Back in 1986, someone at L'Uomo Vogue got the idea of doing a fashion shoot at my college, using male students as models. The commissioning editor pitched up one morning, looked at the undergraduates desperately trying to look cool and asked contemptuously: "is this all there is?" The spectacle of the Labour leadership election reminds me of that question.

For me, the strongest element of the case against Corbyn is simply that there are so many stories of rank bad management - of, as Sunny says, "a level of incompetence that is frankly embarrassing." It's not good enough to reply that such stories are exaggerated by Corbyn's enemies: leadership is performative; if people say you're a bad leader, you are.

In this context, there's something worrying about his well-attended rallies: I fear they demonstrate a desire to stick within his comfort zone and preach to the choir, rather than undertake the necessary but harder job of winning over sceptics. This is the worst sort of stupidity - a lack of desire to learn.

It's also in this context that I interpret his longstanding apologism for terrorists and tyrants. What worries me about this isn't so much that it presages a lousy foreign policy but that it betokens bad judgment - thinking that doesn't extend beyond "my enemy's enemy is my friend".

Many of you would add to this that Corbyn is "unelectable". I discount such claims very heavily because we simply cannot predict the future: "electable" is often the whine of over-entitled centrists upset that a politician isn't playing by their rules.

But I don't discount them entirely, There's a danger - maybe small but non-negligible - that a Corbyn victory would lead some to Labour MPs setting up as a separate party. Under the FPTP system, this would reduce the left's chances of electoral success. The fact that the Corbyn camp are hopeful of avoiding this might tell us less about its probability and more about their overconfidence.

The case against Corbyn thus seems overwhelming.

But it isn't.

For one thing, I see no evidence from Owen Smith's behaviour or history that he is personally well-equipped to be leader. In fact, his frequent mis-speaking - the implicit homophobia in describing himself as "normal", calling Corbyn as a "lunatic", wanting negotiations with Isis - suggests a lack of judgment. Given that no Labour leader will ever get a fair ride in the media, this weakness matters.

And then there's policy. The biggest fact here is that it's not 1997 any more - a fact which, as Paul says, some of Corbyn's critics haven't grasped. Capitalism has changed radically in the last 20 years. We've seen dynamism replaced by stagnation, bond vigilantes by a safe asset shortage, and 90/10 inequality superseded by the rise of the 1%. All this requires a new form of leftist politics. Corbyn knows this. Granted, he might know it only in the way that a stopped clock is right twice a day, but this is good enough.

You might reply that Smith's policy platform suggests that he grasps it too. I'm not so sure. He might simply be telling party members what they want to hear. There's a danger that this same triangulation would lead Smith to move rightwards after being elected. This wouldn't just be a betrayal of Labour members. It would also be a step away from economic literacy and back towards mediamacro and managerialism.

Yes, Smith might do a less bad job of uniting the PLP. But this could come at a cost - not just of worse policy but also a weakening of Labour as a mass party as those who have been inspired by Corbyn leave or become disillusioned.

One under-rated danger here is the generational divide. A Smith victory - if followed by a rightward retreat - would say to those younger people who have been energized by Corbyn: "politics is not for the likes of you; it's just a Westminster bubble". I don't like the potential longer-term cultural effects of that.

Yes, a Smith leadership might - just might - see a slight improvement in Labour's chances of winning a general election. But this comes at a high and dangerous price.

I can't therefore support either candidate. You might think this is a plea for a more competent version of Corbyn. But it's not clear that such a person exists. One rational solution to this would be to split the Labour leadership into a more collegiate form. I fear, however, that such a sensible move is precluded by our backward political and intellectual climate.