How do you “dress as a Tory”? Do you get a discount at the fancy dress shop if you rent the full costume? Does black tie count? Or do you then risk being mistaken for a Champagne Socialist? And how do you avoid looking pretty much the same as everyone else who’s dressed as a Tory? Profound questions such as this, will, I’m sure, be racing through the minds of members of the Cambridge Universities’ Labour Club as they prepare for their ‘Dress as a Tory’ Halloween social tonight – unenvied by the likes of us for whom a ‘dress as your subject’ bop poses enough of a creative challenge as it is. But, in truth, it is for more than practical reasons that I am glad not to be going. Although I would not categorise myself as a Tory, and have friends attending, whom I both like and respect greatly, to me – however light hearted this event may be intended to be – it smacks of the insular self-satisfaction into which the Labour Party seems to be retreating.

Imagine the Cambridge Conservatives publicly advertising a ‘dress as a Labour supporter’ night – turning up, for a laugh, one would presume, in shabby Corbyn-esque attire, or the uniform of a blue collar worker – mocking political opponents as an ‘evil’ horror worthy of Halloween. In most people’s eyes, the joke would be on them; so why is it any different when the political shoe is on the other foot?

Putting aside how little attention supporters of the party led by Corbyn seem to be paying here to his desire for a ‘kinder politics’, the whole concept of being able to ‘dress as a Tory’ betrays the crudeness of the class war caricature which exists in the minds of many Corbynites. For them, the idea that political rivals might have honourable intentions is as strange as a ‘Tory’ looking pretty much like they do. And do not think that this is just a case of one questionably-themed social event being taken too seriously – it is becoming increasingly clear that Labour’s idea of a joke will leave the Conservatives laughing all the way to the next election. Be it Andy Burnham wearing a ‘Never Kissed a Tory’ T-shirt to this year’s Pride, or new Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell having said that he would like to go back in time and assassinate Margaret Thatcher – so often members are sending the message to voters that the party is more concerned with feeling good about itself than policy and winning elections.

Were it run by any other student society, this fancy dress social wouldn’t really matter. If we still live in a world and attend a university where a second-year drinking society can invite fresher girls to an event dressed as ‘crack whores’ and it not hit the headlines, Cambridge’s Tories might just have to take this one on the chin. But this isn’t just any society; this is the youth wing of the country’s Official Opposition, at the university from which some of the party’s greatest figures started. Without doubt, members of all parties do and say things which make them look more concerned with their Manichean political bubble than the lives of the 98 per cent of the electorate who don’t belong to any political party. But if Labour wants voters to like what they see when they get round to taking a fresh look at the party, it needs to do a better job of keeping all that behind closed doors. If it doesn’t, it’s not just bad for Labour – the lack of an opposition which could conceivably be elected will leave both our government and democracy poorer.

And even if, as they so often say, it’s not winning elections which is important to the new generation of Labour supporters – if it’s exclusively their principles – they would perhaps do well to reconsider more fully exactly what those principles are. However wide the gulf in opinion may be, a rush towards the kind of polarised smears, name-calling, and making enemies of opponents which has come to characterise the American system (as a glance at Wednesday night’s Republican debate would have told you) will do no one any good. It is bad, lazy politics. So although I wish friends and readers attending an enjoyable evening, if the CULC and its members are truly serious about spreading Labour values and making this country a better place to live in, they need to recognise that this sort of self-indulgence will do them no more good than those Bullingdon Club dinners did George, Boris and Dave.