Labour go into this election with the dice stacked against Corbyn, as the Tories intended. But here’s the thing – he’s only an election liability *if* you believe he can win.

But in fact everyone – surely even the man himself – can see there is *no chance* of Corbyn being the next PM, even in coalition.

On the 8th June the nation will choose not ‘May or Corbyn’ but ‘big or humungous Tory majority’.

The Lib Dems can’t win either, and again, the whole world knows it. So Brexit is most definitely happening.

Those two facts mean the left can neutralise Tory scaremongering on a ‘PM Corbyn’ or ‘Brexit backsliding’. That’s how we move the conversation on to what kind of country we want. There the Tories are on a much weaker foundation. The fact is, NINE years after the banking crisis, and seven years after they took power, the Tories have cut and wrecked at every opportunity, the longest, most savage swipe at living standards in memory. They will keep on, and on, and on at our pockets because they are ideologically unable to think of anything else.

So if the left can only acknowledge that no, they can’t win this time, no, they can’t stop Brexit, and no, Corbyn won’t be PM, they can turn on to arguments that are winnable. Better yet, a tacit pact to collaborate (perhaps supporting Compass to produce a social-media-friendly ‘tactical voting app’ based on postcodes or similar) would lay the necessary foundations for a proper power grab in 2022 – when the Tories will have been in power for over a decade.

I suspect this would be the Tories’ worst nightmare. May’s gamble would completely backfire – winning the election (narrowly) but losing the national argument.

The key is only Corbyn, or those close to him, can trigger this. Perhaps the Easter significance will inspire them…