If I'd suggested to you before yesterday that Jeremy Corbyn was on course to outperform every Labour leader since Attlee, you'd probably have thought me away with the fairies.

But that is exactly what happened. Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour's share of the vote increased by 9.6 per cent – more than any other leader in any other election since Clem Attlee's 1945 landslide.

Forgive me if I don't congratulate him.

In fact forgive me, please, if I say this to each of the 12.8 million people who voted Labour on Thursday: you scare me.

For months on end – ever since he became leader in 2015 – Jeremy Corbyn's views and alliances have been rammed home.

You would have had to be living in a cave not to know that the Labour leader described Hamas terrorists as his "friends", that in a war between the IRA and Great Britain he wanted the IRA to win, or that he laid a wreath at the grave of one of the Munich Olympic's terrorists.

It has been repeatedly reported that he was, until becoming Labour leader, chair of Stop The War, an organisation whose senior members celebrate North Korea as a model society and defend any enemy of the West.

Then there's Labour's problem with Jews.

For a time, Mr Corbyn's decades-long ally Ken Livingstone was barely off the news with his Tourette-like spouting of the name Hitler. He might have turned Jew-baiting into a fine art, but that has not been enough for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party to expel him.

I could fill this entire page with examples of anti-Semitic hatred from Labour members and supporters, all of which have been constantly flagged up in newspapers and on broadcast media.

And I haven't even mentioned John McDonnell's praise of violent rioters or Diane Abbott's view that any defeat of the British state should be celebrated.

But none of this has made the least difference to 40 per cent of the electorate who were happy anyway to vote for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.

A bit of Jew hate? Support for the IRA? Pah! Look at the inspiring manifesto.

David Fuller's view

Corbyn might be a nice, gentle, polite guy but his alliances over a long career should worry any sensible adult. 

As to the positive campaign statements, he just promises to throw money at any problem his audiences might have.

It is am extreme example of a depressing cycle in UK politics.  Labour screws up and runs out of money. The electorate come to their senses and vote in the Tories to clean up the mess.

Labour counters in the next election cycle by saying that people are fed-up with Tory ‘austerity’.  Just as the economy is recovering, Labour says it will adopt ‘progressive’ policies to help everyone. Overspending increases government debt, weakening the economy once again. 

This cycle repeats because a high proportion of the electorate works for the government.  

Here is a PDF of Stephen Pollard’s column.