In normal circumstances, I would have been glued to the rise and rise of left-wing maverick Jeremy Corbyn over the last few weeks, however, because I have been involved with watching emulsion dry, trying to be ‘one of the lads’ with delivery drivers and pretending to know what a domestic appliance engineer is talking about, it has passed me by, at least to an extent.

Being one of the increasingly lonely types who spends the long hours of the day working at home, I somehow resist the lure of daytime TV (except when I have a cold and give myself sick leave) choosing to listen to either Radio 4 or 5, or, if I am unusually upbeat, Radio 6, if only to hear the daily playing of ‘Take the Skinheads Bowling’  by Campervan Beethoven.

However, in the last couple of weeks, I have experienced a thrilling alternative to this that has seen me regularly entering and exiting DIY stores and Curry’s, the electrical wholesaler, where I have wasted several hours of my life deciding which Smart TV I am going to buy, then never bother to work out how to use.

In between these life-changing events, I have been working and waiting for deliveries from men I try to mimic or attempt to understand in a bizarre effort aimed at retaining my masculinity.

“Just chuck the fucker over there mate, I don’t even know what it is, but I expect I paid for it.”

Of course I paid for it; I am the only person living here, which also means I also know what it is (a dining table) but my blasé “I couldn’t give a toss” attitude made me feel quite manly, especially with paint on my jeans.

It got even worse when the dishwasher repair man turned up and pulled apart the machine, sucking his lips inwards as he talked sagely about chalked up impellers, washer arms and marcerator springs. His exasperation was complete when he discovered that some clown had taken all the filters out and put them back the wrong way round, making the whole sorry affair even worse.

That clown was me of course but despite the suspicious way he eyed me up, I recovered enough composure to pretend I knew what he was talking about, making out that in normal circumstances I would have tried to repair it myself, but I just didn’t have the time. This biblical lie received a major hammer blow when he asked me if I could turn the water off whilst he was unscrewing the plinth to remove the machine completely.

As I was halfway up the stairs in a state of panic and inexplicably heading towards the airing cupboard, he shouted up to me, “Isn’t the tap under the sink?”

What a hideous blow that was, exacerbated by his expression that was telling me that in no uncertain terms, I was an utter cretin. He went on to tell me a new machine was required and that all I needed to do was to take the cupboard door off, draw a template of the new machine, adjust the doors and connections accordingly and simply slot it into place; alternatively, he would come and fit it for me at a cretins rate of just £29.00.

He is coming next week.

So whilst all this has been going on, the underdog of the year, Jeremy Corbyn, has been metaphorically smashing custard pies in the faces of the centralist Labour leader candidates who were trying to convince the nation that the only hope for the party was a return to Blairism courtesy of Cooperism, Kendallism or Burnhamism.

It was a massacre, with Blairite, Liz Kendall, polling just 4% of the vote that basically put to bed the ideology of New Labour, which was, in effect, a watered down version of the watered down version of the Conservative party that has been terrified of alienating middle England whilst keeping one eye on its maverick members joining Ukip.

Good, I say. For too long, we have been stuck in a political parallel universe, where you kept on having to convince yourself you weren’t insane and that Tristram Hunt was actually a member of the Labour party and not a horse riding partner of Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron. Hunt is one of many who has refused to serve under Corbyn, which again, is good news for politics in my opinion.

Leadership rout: Corbyn put an end to Blairism

Catching politics in passing news reports in between trips to DIY stores has been a good thing, because rather than it being something of a hobby, I have learnt how it is perceived by a normal person. When I say normal, I mean someone who amongst the daily rush of picking up kids, working, doing the shopping, then getting just enough time to watch a bit of escapist poverty porn on TV, just hasn’t got enough energy to care enough about what politicians are up to.

As a consequence, it is understandable that the only things that sink into our mind-sets are subjects that revolve around fear, and these fears generally involve the economy, fear of foreign invasion and to an extent the NHS, although it seems that healthcare has taken a back seat to the pursuit of a SMART TV like the one I eventually purchased last week. There is an assumption among the working and middle classes that they will never get ill; a foolhardy assumption in my opinion.

What has surprised me is how instantly the Conservative spin doctors have leapt on to the creation of fearing Corbyn, with the instant parrot phrase from every Conservative MP and right-wing press group being that “Jeremy Corbyn is a threat to our national and economic future.” Rather than sitting patiently to see whether he (Corbyn) would make a series of unforced errors due to lack of media experience, the Conservatives have tried to instantly blow him away with a volley of aces a full five years before the next election. It’s almost as if this is a sprint rather than a marathon?

