Peter Rhodes: Remind you of anyone?

IN January, after a survey showed how popular Jeremy Corbyn was among the new and enlarged Labour Party I wrote: " I'm not sure if this tells us anything, except that Jeremy Corbyn has a lot of support - among his supporters." Today, re-elected with an even bigger majority, nothing has changed.

CORBYN is the Messiah for thousands of Brits who are disillusioned with mainstream politicians and believe that all it takes to build the New Jerusalem is a ban on nuclear weapons, unlimited funds for the NHS, unrestricted immigration and nationalising everything from trains to electricity. This package may strike you as naïve and old-fashioned but it is an entirely honourable point of view and it would have been quite wrong for Corbynism to have been strangled at birth by Labour MPs. It is a philosophy that deserves to be tested at a General Election. Of course, it would be a shame if the Labour Party were destroyed in the process but that is the price it might have to pay for tolerating Jeremy Corbyn in its ranks in the first place. For 30 years on the back benches Jeremy Corbyn endlessly rebelled and voted against his own party and made no secret of his beliefs. He was kept on board because Labour prided itself on being a broad church. History may tell us that this church had, in its crypt, a death-watch beetle wearing a Lenin cap.

STIFF, awkward, patronised and like a fish out of water. Did Ed Balls' performance on Strictly Come Dancing remind you of Ann Widdecombe's?

LIFE imitates art. At the heart of the hiatus over Bake Off is the strange business of Channel 4 buying the show without first ensuring the stars, including Mary Berry, came with it. It reminds me of that wonderful episode in the Hugh Bonneville comedy W1A when the BBC schmoozes Alan Titchmarsh, Carol Vorderman and Clare Balding for a new show, Britain's Tastiest Village, and manages to offend, and lose, all three.

THAT episode also showed what a fine actor Carol Vorderman could be. Her growing irritation and final humiliation was a masterclass in despair.

DID your British heart not leap with pride when little Prince George refused to high-five with the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau ? Why should an English prince perform an American greeting? The creeping Americanisation of Britain has given us not only the high-five but also the Mexican wave, the mutual thumb-gripping seen among sports stars and the hysterical whooping heard in theatre audiences. It is time to reintroduce a little Anglo-Saxon reserve into public life. We Brits shake hands. We clap hands. In moments of extreme excitement we may say "bravo!". We don't do high-fives, even if we are just out of nappies (nappies, that is, not diapers).

I STILL don't understand why police claim to lack the resources to deal with drivers making calls or texting on mobile phones. A pair of cops in plain clothes patrolling the average busy high street could nick dozens in a day. I spotted three in ten minutes, including one of those clots who think by texting with the phone on the passenger seat, they cannot be seen. Dim, as well as dangerous.