As a Lib Dem, my fear is that Corbyn will appoint a media-savvy successor – because Labour's manifesto is a game changer

What I fear as a 'Remoaner' is that the Labour Party, which does not prioritise Brexit, will find a charismatic, polished, savvy leader. A leader who is everything that Corbyn isn’t

Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party manifesto has received praise from voters following its publication this week (EPA)

As a Lib Dem campaigner, this is what I fear about the Labour manifesto.

The comparisons of Jeremy Corbyn and Michael Foot are beginning to strengthen – the similar scruffy appearance, the grassroots insurgency and now – a “socialist” manifesto. Foot’s manifesto was famously described as the “longest suicide note in history” by Labour MP Gerald Kaufman. In a similar tone, Corbyn’s manifesto has been dismissed, but as a Lib Dem what I fear most is if the suicide note becomes his dying will.

Unlike Foot’s Labour in the 1983 General Election, which had recently suffered the split into the Social Democratic Party, Corbyn has, by the skin of his teeth kept Labour intact, surviving coups and crippling pressure from within his party. Furthermore, unlike the 1983 election, we have only recently experienced the greatest financial crisis since The Great Depression. A crisis which lead to the austerity cuts, forming the cracks which are beginning to be more and more visible to the British public. The public are beginning to sway. Polling shows Corbyn’s “socialist” policies are popular and worryingly for a Lib Dem, they seem to form a strong and electable foundation.

There is room to breathe as Lib Dem because of the man on Labour’s throne. The insults are played out, you can find them littered all over the media forum. He’s uncompromising, he’s unpatriotic, he’s not politically savvy and what’s worse he has been muddied. Labour are finding out that everything he touches becomes dirtied with a stench of un-electability, voters at doorsteps waft away mentions of him with genuine anger. Even in their Facebook ads, they are reducing any mention of their leader, realising he presents unfavourably to the majority of the electorate.

How can you support a party whose weakest link is their leader, I do not know. But I still have a niggling fear.

I fear what Labour can achieve on the platform Corbyn has built. Through his stubbornness, he has presented the public with a manifesto that would have been previously dismissed with an eye roll and a chuckle.

He has achieved this at a price – the public hate him.

Although many within the Labour Party are hoping that he will step down and the good ol’ days of a centre left party would return. He has, in my opinion, shown Labour should do nothing of the sort. He has shown we have the right mood and brimming discontent as a country for an election campaign built on the foundations of his manifesto.

What I fear as a “remoaner” is that the Labour Party, a party which does not prioritise Brexit, will find a charismatic, polished, savvy leader. A leader which is everything that Corbyn isn’t but believes in everything he does. A pragmatist.

But for that to happen, Corbyn needs to do something which is the antithesis of his stubborn nature – to step aside and realise he has done his part. And before people start saying John Mcdonnell is the man for the job, the new leader needs to be someone who does not say we have things to learn from Das Kapital on national TV. He should understand that just because it’s true, doesn’t mean it deserves a voice.

In the coming election, the worst thing (for Labour) and best thing (for the Lib Dems) that can happen is if Labour overcomes their rock bottom expectations. Corbyn and his comrades will then have all the right to argue for the same leadership. If they are successful, I will sleep easy.

But what will keep me awake, tumbling through the night in my neon orange pyjamas is if a young pragmatic ideologue enters the ring for the red corner. I fear what will happen with Brexit, what will happen to the Lib Dems and most of all I will be kept awake by a discussion of my own political allegiance.