Joe Haines, the one-time journalist at the Scottish Daily Mail is clear-sighted, ruthless and possesses an almost psychic ability to see straight to the heart of any political problem (file pic)

During a quarter century of reporting politics, I have only ever encountered a tiny number of truly first-class brains. Of those, the shrewdest and most lethal political intellect belongs to Joe Haines, press secretary to prime minister Harold Wilson in the Sixties.

The one-time journalist at the Scottish Daily Mail is clear-sighted, ruthless and possesses an almost psychic ability to see straight to the heart of any political problem.

He once told me: ‘The task of press secretary to the prime minister is to help the prime minister. It is not to help the Press.’

Although now aged 87, Joe Haines retains an alert mind and, intriguingly, never breaks cover without sanction from his well-placed Labour contacts.

For this reason, his article in this week’s New Statesman, the Left-leaning magazine, is of profound significance.

With typical bluntness, he begins by saying: ‘Labour will lose the next general election if Jeremy Corbyn is still its leader, and lose by a substantial margin.’

He adds: ‘Corbyn has no vision for the future of Britain.’

With devastating, rapier-like attacks, Haines goes on to provide what is both an instruction manual and a tool-kit for Labour MPs who wish to get rid of Corbyn as party leader.

He recognises that this task is impossible to achieve by conventional means, since Corbyn has the support of the majority of party members.

But since the leader is backed by only a small number of Labour’s 231 MPs — I’d guess the figure is no more than 20 — Haines proposes that the parliamentary party should unilaterally declare independence from the party in the country.

Haines' article in this week’s New Statesman, begins by saying: ‘Labour will lose the next general election if Jeremy Corbyn is still its leader, and lose by a substantial margin.’ He adds: ‘Corbyn has no vision for the future of Britain’

Although clearly against party rules, Haines states this would be morally legitimate. ‘It is the Parliamentary Labour Party,’ he says, ‘that represents the Labour vote in Britain, not the 423,000 people, including the ragbag of “registered supporters” who voted in the leadership contest.’

For this reason, he is calling on Labour MPs to hold their own election to vote for a new leader. MPs alone would vote. Other party members and supporters (such as those who paid £3 in exchange for a vote in the leadership election) would be excluded.

If this happened, their most likely choice would be Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn, on the strength of his recent, highly praised speech in the Commons debate (on intervention in Syria) in support of Government policy. (Admittedly, this would be a curious criterion for choosing a leader of the Opposition!)

The new leader would then choose his or her own Shadow Cabinet. Regardless of the wisdom of Haines’s plan, this is when the real problems would start, because there would be two rival Shadow Cabinets — but for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that this actually happens.

We would be entering uncharted territory. Commons Speaker Bercow would be forced to decide which leader, and which Shadow Cabinet, were the legitimate ones.

My guess is that he would choose the leader with the majority in the Commons — which would mean banishing Mr Corbyn and his small rump of allies to the back benches.

Similar arguments would have to be solved with regard to use of the opposition leader’s Commons office and access to ‘Short money’ — the State funds that are available to opposition parties.

Next, Labour candidates in May’s local elections would have to choose which faction to represent. Among those would be Sadiq Khan MP, the party’s candidate to replace Boris Johnson as London Mayor.

GEORGE'S SERIAL BUNGLER COMES A CROPPER AGAIN ONE of George Osborne’s first decisions after becoming Chancellor five years ago was to appoint respected economist Robert Chote to the Office of Budget Responsibility, the independent body that gives authoritative analysis of public finances. The move was hailed as a welcome step towards restoring the integrity of our national finances and prevent them being manipulated by government ministers. Sadly, Chote’s organisation has failed. Five years ago, its economic forecasts were far too optimistic — meaning that Osborne had to break his famous pledge to balance the national books before last year’s general election. Now, Chote has bungled again. In the Autumn Statement six weeks ago, Chote’s revised — yet flawed — forecast afforded the Chancellor a timely £27 billion windfall, which gave him the chance to indulge in a spending splurge and abandon his controversial cuts in tax credits for poorer working families. However, Osborne was forced, on Thursday, to warn of impending economic gloom. This made a mockery of Chote’s forecast, and made his own Autumn Statement look reckless. I have a forecast of my own — and I am confident it will prove accurate. Chote will not suffer for his serial incompetence. Instead, he will be rewarded in due course by a grateful Chancellor with a peerage. Advertisement

It is even possible that candidates from the two rival factions might stand against each other.

The result would be chaos followed by a bitter civil war that would probably descend at times into physical violence.

Such a schism could mark the moment when Labour lost the chance of regaining power — quite possibly for ever.

So why is someone as atavistically loyal to the Labour Party as Joe Haines floating such a potentially suicidal idea? The reason is that he thinks the risk is worth it, because he fears his beloved party is doomed under Jeremy Corbyn.

The depth of his contempt for Corbyn knows no bounds. He says: ‘He might once have fitted the role of a deputy manager of a northern friendly society — kind, polite and compassionate yet unable to help his client — but he is intellectually unsuited to be a minister of any kind, let alone the Prime Minister. Either he goes, or the party itself is a goner.’

However, I disagree with Joe Haines’s analysis, principally because he does not set out any credible argument as to who might replace Corbyn. Despite all his undoubted faults, Corbyn is the only Labour figure to have set out a distinctive vision.

his three leadership election rivals (Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall) all parroted Tory policies. No one else since has shown any sense of moral authority.

That said, there is no doubt that most Labour MPs agree with Joe. But whether they will answer his call-to-arms is another matter.

In view of this, I recalled the thoughts of one of those other men with first-class brains I have encountered in Westminster: Lord (Tristan) Garel-Jones, the Tory whip who was accused of masterminding the conspiracy to topple Margaret Thatcher 25 years ago.

He knows how hard it is to dislodge a sitting leader. But he also knows it is not impossible.

Now, thanks to the Machiavellian masterplan of Harold Wilson’s spin doctor, a notorious expert of the black arts, Labour MPs have been handed the weapon. I predict that in due course, Uncle Joe’s plan will turn into brutal political reality.

This week, we learned that the world’s oldest living animal has been given a new lease of life after being put on a healthy new diet.

Jonathan, a giant tortoise who was born in the year of the Great Reform Bill and when William IV was on the throne, has just turned 183. But will Jonathan live long enough to see Sir John Chilcot finally deliver his report on the Iraq War?

Our apologist for barbarism

JUST nine days ago, Britain’s closest Middle Eastern ally executed 47 prisoners.

The Saudi Arabian government claimed that the men were ‘terrorists’.

In fact, the only ‘crime’ many had committed was to have protested peacefully against the regime. Some had been arrested as children; others were mentally ill.

Most controversially, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told the BBC’s Nick Robinson yesterday that the dead were ‘convicted terrorists’.Though some of those executed were, indeed, killers (such as Abel al-Dhubaiti who murdered BBC cameraman Simon Cumbers and left the Corporation’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner, paralysed in an attack 11 years ago), many others were not.

Mr Hammond was inanely repeating the propaganda issued by the bloodstained Saudi regime.

This is a very serious matter. It is disgraceful that a British Foreign Secretary should be an apologist for what is nothing less than judicial murder.

Mr Hammond’s comment was a wholly unjustified slur on those Saudi prisoners who were executed in a fashion that differed little from medieval barbarism.