Late snowballs are appearing on the Choose Your Miliband piste. Not all of them look as if they have the magnetic power to cause an avalanche of votes, but if nothing else it’s going to become amusing until things are decided later in the year.

The real dark horse, no – hang on, mustn’t say that or the femino-anti-fascist thought police will be after my DNA profile – the surprise snowball is Diane Abbott, veteran of many a fraternal greeting sent from Haringey to Moscow and all points East. While you and I probably can’t think of anyone who’d vote for this hypocrite, we’re not in the Labour Party. I think Abbott is betting on the Putney Swope* syndrome: everyone thinks nobody will vote for the black woman so they must – and she gets a loony landslide. Lest we forget, the Mad Handbag got elected on a very similar basis 35 years ago. 35 years. Blimey.

Jon Cruddas took some soundings and decided he couldn’t face it. Andy Burnham got some far worse soundings and decided he could wing it. Burnham was an over-promoted clown as Health Minister….and a shifty little bugger on the subject of Stafford Hospital – where he signed off its Trust Status, and then somehow got away with it. So he’s got all the right credentials, but nobody likes him much. And of course there’s always the chance that former horizontally fraternal relations with colleagues now in the banking sector might come back to haunt him. I think the best thing Burnham can hope for is not too many spoiled ballot papers saying ‘And especially not him’, but he is mad to run. Politicians, see: can’t bear not to.

The man who spent a week conferring with his imaginary friend was the one we all knew would stand come what may. It is something of a tribute to the hatred Ed Balls attracts that a candidate standing for broadly the same things as him got his hat in the ring immediately. This was the other Ed of Miliband, a man some think is running to split any vote against his brother. I’ve no idea why people think that, because it’s tosh: Ed M is running purely and solely to win, and ram a large biro up Ed B’s nose. His brother’s fate isn’t something that concerns him overmuch.

The most likely outcome ‘on paper’ is that the senior Miliband spawn will win. But this is based on some pretty flakey thinking.

First of all, the so-called ‘poll’ conducted about the result was done among folks who weren’t necessarily members of the Labour Party – and definitely not in the PLP. Second, there are lots of new MPs in the somewhat thinner ranks of the Commons progressive movement, quite a few of whom aren’t known quantities….and quite a few of whom are. And third, you can forget all this democracy nonsense: the Labour Party is and always was about power.

David Miliband is in a potentially good position, but he has made mistakes – and enemies. He has ratted on more coup attempts than Beria, and thus earned the dislike of quite a few MPs….although many of them have since run away sorry, retired. And although he’s been quick to bury his Blairite ‘New Labour’ parachute, David was coached, admired, promoted and protected by Tony Blair and his entourage. The prevailing mood is therefore against him.

Ed Balls by contrast is – although he will fight to the death to hide it – the Whelan/Dromey/Harman/Unite candidate. Ed isn’t just old Labour, he’s Kropotkyn Labour: a man who (even in the limelight) gives one the feeling he’d like to throw a bomb at the Queen, and demolish Eton. Being therefore antediluvian in his appeal, Balls is the very man for all those headcases who still think socialism has a role to play in the future.

And bizarrely, in the immediate term it does. Come the time of the leadership election, one contagion to have spread from Greece will be the ‘victimisation of the workers by the running-dog forces of capitalist etc etc’ Leninspart interpretation of history. Nasty cuts will have been applied here. There’s a good chance the politics of higher bills will have also become the politics of strike action. And by then, there’s a fair possibility that inflation will be climbing again.

This can only be good for Basher Balls. And lest we forget, there are precisely 53 MPs sponsored by Unite. They can choose not to vote for Ed Balls, and thus have the direction of their knees changed. But this is unlikely. Dromey and Harman are two of them…and they in turn could probably steer another 50-70 sheep into Ed’s corral.

Then we shouldn’t forget that by the appalling standards of what passes for ability these days, Balls is ‘a heavyweight’. He is indeed unpleasantly obese and sweaty, but I refer more to his having held Offices of State. He did nothing – absolutely zilch – for the cause of State-abused single mothers and their children, and even less about endemic paedophilia in the childcare sector. And thus – having enjoyed zero effectiveness as a Minister – he too has all the right imagery for a future Labour leader. He tweets too. Non-stop. And gets people who bother him banned from Twitter, he added bitterly.

Ed Balls is a dangerous man if given power – but if he wins this contest, it is probably fair to say that Labour will be unelectable for a generation. Only Ed Miliband’s soft-Left voter appeal can stop him. If you’re for Labour, then Milband the Younger is your only hope. For the rest of us, my recommendation is that we all start campaigning for Balls immediately.