But the problem is that’s because many of them had become discredited, eg, massive nationalisation, unilateral disarmament, withdrawal from NATO etc – those ideas have been shown to be generally unworkable, and certainly not sellable to the electorate. Many areas of policy had become ‘taboo’ since Tony Blair’s reform of the party. Yes, you make some good points there and I would agree with many of them. Things have changed for the foreseeable future – if not forever. That’s why even though Jeremy is going to win, it really doesn’t matter anyway: it’s now okay to be openly anti-American, pro-Putin in a way that was unimaginable even a few weeks ago within the Labour membership. But the tone he uses hardly matters: a Labour MP, in a position to become the leader of the party, giving voice to these subjects which had become taboo to talk about in mainstream left of centre ideological conversations has let the proverbial genie out of the bottle. To be fair here, Corbyn only lightly touches on most of these topics and at his worst tends to merely hint at these strains of thought, usually in a quite reasonable sounding manner. Anti-Americanism so strong any enemies of the U.S., no matter how awful themselves, can be taken on board as “friends” pro-Putin sentiments vocal anti-Israeli feelings Chavism. When you contrast that with the man telling Labour voters to get a heart transplant while taking large consultancy fees from the Kazakh dictatorship, it’s easy to understand the appeal of Jeremy.īut another huge factor in his rise has been Corbyn’s willingness to vocalise ideas that had become more and more prevalent on the Left yet remained verboten for any Labour politician to talk about – much of it with good reason, as it’s some very nasty stuff we’re talking about here. Add to this the sullying of everything and everyone connected even tangentially to New Labour via the post-political careers of many of its leading lights (beautifully discussed by Nick Cohen here, in an article that will surely have him labelled as a Tory on social media) and it all becomes even clearer.Ĭorbyn’s “purity” helped him more than anything else the fact that’s he’s never had a frontbench job, never been paid off to say any of the things he says. So a far-left candidate becoming leader this time round being considered a total impossibility looks unbelievably naive in retrospect. The membership of the Labour Party, as most of the commentariat are only now openly admitting, has been becoming ever more left-wing, pretty much from when Blair resigned as leader. The price freeze thing? “Why isn’t Ed promising to nationalise the grid and give energy for free to poor people?” A group of Labour activists were chatting amongst each other, discussing how Ed’s speech was “possibly the most right-wing oratory ever delivered by a Labour leader”. Then I walked into the bar at the Hilton and into an exact opposite universe to the social media one I’d just been ensconced in. This was the year of the energy price freeze pledge, and the press was dishing out the “Red Ed” sobriquet very freely – even the left of centre papers were in on the act. I recall stepping out from Ed Miliband’s speech while looking at how it was playing on Twitter. But like so much of life, it all seems obvious in hindsight. However, it’s still worth bringing up as an example of how little anyone saw the whole thing coming. Jeremy Corbyn entered the Labour leadership contest with odds of 200-1 of winning, a number we endlessly hear about these days.
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