Amid all the hoo-hah about the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith it is easy to forget that one reason that the Tories are happy to fight each other is that Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party appears determined to make itself utterly unelectable. My local MP, ardent vegan Kerry McCarthy, is now the shadow minister in charge of farming and thinks that meat eaters should be treated like smokers, as pariahs. But if you thought she was barking mad meet Christine Shawcroft.
This old Trotskyite sits on Labour's National Executive and has just opined that the way to fight the islamofascist war criminal butchers of ISIS is not with air strikes but with tea bags, that is to say our soldiers should head off to Raqqa for a friendly cuppa.
Of course comrade Shawcroft is right about air strikes. Our RAF planes are achieving little other than making the UK a prime target for ISIS. We should not be intervening. But the naivete of her suggested solution to the conflict is breathtaking.
It is not that Comrades Shawcroft or McCarthy are evil, bad or wicked. I am sure that they are both very well meaning decent indibiduals and, for all I know, are charming and fun to be with as well. Actually I doubt that, they both appear to be rather humourless ladies.
The problem is that they come over as just being utterly barking mad and - as a general rule - Britain does not like to vote for folks that are so clearly mad from the off. For a politician to be certifiable once in power is to be expected but they should at least try to hide the fact until the contest is won. That does not appear to be the way of Comrade Corbyn's Labour Party.