Gamechangers: Mum knows best, Tony Blair - Jeremy Corbyn is the Spitting Image of a leader

Now listen to me Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, I am saying this in my best "mother" voice: "Stop it. Stop being horrible to Corbyn." Not because it isn't classy. It isn't, but that's not the point. The point is that the hysterical demonising of Jeremy Corbyn is gusting wind into his sails.

I'm not supposed to comment. Not belonging to Labour marks me out as yet another Tory, Communist or Green who wants to bring down the party. But that assumes me to be tribal and I am not. I've voted for pretty much every party in my time aside from Ukip, and just want sensible policies from people who appear to be broadly reasonable. Me and the millions of other floating voters who decide election results.

Let's look here at what happens in the news every day. A roaring Labour lion is quoted saying Corbyn is a dangerous lunatic who will bring down not just Labour but party politics as we know it.

We wait expecting a clip of a Spitting Image Arthur Scargill, raging on a coal mine when a rather engaging chap, who looks like he might be a friend of your dad's, pops up saying something devastatingly reasonable like: "It's about policy not personalities."

So – stab your eyes out with the irony – instead of focusing on the very policies that I would oppose, I see a decent man among the preening, shiny, neighing prancers. Not only that but a decent man being pilloried by sweaty bullies. And we Brits love an underdog. So even though I want a really strong opposition and good alternatives at the election, part of me somewhere thinks he deserves to win.

If and when he does, having been attacked so rabidly, he and his supporters will have dug in and will be far harder to topple if/when in two years he can't connect with the electorate. And here's the thing, Labour. You shriek about duplicitous Commies and cynical Tories but you've done this to yourselves.

Christine Armstrong is a contributing editor of Management Today, author of Power Mums (interviews with high-profile mothers) and founder of www.villas4kids.com. She can be found on Twitter at @hannisarmstrong.