Generally speaking, I am reluctant to compare myself to Jesus. Yes, we both appreciate a good wine, freshly made bread and are intolerant of money lenders, but as Easter draws near our thoughts inevitably turn to his suffering in the garden of Gethsemane.

You will recall that is where he beseeched his father “if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me”. That is more or less my appeal to the voters in the ward in which I am standing. In his case he was thinking of being whipped to within an inch of his life and then crucified. How that compares to a potential four years of council meetings only time will tell.

This week sees the launch of the local Green Party manifesto and is the closing deadline for candidate nominations. It is hard to overstate just how fast and explosive the party’s growth has been since I wrote this lament less than a year ago.

Forty-four candidates will be contesting every ward in the borough. My prediction is that in the region of a dozen will get elected due to a mix of local and national factors. The Labour operation depends largely on people who are on the party payroll or want to be and whoever they can dragoon. They have absolutely lost the votes of the under forties and anyone left leaning. Their principal line of attack is a mix of Daily Heil rhetoric against the mayor with some valid criticisms. A fragment of the Labour vote may go to Reform in pockets which have had a long fascist tradition as part of its wider collapse

Aspire will pay the price for selecting as candidates people who have earned a reputation as lazy and petulant and whose main qualifications are personal ambition and being friends of the mayor.

It is no small job for what is essentially a new organisation to find dozens of people willing to be candidates and identify several who are prepared to take on the responsibility of getting elected. Combine this with the impressive achievement of coordinating a group of people who had mostly never met each other before and were able to draw up a manifesto which is well to the left of anything on offer locally.

In addition to the intellectual work, teams of people, again who mostly didn’t know of each other’s existence at Christmas, are out canvassing and leafletting every weekend and are committed to doing loads more in the coming weeks. This includes the new experience for most of them of marching in a party bloc against the far right this Saturday.

This is a snapshot of what is happening in one borough and the evidence is that similar things are happening virtually everywhere that would once have been considered safe Labour territory.

A new left has emerged from the wreckage of Corbynism. From my point of view, it could still do with a bit more structure and a tad more efficiency in its decision making, but these are trivial quibbles and a million times preferable to the nonsense we see elsewhere. It is going to transform radical politics in Britain.

Now we just need to see if the voters of Bethnal Green East will be more obliging than God the Father.