Social media is alive today with tales of people being refused a vote in the Labour leadership election on the grounds that they don’t support Labour values (if anyone even knows what those are any more). We suspect you’ll be hearing quite a bit about it in the press over the coming days.

The prevailing reaction seems to be slack-jawed astonishment at the planetary-scale car-crash the party has allowed to develop around the issue, with another “coup” story thrown in for good measure in the Telegraph.

We can only think of one way the farce could become even worse.

It’s 12 September, the day of the decision. Harriet Harman walks out in front of the assembled press and reads out the results.

– Jeremy Corbyn has won the first round at a canter, with 47% of the vote. His nearest competitor, Andy Burnham, has 23%, with Yvette Cooper on 21% and Liz Kendall a distant last on 9%.

– Thousands of other votes for Corbyn have been disqualified.

– Kendall drops out, and her 2nd and 3rd preferences are given to the remaining three candidates. But almost none go to Corbyn, and nobody yet has over 50%, so a third round is entered.

– Kendall’s votes split heavily for Cooper, who moves up to 28%, with Burnham on 24% and Corbyn on 48%. Burnham now drops out. His 2nd preferences nudge Cooper to 51% and victory.

Labour is now led by someone who was the first choice of less than a quarter of the party’s own support, and who on 1st preferences actually finished 3rd out of four.

(We’ve deliberately made the example extreme there – it’s a lot more likely that the 2nd-place candidate would win, but it’s absolutely theoretically possible that the one in 3rd could overtake them in the 2nd round, in so far as we understand the system, and it seems to be widely agreed that Cooper and Burnham are neck-and-neck.)

The runaway preferred choice is plainly seen to have been denied victory only by a massive vote-fiddling operation by which thousands of people who voted for Corbyn – or were merely suspected to have been thinking about it – have had their votes openly thrown in the bin on trumped-up charges without any challenge or hearing.

Labour announces that it is now a plausible and democratic alternative government in whom the British people should place their trust, even as half of its own members and supporters take to the streets with pitchforks and flaming torches.

We’re just going to leave that one there for you to ponder.