MARX famously declared that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce — but this is by no means a fixed rule. History can and does also repeat itself a second time around as tragedy.

In 1980 Michael Foot had been elected as leader of the Labour Party, representing a decisive shift to the left.

A year later, in 1981, Tony Benn challenged Denis Healey for the deputy leadership and was only narrowly defeated.

The right-wing media in the country, supported by Labour Party rightwingers, mounted a determined campaign of vilification, defamation and demonisation of both Foot and Benn.

Benn was pilloried as the most dangerous man in the country.

In response to this tectonic shift to the left in the party, the so-called “gang of four” — a group of leading right-wing leaders — left Labour to form the short-lived Social Democratic Party, thus ensuring a Tory electoral victory in 1983 and the return of Margaret Thatcher, made easier by her triumphant bellicosity over the Falklands.

Does this remind you of recent Labour Party defections and Change UK?

The present attacks on Corbyn and John McDonnell bring back the memories of those years. This is the first time since then that we have a socialist leadership of the Labour Party.

Corbyn’s team has also presented a radical, forward-looking manifesto which should galvanise and enthuse working people throughout Britain.

After years of Tory austerity and the deliberate dismantling of Britain’s welfare state and community structures, the country is being offered a programme that could transform our nation into one in which solidarity, trade union rights, community support, a decentralised democracy, together with many other much-needed reforms would replace the rampant individualism and free market capitalism that have so devastated our communities.

But then comes the caveat. Despite the announcement of these many innovative policy proposals streaming out of Labour Party HQ, many citizens will not even have heard of them because they have been drowned out in the media by the loud drum-rolls of the Brexit debate.

There is also the deliberate suppression of the details contained in these initiatives because, if people were properly informed about them, very few would not applaud them and vote for the party proposing them.

The ruling elite knows this full well. On top of that we have the continued visceral attacks on the leadership from the right wing within the Labour Party itself, alongside the whipping up of baseless anti-semitism smears and back-stabbing.

We now know that we face an election very soon which the blond, Churchillian bulldog feels convinced he can win on the back of his belligerent stance over Brexit.

And if the one-sided media coverage and internal sabotage within the Labour Party continues, he probably will.

The only chance of ensuring a Labour Party victory is for every activist to go out on the streets and campaign as never before, knocking on doors and convincing people that this is a one-off opportunity of reversing decades of Tory destruction and turning this Titanic around.

We have to try to drown out the Tory Brexit mantras and counter little Englander nationalism with appeals to help forge a new nation based on justice and equality; we have to offer people a new vision, give them a sense of hope and optimism.

If we fail to do this, then we will face another tragedy, even if the leading role in the show is played by a farcical figure from a comedy show, ushering in further years of Tory misrule.

I for one do not want to see the stories in the media several years from hence when the “danger” of a left-wing Labour victory has been eliminated, in which Corbyn and McDonnell are praised as “the best government team we never had” and are made into “national treasures” as Benn was in his old age.

That is a “farce” I don’t want to witness.