Every day seems to bring a new media-generated hoo-ha about what Jeremy Corbyn may or may not have said. As Owen Jones warns, we’d better get used to it. The vast armoury of the Tory press is trained on Jeremy. Years of remorseless battering of Ed Milliband left many of us in Labour exhausted by the impossibility of getting a serious political message across in a media that thrives on division and ridicule. We better hang onto our tin hats – the right wing media has only just warmed up. Better than that, we need to stand together. Last week, while the media was obsessing about women-only rail carriages – for the record, Jeremy announced a consultation, an opportunity to listen to women themselves, not a policy – the Tory party went about its everyday business, largely without serious scrutiny. The prime minister produced a list of Lords that challenged any remaining notion that the revising chamber could have a respectful place in our democracy, swelling to a gargantuan size, replete with those enjoying the favour of the government, while the elected chamber will lose many seats (in mainly Labour areas). The Regulatory Policy Committee – independent advisors to government – unanimously declared the Trade Union Bill `not fit for purpose’, a savage indictment of the first major piece of legislation of the first full-Tory government in nineteen years yet barely rippling the media pond. And in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, it was confirmed that thousands of people with disabilities had died while being hounded into work by Iain Duncan Smith. Such is the concern about this revolting state of affairs, international human rights lawyers will investigate.

This country needs this Government to be held to account. They came to power without fully revealing their malicious intent, opportunistically using the collapse of western banking on 2008 to slash and burn the state they abhor yet has been the greatest force for equality the people have seen. And, despite some benign recent economic conditions, they have increased the debt! Jeremy Corbyn, should he be revealed as party leader on September 12, and as a supporter I hope he is, is very well aware that the people need Labour. People like my neighbours on Merseyside who are in work but earn so little they have to rely on tax credits (now being removed) to subsidise the low wages from their employers. Or the young people who feel utterly let down by short-termist politics which gambles away their futures for the votes of the better off, and hopeless about a nation that cannot offer them an education, a decent job or the hope of a home. The parents desperate for the school holidays to end so that their kids can get a decent meal at midday, for whom talk of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ is a joke when crap jobs, low wages and foodbank dependency make life more akin to the ‘Northern Workhouse’. I am one of the lucky ones. I have been able to work and contribute through my adult life. I have been able to afford somewhere to live, I can put food on the table. I can enjoy a holiday, and when I retire it will not be into poverty. I believe in the benefits of the state for all in our society and I am proud to pay my way.