ALTHOUGH Tony Blair heaved the Labour Party back to the political centre—and electability—in the 1990s, he never entirely finished off its hard-left wing. It lived quietly on in pub corners, in parts of declining trade unions, among MPs on the party’s eccentric fringes; a mostly male, white and increasingly aged world slipping slowly into irrelevance.
At least, so Bagehot thought—until, one recent evening, he found himself in Camden Town Hall in London, at a rally in support of Jeremy Corbyn’s bid for the Labour leadership. There they were on the platform: the lefties from the public bar, those for whom no dog-eared old cause is too sentimental, no tax too high, no anti-American autocrat too distasteful. But where once there was a bored landlord wiping glasses, they now faced a fizzing throng of supporters. These booed Mr Blair’s name and roared their approval as a slightly stooped man, sporting a white beard, a crumpled shirt and a bemused expression, bustled up to the stage: Mr Corbyn, a political footnote suddenly turned headline.
Strange events are abroad in British politics. In May the Labour Party lost an election in which,...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, Jeremy Corbyn: closet conservative
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