If it is true I think he will have to go as well.
I have no idea if Labour have any capable MPs, let alone leaders anymore. But we as a nation need them to find one or two, otherwise they will be handing the keys to Farage and his lot. That is not my preferred outcome personally, but with each passing scandal and hopeless political choice it seems more and more likely.
I'm afraid you cannot find something that isn't there.
The quality of MPs is now at the lowest it has ever been, for a number of reasons. Most are now in parliament because it is the best salary they can command, often wildly in excess of what they would get in a commercial environment. Then there are the expenses and huge pension contributions. And the golden goodbyes.
So what you see is what they have got, there are no hidden intellectual giants waiting in the wings, or even many with experience of running businesses, which would be handy.
Whatever anyone thinks of any of them, the likes of Benn, Healey, Shore, Crossland, Lawson, Thatcher, Ridley, Lilley among others who could be named, were all serious politicians with genuine intellectual grasp and significant extra-parliamentary hinterland among them. There are virtually no such figures in parliament today, and while it is common to look back on yesterday's men as "giants" and today's as minnows, there is no doubt that the intake at each parliament since the turn of the century has seen the quality fall.
Not insignificant as a factor in this was membership of the EU, when law making became outsourced to the EU. Post Maastricht in 1992, more and more of the laws we lived under were written by the EU Commission and rubber stamped by statutory instrument in parliament . No vote, no debate. Roughly around 65%, of laws, some said more but certainly around that, were made that way by 2015.
This made MPs lazy as there were fewer and fewer matters over which they had any real say. There were of course MEPs, but the EU parliament is a Potempkin construct, having members who cannot of their own volition instigate legislation, ammend it or repeal it. So they got lazy too.
Now, we have MPs who are hopeless at drafting legislation because they are either new to parliament, or have been there for ages and have never had to do it before. We have forgotten how to govern properly, and so the task passes largely to unelected bureaucrats. It hardly encourages able and talented people into parliament, and for all that those who are there appear to be well paid according to their apparent talents, the money will mostly not attract the best people.
These are the dog days of British politics.
