Jeremy Corbyn has a messiah complex and Labour has become a cult

Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary, is to be Labour's candidate for Greater Manchester's mayoral election next year. He must be euphoric. At last! The chance to escape from the throttling, enervating inner circle of the party! To be free again, to think rationally and intelligently!

Meanwhile the deputy leader, the hitherto constant, if inscrutable Tom Watson, has burst out of his restraint. While being interviewed by Decca Aitkenhead for The Guardian, he suddenly released himself from tacit loyalties and spoke his mind: "There are Trots that have come back into the party...They see the Labour party as a vehicle for revolutionary socialism and they are not remotely interested in winning elections, and that's the problem."

The hyperactive entryists were, he claimed, splitting, factionalising and trying to seize control. He admitted that not all those who had joined up recently were 'Trots and Bolsheviks'. But the problem was real and seemingly insurmountable. The thoroughly decent Ed Milliband has also expressed serious doubts about the current leader and declared his support for Owen Smith in the forthcoming leadership tussle.

These three wise men must know their words will make no difference to the small, demented cabal which now runs Labour, a secretive, paranoid cult with its own made up creed and abominable rules. Corbyn, skinny, beardy, and preternaturally calm has a Jesus complex and seems to be enjoying the daily castigation he gets from the media and alarmed politicians. His humility now seems ersatz.

The cultists and their guru might soon insist on specially designed devotional tattoos for new members whose ardency is akin to a religious experience. They remind me of those wild American Millenarians who believe US elites are all corrupt and unjust and promise gullible followers that with their truths and daring, they will bring forth a pure new world. What have they done to the inspirational party and the legacy of leaders such as Clem Atlee, Aneurin Bevan, Roy Jenkins and Antony Crosland who changed these class-riven isles? Unforgiveable.

Now just to be clear: I am not a sullen Blairite, not a supporter of the MPs, ex-MPs and Peers who have a sense of entitlement and who have been muttering about and plotting against Corbyn in dark corners ever since the election. These right-wingers betrayed the founding principles of their party. Some, including Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, cavorted with and then became millionaires. Equality to them was either a useful jingle or an effective club with which to beat up Tories. They never really believed in it. I do not share their morally bankrupt visions for Labour. Their objections to Corbyn are not mine. Their visceral hatred of him is deeply unpleasant.

Temperate socialists have been silent for too long and that has allowed the media to frame the internal Labour conflict as one between smooth talking, pragmatic Blairites and the loony, hardline Corbynites.

I am a lifelong egalitarian, a serious and sober leftie. Yet, I am both seriously alarmed and incandescent that Labour has become so self-indulgent and indifferent to the complex needs of our nation. Several incredibly talented, committed female Labour MPs have told me they are thinking of giving up politics because of the new regime and the hopelessness they feel.

At one summer party, one of them started to cry as we talked. She had been at a constituency meeting where some young attendees had turned nasty: "It was like being in some retraining Mao camp, abuse used as correction. Mrs May once said hers was a nasty party. We've surpassed nasty and are unelectable. Some of my older constituents were disgusted and said they would never vote for us again." Allegedly misogyny is becoming intolerable in the party which pioneered women's rights. How did it all go so horribly wrong?

If this carries on, the confident and so much better organised Tories will rule over us in perpetuity. That means the welfare state - the jewel in the British state - will be ruthlessly dismantled; the poor will get poorer, homelessness will become endemic, migrants and refugees will be scorned and maligned. Theresa May talks soothingly about one nation Conservatism. But talk is cheap. Boris spoke just as soothingly about fairness and look what he did next. Many of us may die before Labour wins again. Though I am not a member of the party, that thought is unbearable.

Temperate socialists have been silent for too long – maybe because of confusion or, and shame - and that has allowed the media to frame the internal Labour conflict as one between smooth- talking, pragmatic Blairites and the loony, hardline Corbynites. I know many left-of-centre Britons who are enraged at the way vital alliances are falling apart, and the goodwill being squandered by Corbyn's obsessive missionaries. There must be thousands more out there. We must express this rage, get heard.

How dare these cultists consign socialism to the dustbin of political history? How do they behave so unconscionably? The respectable and sane Left should learn from the Trotskyites, use their techniques, infiltrate the party, do what it takes to stop them from trashing the history, heart and soul of the Labour party.