If Corbyn wins, he could split the Tories too

‘Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?’ asked C.P. Cavafy in his poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’:

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

All through your and my life the Labour party have been at the gates of Downing Street, and often enough stormed them, only to be beaten back at a subsequent election. What might happen to the Conservative party if those barbarians disappear?

We must not assume that Jeremy Corbyn will take the Labour leadership. The likelihood remains that when second preferences are counted Yvette Cooper or Andy Burnham will scrape through. But theirs would be a miserable victory: humiliated before they even begin. Their party now faces one of two alternatives: a real victory for Mr Corbyn, or a Pyrrhic victory for Ms Cooper or Mr Burnham.