Dave hands an easy one to Jeremy.

For far out left Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn, David Cameron's dissolution honours list looks as dissolute and off the planet as it possibly could be.

What was Dave thinking about on his imaginative holidays in Portugal and Cornwall ( Seems it was a "no" again to Far East, Kenya's Great Migration, or even the USA but perhaps they were never considered as not man of the people places)? Even if he'd knocked up this list of cronies and sponsors and hangers on (of all the former main parties) before he went away, surely anyone with political nous would have woken up in the middle of the night sweating that he was just about to fall into a bear/Tory trap of his own making and do a hasty rewrite and cull. Where were his advisors?

The dreary list adds £1.2 m a year to the bill for running the already absurdly large ( in a former life Dave had said he wanted to reduce it) unelected legislative body which is now becoming a blot of Britain's democratic credentials. It looks more and more like an old mates club and less and less a place where some of the nonsenses which get barely a glance in the Commons can be examined in a less political atmosphere.

The 2020 General Election is there for the Conservatives to lose. One of the ways they snatch defeat is to confirm to voters some of Corbyns shouts and dogwhistles about an inward looking,inbred, corrupt and self serving establishment. Even if Corbyn doesn't win the very old Labour crown for sure whoever does will pick up the same theme on this issue. It's just too good for them to miss. Dave's inept, insensitive and appalling list is a step in that direction.

Why does he keep doing this sort of thing? It's probably down to the reality that his life has always been centered in very refined London and Oxfordshire English circles. Genuine encounters with and experiences of the world inhabited by most people have been relatively few. Sensibly he would have very close to him a few "ordinary people" as Labour likes to call them who could steer him away from cliff edges, but he doesn't appear nearly so comfortable with them. His successor will have to be very decisive in putting these images to rest, ideally starting by slashing House of Lords numbers and cleaning up and de-politicising and de-cronyising further appointments from the start. It has to be done before 2020.

MPs go off on hols and Labour ponders a swerve off the road.

They've gone. The first short term of the new majority government Parliament is over. For those who  survived the election it's been quite a year since their last long break. There was the tedious winter with its everlasting preaching and whinging about how awful things were from the power seeking Messrs Miliband, Cooper, Burnham and others, carping from the LibDems who were meant to be part of Government and the dreadful thought that either or both of those tribes could together form a majority government in the May General Election. Fortunately the pollsters got it all hideously wrong and when the likely result flashed up on the outside of the BBC building seconds after 10pm on the big night there was was a palpable sense of relief, not to mention amazement. Within hours some big names were gone. Ed Balls was toast, his defeat confirming that it really was a bad night. For the new bugs, especially the non House trained SNP horde descending from the north the first two months of their parliamentary careers has been a great learning experience. The seven week gap will allow them to come back with the confidence of not now being new.

Since the big night the Labour Party has in disarray and left as a smouldering ruin, mainly one of denial. The Party needed the steadying hand of the leader to settle them down and start working on the future, first of all figuring out that they had simply been trying to flog an out of date product that people no longer wanted to buy even though they weren't exactly in love with the alternative. Instead their former Dear Leader did a runner. He dropped everything in the lap of the hapless Harriet Harman and flitted off to the Med with his Mrs, who could throw all those measurements for new Number 10 curtains in the bin. They had a couple of holidays. OK he was exhausted and beaten but so was his party. Those Labour MPs who survived or freshly joined Parliament had no such luxury .Above all they needed gathering together and leadership to help them recover from the shock of the night. They didn't get it.

The Tories have thoroughly enjoyed this first session as the new majority government. The absence of hand wringing LibDems holding their ankles has been a wonderful feeling. They know that five years is a short time to get things done so have set off at a good pace. The 2010 coalition failed to do that as did Tony Blair in 1997. Blair wasted his first term and threw away his potential legacy because he thought he had all the time in the world.  Early in his second term he was taken over by Iraq and adulation for George Bush. Hubris was in the driving seat and out of the window went all the visions of New Labour party and public sector reform. That was it .Any dreams of being the great reformer were over.

After May 10th Labour needed  to steady themselves, follow their former leader on holiday , dust themselves down and take stock of what had happened. After a summer pause there should have been a thorough review of policy and then decisions on whether they wanted to satisfy the existing small core party and probably never see power again or return to the election winning stance of New Labour. That hasn't happened and it's become a gory process. The leadership cart has been put before the policy horse. There is now a long process involving three essentially left candidates leaning towards the past and one forward looking one who is branded (dirty word)) Tory or ,even worse, Blairite.

Several dynamics are at work here.

First the dark socialist real heart of the core Labour Party is exposed. New Labour was an aberration and never won the hearts and minds of the old lags or the new idealistic protest movement anti austerity etc. young. Both these groups have watched Quantative Easing and, like Mr Corbyn concluded that it proves you can just print more new banknotes and all economic problems are solved,  Many accepted New Labour as a way of gaining power but they never believed in it. They saw it as a means to an end but not one they could ever commit to. And as for the cave dwelling unions.....

Second it would be unwise to welcome Mr Corbyn as leader on the basis that he would keep Labour out of power for a decade or more. If the Conservative Government were to seriously come off the tracks by its policies not working over the next 5 years then Labour could get in by default in 2020 whatever its programme and whoever its leader. Corbyn, although speaking left wing nonsense much of the time, has one big plus over most of the leading current Labour and Conservative politicians. He speaks English rather than other world Politician. That in itself will get quite a stack of votes, as , counter to recent fashion, will be the fact that he's older. Wiser no ,but attractive to a receptive revolutionary audience with his thirsting for nationalisation, love of socialist comrades and causes around the world, and belief in higher taxes on and general emasculation of the better off.

If Mr Corbyn does win it is possible that the Blairites may break away either into a separate David Owen style Democratic Socialist Party or simply join up with the LibDems who would warmly welcome any hand to to bring them back from the dead.

There are many days and nights to go before we know how this contest will play out. Finding out what it means will take longer but we can expect a lot of noise from the left, especially now it has been reinforced in the Commons by the much more eloquent and vociferous cargo cult Scottish Nationalists.