venezuela template is relevant because of the likely timing of a potential Corbyn government. Britain would just have left the EU, with consequent economic challenges. Corbyn supports Brexit for the wrong reason: he sees it as an opportunity to impose “socialism in one country” untrammelled by European law. Britain has the fifth largest economy in the world, but even that could be destroyed by the “perfect storm” created by our French and German enemies (let’s face reality) doing everything possible to impoverish us externally, while a Corbyn government subjected us to Venezuela-style nationalisation and universal state control domestically.

Not to worry, the Conservative Party will save us and see off these polytechnic Trots (that was meant facetiously). If all Conservative MPs paraded the streets of their constituencies wearing sandwich boards with the slogan “Please don’t vote for us”, they could not do a more effective job of making themselves unelectable. When the public looks at Westminster it does not see a sinister coterie of Marxists preparing to take power, it sees the Conservative Party, with the full endorsement of the Prime Minister and Chancellor, stubbornly attempting to block the will of a majority in a referendum.

Thanks to a dozen mega-entitled Tory Remainer MPs resisting the constitutionally expressed national will, the public sees the Tory Party as the enemy of democracy and is preparing to punish it accordingly. The public has little awareness of Labour, whose Brexit message is muted and contradictory, it is the Tory Remainers, with their seigneurial contempt for the electorate, who are making their party unelectable.

Nor can we rely on Frank Field and the Mensheviks to stop the Corbynistas. They simply have not the power, the will, or the numbers in the places where it counts to break the grip of Momentum. It is significant that in a society where an obsession with “race” now dominates public life, even the overt, unapologetic anti-Semitism of the ruling group in Labour has not threatened its control. A Marxist clique that can achieve that degree of invulnerability is greatly to be feared.

Unless, very quickly, the Conservative Party defers with a good grace to the will of the electorate and delivers a clean Brexit, then Britain is doomed to undergo a Third World style of Marxist coup, followed inevitably by a Third World standard of living and international status.