Do you know what the easiest thing in the world is?
It’s easier than falling out of bed. It’s easier than picking a fight with Katie Hopkins.
It’s opposition. Of any sort.
See, the person who’s got a big idea has done all the hard work already. They’ve done maths and sweated over the press release and told their mum and everything.
All an opposer has to do is give it a bit of a kick.
Make the pedestal wobble. Cause the still-wet mortar to shift. Put a dent in it with something as simple and easy and cheap to get hold of as a few well-chosen words.
And if anyone says “worl, whatchew got that’s better?” you can pluck just about anything out of thin air and add a bit of small print about it being subject to change if the sums don’t work out.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re arguing with a mate in the pub or standing in the House of Commons opposite the Prime Minister.
All you have to do is look mostly sane and ask the right questions.
Which is why, the Labour Party, you’re making such a hash of it.
It’s not just that you voted in Ed despite him being slightly less electable than a confused aardvark.
And it’s not just that to replace him you decided to have “a broad debate” about “the direction of the party” which ended up with Jeremy Corbyn and the ever-deepening hole you seem to inhabit.
It’s this - not only have you got the easiest job on Earth but you’re making it as hard for yourselves as you possibly can.
Look, the people running the country look like they’ve left their periwigs and corgis in their second-best carriage.
They cut tax credits for the working poor while food banks multiply like Charlie Sheen’s ex-lovers and cut the emergency services in the middle of an international terror crisis.
They don’t have a strategy for dealing with ISIS even though they’ve been bombing them for two years, their computer systems are as susceptible to cyberattack as a ZX Spectrum and the power stations keep being turned off without anyone bothering to turn on a new one.
On top of that they’ve had their first five years of honeymoon and are stuck into the second term in which hubris and backbiting always combine to produce rebellion and laziness.
They don’t do their sums, they don’t think it through, and the Prime Minister doesn’t even intend to stick around.
Not only is opposition the easiest job in the world, but opposing this lot is the political equivalent of lying on a sunbed ordering another cocktail while somebody rubs your toes.
And yet you make such hard work of it.
You don’t know what you think about Trident. You don’t know whether hypothetical terrorists spraying citizens with guns should be shot.
You don’t know how much of a nod is enough, and you don’t know enough to keep Ken Livingstone away from anything too sharp, like a defence review or a microphone.
You don’t know that giving Diane Abbott a job doing anything is as welcome to most of the country as recruiting Camila Batmanghelidjh to be Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
And even those of you who DO know all that don’t know what the hell to do to stop it.
Yvette, Dan, Alan, Chuka and the others just sit there looking glum, rolling their eyes when they think no-one’s looking and hoping Corbyn’s spade-based efforts to reach Australia without a plane ticket will burn him to ash without any effort on their part.
The Corbyn fans who joined the party in large numbers tell themselves and anyone on Twitter who hasn’t blocked them yet that this is all fine, there’s nothing wrong and if you don’t agree you must be a spy, crowing madly like Comical Ali as Baghdad falls.
Meanwhile The Voter – who incidentally is the person you need to get on-side with, something you seem to have forgotten – thinks you’re doing worse than Ed Miliband was FIVE YEARS AGO.
So I’m going to make this easy for you. I’m going to use simple words and clear instructions.
First, say that ISIS is bad.
Second, say that terrorists spraying bullets should of course be shot if the police called to deal with them decide that’s the best thing.
Third, put somebody with a passing experience of defence in charge of your defence review and put Livingstone, Galloway and Abbott in separate padded cells.
Or perhaps a shark tank. Either/or.
And fourth, CATCH YERSELVES ON.
Jeremy Corbyn is never, with the best will in the world, going to win a vote that puts him in Downing Street.
Replace him with someone who will. NOW. Not next year, or after the EU referendum, or at some point when Yvette or Chuka finally summon up the blood.
Corbyn is a complaint. He is the result of a number of people saying “I don’t like this” without thinking any further.
He is, ironically, a perfect bit of opposition while simultaneously being incapable of presenting any himself.
You have an open goal, if only you would climb out of the funfair barrel you are stupidly swimming around in and learn how to kick the flipping ball.
All it takes is for one person among your MPs to say “enough of this s***” and 51 nominations from their colleagues, followed by the Labour Party membership coming to its collective senses and voting to win rather than excavate the Earth’s core to see how far from reality you can get.
It shouldn’t be so difficult as it apparently is. It’s just a case of sanity, and deciding you’d like to experience some.
If you don’t do it for yourselves, then do it for the nation.
It’s the easiest thing in the world.