Daily catch-up: sixteen reasons not to vote for Jeremy Corbyn

Just before the Labour Party exits stage left, a few reminders

Another fine cartoon by Jake Goretzki. More of his work here.

• Thirteen reasons not to vote for Jeremy Corbyn: measured argument from Labour Pains. And a 14th reason from John Van Reenen, who has read Jeremy Corbyn’s The Economy in 2020 so that you don’t have to.

• Many thanks to David Boothroyd for pointing out a 15th reason: that Corbyn has the declared support of just 15 Labour MPs, 6½% of the total. Twenty-one of those who nominated him do not appear to want him as leader. I have compiled a list here.

• A 16th reason is the abuse from the Cybernistas, the Corbyn supporters on the internet, who attack anyone who wants Labour to be in a fit state to form a government ever again.

I shouldn’t, but I do enjoy asking people who prefer an actual Conservative government to a “Tory-lite” one, that is, a centrist Labour government, why they don’t just go and join the Tories.

And I do wonder why they describe their opponents so often as sneering and smug. Trying to explain that that “the choice is not reform or radicalism, it is reform or Conservatism” (David Miliband) or that “our principles require us to seek power” (Gordon Brown) is not a sneer, it is an argument and Corbyn supporters simply won’t engage with it.

As for smugness, we centrists lost in 2010. Those Labour MPs who voted for David M (53 per cent of them) behaved with restraint and dignity to maintain party unity. The centrists were not running the show for the past five years, so the failure of Ed M’s project is not their fault. The ones I know felt sad and frustrated at five wasted years and now feel despair that party members want to respond to defeat by redoubling their efforts to alienate the electorate.

We centrists have been proved right. But smug? The one thing we are not.

• And finally, still catching up with some gems from Moose Allain:

“You look a bit grumpy.”

“It’s early.”

“OK then, you look a bit surly.”