If Labour members are being banned for supporting other parties, then Labour MPs should be banned for supporting Tory Party policies

Most Labour MPs supported Tory Party policies on welfare, immigration and war, so when the General Secretary gets round to banning them, there will end up being a minus figure of members, meaning any candidate who wins nought votes will be the clear winner

If you were cynical, you might notice all those banned, including the 130,000 who joined recently, are those likely to vote for Corbyn (PA)

The war in the Labour Party is more fun this year, because there’s not even a pretence the factions are on the same side. So now, when 3,100 members are banned from voting in the leadership election, as revealed today, instead of trying to make sense, the General Secretary’s imagination can be allowed to flourish.

So you hear of reasons for being banned such as “tweeting a preference for cucumbers over spring onions”, or “supporting a candidate who wasn’t in the Labour Party, on the grounds it was the 2009 final of X Factor and there was no official Labour candidate.” Long-standing members are banned because “you boiled an egg in a manner that could support terrorism” or “it has been reported you had a dream in which David Miliband’s head was on a tadpole”, or “it was suggested you didn’t recognise Stephen Kinnock during a question about politicians on Pointless”.

If Keith Vaz was a Corbyn supporter he’d be told he couldn’t vote as “one of the prostitutes you hired once tweeted in support of the Green Party”.

One Labour member was banned for ‘liking’ a tweet that supported Green Party policy on fracking, which suggests at no point must you have ever supported anything ever proposed by another party.

So to clarify, to be allowed to vote you have to support any idea said by someone in your party, as long as it’s not from the leader of your party, but have to disagree with anything ever said by the Green Party. This means Green Party leader Caroline Lucas could advocate voting Labour, then anyone in the Labour Party who voted Labour would be banned from the Labour Party for supporting a Green Party policy and Labour would be forced to disappear under Labour Party rules.

This could get even more complicated soon, because most Labour MPs supported Tory party policies on welfare and immigration and war, so when the General Secretary gets round to banning them, there will end up being a minus figure of members, meaning any candidate who wins nought votes will be the clear winner.

One Labour councillor was banned following an allegation of “being rude” at a meeting. This is understandable as there are strict guidelines against rudeness in the Labour Party. Members should follow the example of anti-Corbyn MP Jess Phillips, who said proudly “I told Diane Abbott to f**k off”.

She’s not been banned, so that must be the sort of banter that helps build camaraderie and should be used by all members. Every Labour branch meeting should start with the chair telling everyone to “f**k off”. Then the treasurer’s report should go “I’ve got the money so why don’t you all f*ck off”, then a guest speaker can tell everyone to f**k off, and at last the Labour Party will be presentable again.

The problem is another member was banned for writing on Twitter “I f**king love the Foo Fighters”. The swearing can’t have been the problem, so it seems there’s a stringent policy on which American 1990s rock bands you’re allowed to love. This makes sense, because no party can go into an election preferring the Foo Fighters to the Smashing Pumpkins, that would be electoral suicide.

If you were cynical, you might notice all those banned, including the 130,000 who joined recently, are those likely to vote for Corbyn. The anti-Corbyn faction believe it’s essential to stop him, because while he can attract thousands to rallies, they say he couldn’t win a General Election. The only answer, therefore, is to replace him with someone who stands even less chance of winning a General Election, and can only attract nine people to rallies.

It’s like saying we must accept Wayne Rooney is no longer effective as an international striker, so instead we’re going to play Mrs Wetherspoon who works in the Age Concern shop, though at the moment she’s in bed with her dodgy hip.

Part of Owen Smith’s problem may be that no one knows what he stands for, especially himself. He claims he supports the same ideas as Corbyn, and there is some truth in this. For example, he says there are too many immigrants, and Corbyn says there aren’t too many immigrants. So they might disagree on the too many/not too many issue, but they’ve both counted the number of immigrants and that’s the main thing.

Strangely, despite backing Corbyn’s ideas, he never mentioned this at any time until a few weeks ago, which shows he’s much more careful and trustworthy than Corbyn, who rushed into supporting his own ideas as soon as he had them.

But you can’t help wondering what Jeremy Corbyn’s strategy will be if, despite the fun of all the bans, he wins anyway. Because this time the MPs won’t even pretend to back him. Instead of looking surly as they sit behind him in Parliament, they’ll throw peanuts at him during Prime Minister’s Questions, then release chickens to cluck round the Commons while he’s speaking, and let ferrets loose and set fire to John McDonnell’s jacket.

They’ll swap Corbyn’s notes so he reads “Eileen from Barnsley wants to know, well she’s actually drawn a picture of a knob with drips coming off it, so I’m not sure what point she’s making but could the Prime Minister answer Eileen please”.

While Corbyn is outlining his housing policy on The Andrew Marr Show, Tom Watson will creep up behind and drop his trousers, and the next day when Labour is on 0 per cent in the polls, he’ll say: “I told you Corbyn was useless”.

Then they can get David Miliband to stand against him, and this time win a leadership election one-nil, with 673,459 disqualified votes.