Years ago, I was talking about the U.N. human-rights panel. The worst, cruelest dictatorships were on it: Cuba, Sudan, China, Zimbabwe, and so on. Really, only North Korea was missing. (They might have been heading the anti-nuclear panel at the time, I’m not sure.) There were people who wanted to reform the human-rights panel — but only cosmetically, many of us feared.

I said, “In a way, I like the U.N. Human Rights Commission the way it is.” And John Derbyshire said, “You mean, ‘The worse the better.’” When I heard that phrase, my blood ran cold. It was perfect. At the same time, it was devilishly cynical.

If the U.N. human-rights panel remained stocked with the world’s worst human-rights violators, people could more easily see the U.N.’s human-rights performance for the farce it is.

This brings me to British politics — specifically, to the race to be the Labour party’s next leader. It looks like Labourites are set to elect Jeremy Corbyn — a bona fide left-winger, right out of Central Casting. I know him well. I mean, I’ve never met him, but I grew up with him — many of him — in Ann Arbor. I know this type intimately, right down to the little beards on their faces.

They are socialists and Marxists. They embrace and promote every anti-Western cause — be it the PLO or what have you — and wish to bring free, democratic, capitalist countries into the socialist camp. I have no doubt that Corbyn admires Che Guevara and the Castro brothers more than he does Mrs. Thatcher.

Now, I am a Tory, deep blue. (Over there, they have their colors right.) In a sense, I should be rooting for Corbyn’s victory in the Labour-leadership race — it would mean, as Tony Blair warned, “rout, possibly annihilation” for the Labour party. My guys would win as far as the eye can see.

The worse the better? TWTB, for short?

In the past, I’ve said that the anchorman of CBS News ought to attend Democratic fundraisers (as Dan Rather did). TWTB, you know. And the New York Times’s Supreme Court reporter ought to march in pro-abortion rallies (as Linda Greenhouse did).

But I know this feeling is ultimately wrong. The Labour party is by now an old and honorable party, and has been populated by many a British patriot. To see it go bolshevik, with the election of Jeremy Corbyn, would, in part, be a blow to us all.