SOME people are getting into a right old political pickle over the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn winning the Labour leadership contest.

He’ll never be a Prime Minister, they warn. He’ll lead Labour back to the 1980s, they howl and the party will be in the wilderness, the doomsayers claim.

Well the tactics of the other contenders and of Labour ever since the 1980s seems to be to persuade enough centre right Tory voters Labour is a better bet than who they would usually vote for.

A bit like changing your brand of washing powder.

This while trying to hold on to the natural Labour support in working class areas, Scotland, Wales and the north of England.

That is not working. The Tories are voting Tory again and becoming a little less embarrassed about it than before and the traditional Labour vote is shrinking.

The Blair years, while successful in England, repelled many in those areas already mentioned, gradually eroded left leaning support and led to the belief, rightly or wrongly, that there is no discernible difference between Labour and the Tories.

Labour needs to win back its core voters and attract new voters.

Look at what happened in May in Scotland.

In Glasgow the Labour vote fell, but not by enough to cause the SNP landslide.

If was purely on Labour dropping votes the seven seats would be marginal and some Labour MPs would have held on.

What happened was the turnout in the city increased hugely with an extra 60,000 people voting.

As well as taking votes from Labour, the LibDems and others the SNP attracted the support of these new or lapsed voters to increase the party’s vote by more than100,000, something truly remarkable.

It did so by attracting the support of people who previously did not vote because they felt they had no-one to vote for.

When these people turned out it created a result unprecedented in Scottish political history and beyond the SNP’s wildest dreams.

And it was on the back of a campaign conversation that opposed austerity, nuclear weapons, political establishment and cosy status quo where the occupants of Downing Street change but little else appears to.

Yes, Jeremy Corbyn is not going to win the Labour party any votes from the Tories.

But he is the only leadership candidate capable of re-igniting interest in the Labour Party among that huge group of voters who feel disenfranchised, left out in the could by the move to centre ground, centre right politics.

Maybe he won’t win an election. Neither did Neil Kinnock, neither did Gordon Brown but he might show Labour there are people out there desperate for a voice.