Many people thought the Labour party would struggle to top the disaster of losing the general election, but it has silenced the doubters by somehow contriving to lose its own internal leadership election. Voters have signed up to support it, and Labour has reacted with a purge of such generalised unfairness that I’m almost starting to doubt that its leading lights really wanted to bring democracy to Iraq. It must be easy weeding out applications from those who don’t share Labour values – surely the very fact that they’ve made a decision and put their name to it is a huge beacon saying “Outsider!” A party that sees enthusiasm as a negative – at least that’s a quality that may win back Scotland.

Perhaps Harriet Harman’s handling of the whole debacle is a brilliant piece of marketing designed to make whoever takes over seem like a genius. There’s an easy way to find genuine Labour supporters – they boasted about voting Green in this election and kept quiet about voting Lib Dem in the last. Naturally, what Labour fears is not Tory entryism, but the horror of infiltration by the sort of people Labour is supposed to represent. Most columnists seem to feel that the party should plump for one of three fairly unpalatable options as at least they can win an election, just not this election, as there are too many people voting.

Every photo of the candidates looks like the staff room of a failing comprehensive feigning amusement at being photobombed by the janitor. Liz Kendall, with her permanent air of an office manager who has just come back from a course, couldn’t lure a voter out of a burning building – and her whole campaign is based on changing Labour to be whatever people who hate it want it to be. Meanwhile, Burnham, who looks as if he has carved Fireman Sam’s face off and laid it carelessly across his own skull – and would soon have Labour polling lower than Mrs Brown’s balls – wants to change the party into something bold and exciting. You’ve got to ask the question: well, why hasn’t he? It’s not as if he’s spent the last 15 years working at Asda.

Yvette Cooper, whose name sounds like something Jeremy Corbyn drove in the 1960s, says Corbyn doesn’t have answers for the future. She doesn’t have a particularly firm grasp of the future either, as she spent the first three months of this year telling us that Ed Miliband would be prime minister. Of course, as Cooper and Kendall have pointed out, there is sexism in the coverage of the contest, as there is everywhere. Cooper must wonder just how entrenched it is when her call to end detention for asylum seekers was overshadowed by Jeremy Corbyn taking the night bus.

Leaders around the world are nervous about Corbyn winning and becoming PM, as they know every time they visit the UK he’ll present them with another bottle of his homegrown elderflower champagne. I’m enjoying senior Tory peers calling Corbyn a “throwback”. A guy in a horsehair wig wearing a cape, who got a job for life because his great-great-great-grandfather had a knack for picking out the healthiest slaves? We can safely assume that Corbyn is no longer on the establishment’s Christmas card list. But he has been added to their other list, right below the crossed out name of Dr David Kelly.

Corbyn has met with extremists. Meeting someone doesn’t mean you agree with them – I’ve met Olly Murs, but that doesn’t mean I think you gotta hold on, hold on to what you’re feeling, that feeling is the best thing, the best thing all right. In the age of Facebook, we know that calling someone “friend” isn’t necessarily an endorsement, and generally signals an attitude somewhere between antipathy and disgust. Of course, it’s very difficult to have a career in politics without meeting a variety of people who support mass murder. Indeed, some of them will have been leading the Labour party. Britain is always in an awkward position talking about fighting extremism while we support and arm extremists such as Saudi Arabia. Our exact moral position is unclear. We’re opposed to beheadings unless they’re for sorcery? Something like that.

I wouldn’t be tempted to vote for someone bland, thinking that they might play better in the media. The media will thoughtlessly monster whoever is elected, just as I will. Those who hope for favours from the press would do well to remember how Ed Miliband was savaged simply for looking and sounding like some cruel alien satire on humanity. I feel pessimistic about Corbyn’s chances of doing anything if elected, but maybe I can afford to be. Maybe if I was being sanctioned or discriminated against or evicted, I would have to hope. Perhaps the politics of optimism always feels self-indulgent to those who don’t really need it. In any case, I’m pretty confident that the election itself will result in a landslide for Robert Mugabe.