“A threat to our national and economic future, has replaced “We are merely cleaning up the economic mess caused by New Labour” and it will work too, at least for a time, because like old Harry Enfield sketches (when he used to be funny) parrot phrasing sticks in the conscience and it is hard to shift. I noticed this first hand during a first visit to my new local pub, a lovely little village inn featuring fine ales, home cooked food and traditional, rosy cheeked Hampshire racists.

All the talk in the pub was of threats to national security, the economy and how TV sitcoms aren’t as funny since they got rid of ‘Till Death do us Part”. For Corbyn to be able to convince these types that there was a new social movement that would slam nails into the coffin of uber-capitalism, he would have to die and come back as Jesus, carrying a metal tankard of Old Thumper whilst promising to re-instate the Black and white Minstrel Show on Saturday evenings (Not that Diane Abbot would be too pleased).

However, the Tories and the right-wing media are firing their aces early for a reason and that reason at a guess, is the huge swathes of people who have had enough of being systematically lied to and are starting to listen to a man who to them, seems like a decent, ordinary chap, a traditional British underdog even. A bit like the man who pleaded on your deaf ears to try harder in Geography because he hated the thought of seeing people throwing away the opportunity of free education at the point of delivery.

People, especially the young, but even my father (who has voted Tory in the Thatcher years) are saying that they have had enough of all our fiscal policies being decided by an elite group of multi-millionaires who avoid taxation in exchange for party donations, the parting of knighthoods, and a place on the board of a pharmaceutical or healthcare giants who, if unchecked, will eventually send us spiralling towards a two-tier NHS or a more sinister term, ‘social eugenics’.

Politics has been beset with an apathetic feeling that yes, we know MP’s have their noses in the trough, but there is little we can do about it, so we are taught instead, to persecute people dependant on the welfare state or living on a zero hours contract at JJB Sports. The hopeless are an easy target, and as seen on Benefits Street, they are a right-wing ranters paradise.

I don’t know if Jeremy Corbyn could be a good leader of this country, but he can certainly provide an alternative opposition that is absolutely essential to halt a democracy lurching towards the incredibly dangerous position of being a one party state, a state where the only difference between Labour and Conservative is the Thespian abilities of its nauseating leaders.

When Corbyn is accused of offering a hand of friendship to terrorists, it is only the equivalent of what John Major did with the IRA after years of bombings and eye for an eye conflict that got Britain nowhere. Churchill would have probably led a terror campaign in Britain if the Nazis had invaded, so a terrorist is a terrorist for a reason, not just a bit of a laugh. A terrorist, in general, is a freedom fighter in a state of desperation.

I admire any politician of any party who can be instrumental in causing an end to terrorism which is at an all-time high, despite the American ‘War on Terror’ as the graph below shows. I don’t think Corbyn wants to hold banquets with terrorists at Chequers, he is just saying that blowing up the Middle East and killing alleged dictators (as all data shows) makes terrorism worse, so dialogue might not be such a bad idea. Ask the people of Belfast, who, despite some rocky periods along the way, have a far better life than they had in ‘the troubles’ during the 1970’s and 80’s.

War on Terror: Graph showing terrorist attacks since 9/11 and Iraq War

As for the economy, unless you are reading this from your mansion as you count out your free EU subsidy money, I wouldn’t be too concerned, as Corbyn’s main targets will be corporate empires that specialise in offshore tax evasion, nom-dom status and the collecting of land for the purpose of EU handouts.

Unfortunately for Corbyn, these empires include News International (The Sun, The Times, Sky Broadcasting) DMGT (The Mail) and Northern and Shell (The Express, OK, Hello, Asian Babes, Big Ones and Television X) so he can expect even more sinister persecution than what sent former Labour centralist candidate, Chuka Umunna, running to the hills earlier in the year, forcing him to to eventually withdraw from the contest for personal reasons, which one imagines, equates to a skeleton being found in a cupboard.

As a man who has been married three times, Corbyn must know what is coming but perhaps, at 66 years of age, he is beyond caring and all the people who matter to him most are aware of his skeletons and don’t care either. That may be why the Conservatives see him as such a dangerous animal that could potentially tear them apart? I don’t know this, it is just a theory.

Whatever, the case, all that I would want to see is a British sense of fair play, where people make up their minds through independent thought and not the vitriolic newspaper comments pages in The Mail, The Express or The Sun, whose agendas are not for the people, but purely for self-serving purposes.

As a friend said to me the other week...”Imagine how much less angry these poor souls would be if they didn’t read The Mail.”

I’ll leave you with Campervan Beethoven, maybe Corbyn should take the Tories bowling…right, Harry’s room… what colour do you reckon…red or blue?