HIS name is Chris Henkey but one can see why he has been dubbed Captain Cool. Faced with an engine on fire as his British Airways Boeing 777-200 approached take-off, the pilot brought the Vegas to Gatwick flight to a smooth halt. From there, the crew led the 157 passengers through the billowing smoke to safety. Relieved travellers could not speak highly enough of Captain Cool’s ability to turn looming disaster into triumph.

Wonder what he is doing tomorrow? It is then that the results of the Labour leadership election will be announced. These are always tense affairs for the Labour family, even in better times. The last leadership announcement, being the occasion for political fratricide, was awkward to say the least, with the Miliband brothers embracing each other like Caesar and Brutus after the act. Gordon Brown’s coronation was not much jollier. Sure, it was meant to be happy ever after as he strolled into the job he had coveted for so long. In reality, the storm clouds were over his head before he began his acceptance speech. For Labour, leadership contests are like weddings in Game of Thrones. There will always be blood.

This time, if the polls are correct, there will be blood enough to dye any number of flags a good, healthy socialist red. The health warning about polls is even more pertinent than usual because this is not only the most complex and unpredictable contest in years, it is also the most woefully organised. Between the late arrival of ballot papers, fifth columnist Tories and general bureaucratic mayhem, it will be a minor miracle if no-one threatens to challenge the result in the courts. But if the bookies are correct, and I’ve yet to meet one queuing up in Lidl, then Jeremy Bernard Corbyn will be duly elected leader of the Labour Party. May God have mercy upon their souls.

No, no, no, we must not be the bad fairy at the christening, if only because the number of applicants for that job is now running into the thousands. At the head of the queue yesterday was George Osborne, employed as Chancellor of the Exchequer who kindly sat down with the New Statesman this week to give the left the benefit of his wisdom, he being the architect of the “National Living Wage” and practically Keir Hardie’s spiritual heir if it was not for all those wallpaper squillions in the family bank. In moving to the left, said Mr Osborne, Labour was unravelling the work of a generation and heading off into the wilderness. “If they want to go back to the 1980s, let them,” he concluded in what was clearly a variation on the traditional Scottish curse of “hell mend them”.

At least Mr Osborne was relatively measured in his observations. Others are greeting the arrival of Mr Corbyn as Labour leader as a cross between the End of Days and the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the sacred relic is opened and all hell breaks loose. According to these merchants of doom, Labour under Corbyn will be a laughing stock at best and a menace to the country at worst. Half the Shadow Cabinet will resign, it is rumoured, and the party’s poll ratings will go so far south they will strike the Earth’s core. It gets worse: Ken Livingstone is said to be waiting by the phone. Or was it Ken’s newts, ready to take on the environment brief?

All very silly, but so much about the Labour leadership contest has been surreal, and one cannot often say that about a political process. From how Mr Corbyn came to be nominated in the first place, as a token presence from the left, to the way he has drawn the crowds to party rallies, the bearded, vested, crumpled one has defied every expectation hurled in his direction. His reception around the country, in Scotland particularly, has been toasty to red-hot. If he ever opted to gig with Nicola Sturgeon it would be like Simon & Garfunkel getting together again. From being the “there to make up the numbers” candidate, he has now come to within a whisker of running the whole show. It has been an extraordinary rise to prominence, but how out of this world, how out of kilter with the times and electorate, is it really?

Those who fear the worst from a Corbyn leadership might like to ponder this. If he has defied every law of political physics thus far, who is to say he will not go on doing so if he becomes leader? Mention of Scotland’s First Minister brings us to one of the few things on which one can rely in politics: everything changes eventually. When Ms Sturgeon joined the SNP in 1986 at the age of 16, the party, having performed badly at the two previous General Elections, was down in the electoral dumps; rather like Labour today. The SNP then would have looked a very poor prospect for any ambitious young type. But nothing stays the same, and that one-time teenager was to be found his week playing warm up act for the Queen at the opening of the Borders Railway, and paying tribute to the sovereign on the day she became the longest reigning British monarch. Did you ever think you would see the like: either a new railway line, or an SNP First Minister and a British monarch being so pally?

Elsewhere in Europe, there has been a surge in the number of parties and movements breaking through the concrete. Several come from the right, but others, Syriza in Greece and Ciudadanos in Spain, hail from the left and centre. Being optimistic, one could view Labour under Corbyn as being part of that new wave of politics which sees questioning the established order as a positive contribution to the public good, the first step towards fixing a system that is not working as it should. As such, far from being electorally toxic, a Corbyn-led Labour Party could be just what is needed to restore rude health to the party and politics in general.

Where a Corbyn-led Labour Party goes in the months and years to come is another matter. On the day the ballot closed in the leadership contest, Lord Ashcroft published another of his telling polls, this one conducted among steadfast Labour supporters and those who had transferred their loyalties elsewhere. The picture that emerged was of a party core divided over which was more important – winning power or upholding principles. It was ever thus with Labour, but it could be more so under Mr Corbyn.

Should Mr Corbyn win the leadership, politics will certainly enter new, infinitely more interesting, times. Either the widely predicted Labour meltdown will come to pass and a split occur, or the survival instinct will kick in, as it usually does with politicians, and they will fall in behind the new leader. Either way, politics at the UK and Scottish levels will be transformed, for which amen. It is not a healthy state of affairs, either in Scotland or the rest of the UK, to have Oppositions barely worthy of the title.