Why #ToriesForCorbyn isn’t very funny.

Why are many Tory members supposedly ponying up £3 to join Labour in order to bring back such an outdated, disproven and downright destructive politics?

In 2004 the Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah declared “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” Gaza based Hamas soon went on to suggest homosexuality should be punishable by death.

Not a particularly nice bunch, eh? You’d think that. Unless of course you were the veteran Labour MP for Islington North and now Labour leader wannabe, Jeremy Corbyn, who is known to have regularly announced his proudness in calling them his “friends” (even inviting representatives into the Commons on one occasion).

Then there is the mass murderer Che Guevara, and buddy Castro who condemned his country to decades of perpetual poverty. Yup, his political idols.

And Hugo Chavez, the man who despite Venezuela’s vast oil wealth brought the country to the point of having to ration toilet roll. An economic inspiration.

Not really that funny, is it really? No.

One of the greatest achievements of the late Baroness Thatcher (for those of us on the political right at least) was to banish the hard left to the fringes of acceptability, depriving them of the oxygen of publicity and the legitimacy of official office. So why are many Tory members supposedly ponying up £3 to join Labour in order to bring back such an outdated, disproven and downright destructive politics?

Would it help the Conservative’s chance of electoral victory? Probably. But there is more to politics than just elections. There is a never ending war of ideas. Is having the hard-left at the forefront of British politics once again worth it? I certainly don’t think so. Given the changes to the Labour leadership contest (particularly the lack of the MP electoral college pool vote) it’s not inconceivable that Corbyn could win. It may be a disaster for the Labour Party, but I’d say it was a disaster of the country too. The Official Opposition of Her Majesty’s Government fronted by a terrorist sympathising neo-Marxist? No thanks.

And what, as unthinkable as it may sound, if he went on to actually win a General Election? It’s not impossible. Uniting the various hard-left factional parties and Unions behind the party machine, possibly with the support of some Greens, the traditional Scottish Labour base and scores of otherwise non-voters? The short-term lolz just aren’t worth that risk, whatever the odds.

Furthermore, it’s actually pretty childish and arrogant. Labour supporters have a democratic right to elect a leader without cackling right-wingers with too much time on their hands meddling in the process. An effective opposition is an instrumental part of a functioning and healthy democracy. While I personally hope Labour stay on the opposition benches for as long as possible it would be preferable if they could actually do the job of scrutinising the Government of the day to a half decent degree while they are there.

His views aren’t funny. They are abhorrent. Giving them the light of day again isn’t clever either. It’s not in the Conservative’s best interest, and more importantly, certainly isn’t in the country’s interest either.

Corbyn’s hard-statist leftism doesn’t belong on the front benches of the future. It belongs in the dustbin of the past, where it has dwindled for decades into near-irrelevance. Keep it there.