If you see me going around with a big grin on my face, it’s because for the first time in nearly forty years it looks as if I shall get the Labour Party leader – and possible future prime minister – I want. I refer of course to that courageous patriot Jeremy Corbin who showed true magnanimity by entertaining Gerry Adams and other IRA terrorists in  London a few weeks after the Brighton bomb. Jeremy is not only patriotic, he is progressive and far-sighted: he wants rid of the Queen and all that Establishment tat and much prefers that Britain should become a republic.

He has a developed gift for international statesmanship, evidenced by his close affiliation with the Marxist regime in Venezuela and his willingness to cede sovereignty of the Falklands to Argentina

He is progressive too on educational matters and would abolish grammar schools – though he attended one himself – and academies. He is gifted with the visionary insight which recognises the far superior quality of the state comprehensive system.

His defence and foreign relations policies are nothing short of enlightened. A long-serving member of CND, he knows that Britain will be a far safer place once we abolish our nuclear weapons unilaterally. And he has nothing but scorn for the flawed logic which says that the only country ever to have suffered a nuclear attack was Japan – which didn’t possess nuclear weapons at the time.

And anyone who hates the Israelis and supports the Palestinian Arabs – he calls Hamas and Hezbollah “friends” – surely understands the meaning of democracy and civilisation

Jeremy Corbyn is very far from being a political nerd or a mere apparatchik. In fact there is something of the renaissance man about him, and certainly of the literary man – as evidenced by his weekly column in The Morning Star.

And he is one of the most humane and tender-hearted of men. Not only would he ban the importation of foie gras, but he campaigns against the Yulin Dog Meat Festival.  

Economic policy is truly his strongest point, as demonstrated by his intention to tax the well-off until the pips squeak. He proposes no upper limit on the highest rate of taxation, a large increase in corporation tax and a 7% rise in national insurance contributions. And he is wise enough to see the need to re-nationalise the railways.

I hear that membership of the Labour Party costs less than a fiver. I think I shall invest and then I can vote for Comrade Corbyn in the leadership election. It is but one step from Labour leader to the high office of prime minister, and I am confident Jeremy will make it.

My earlier preferences for prime minister were Michael Foot and John Prescott, but alas these came to nothing. Jeremy will put that right.

I can’t end without mention of my attendant joy – approaching ecstasy – when I behold this morning the expressions on the faces of Margaret Beckett and Frank Field who so wisely proposed Jeremy for the leadership.

Is Greece about to take her leave of the Fourth Reich?

“Fourth Reich” – what’s that when it’s out? Surely Germany is a model of modern democracy, having thrown off long ago all that Fascist nonsense and the ambition to control Europe? That’s what it looks like on the surface. But the fact is that what Bismarck failed to achieve by military means in 1870, the Kaiser by similar means in 1914 and Hitler again in 1939, Frau Merkel has accomplished by peaceful process.

Well, peaceful if peace may be defined as a bullying economic hegemony accompanied by consistent financial punishment of the southern states in the EU. EU economic policy – which really means German economic policy –has caused permanent recession in Italy, Portugal, Spain and, of course, Greece, with high unemployment and cuts in wages for those fortunate enough to be still in work. Youth unemployment in those countries is at a catastrophically high level – in Greece over 60%.

This is hardly a recipe for the peace and stability which the EU compliments itself on having established and sustained for forty years.

I have suggested here that Germany dictates events in Europe. That’s not quite true. She does it with the connivance of France. So we should really speak of the Franco-German axis – an extension of the collaboration which existed during the Second World War.

But now Greece is showing that, to quote Yeats, “the centre cannot hold.” Perhaps today we are seeing the beginning of the end of the European Project?

The EU as presently constituted never could hold as a satisfactory political arrangement. For that, there would need to be a single currency. Well, there is a single currency, isn’t there, the euro? On the face of it, yes. But a single currency is not workable when imposed upon countries with such disparate economic bases. For while Germany is a modern, industrialised technocracy producing and exporting top-of-the-range motor cars, washing machines and a thousand different sorts of gadgets and machines, the southern states are still largely agricultural: Greece, in particular, survives (or barely survives) on olive oil and tourism.

In order to preserve the illusion of the EU, two things are required: subsidies from the advanced nations of northern Europe – principally Germany – and ever fiercer demands – also issued by Germany – for permanent austerity in Italy, Portugal, Spain and Greece.

You can try this solution if you like, but you can’t keep it up. First, because the German people are fed up of paying taxes to support the inefficient southern regimes which they regard as a shambles; and secondly, as we see today in Greece, the people of the southern nations will not put up with perpetual austerity.

A Grexit is a distinct possibility – though never underestimate the lies, fixings, institutionalised skulduggery, threats and bribes with which the leaders of the corrupt bureaucracy of the EU will resort to in order to preserve the facade of political union.

And if the Greeks leave, the other southern countries might think about following them.

Personally, I should like to see Britain lead the rush for the door: better off out.