I THINK that Stuart A Chapman did not see that my letter that made him laugh was ironic.

The extraordinary hatred that Jeremy Corbyn inspires not only in people like Mr Chapman, but in those in the Labour Party that voted for the Iraq war (did Stuart A support that illegal invasion too?), is impossible to explain in a normal way.

Here is a man, who, unlike Mr Chapman and his ilk, never abuses his enemies, who opposes austerity and wants to build a kinder, gentler Britain, who opposed the Iraq war and who opposes nuclear weapons.

He has said that a government led by him would sign and ratify the UN General Assembly's draft treaty banning nuclear weapons, making Britain the first nuclear power to do so, and who would recognise Palestine as a state, thus breaking with the West's collusion with Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.

So why should such a reformer, who carries the hopes of millions of his fellow citizens, be abused far more than any other mainstream politician?

I ironically suggested that Corbyn is hated because he is a genuine reformer.

As for his alleged anti-Semitism, I wonder whether Mr Chapman read a letter in the Guardian the other week signed by more than 200 British Jews, some of them extremely distinguished, which claimed that Corbyn was not anti-Semitic at all.

Finally, it astonishes me that Mr Chapman never appears to have heard of democratic socialism.

Malcolm Pittock

St James Avenue

Bolton