It is not the surge of an outsider in Labour’s leadership contest that is surprising but the face of that surge. With an appetite for a fight outside the Westminster bubble, Corbyn must learn who will vote for Labour in futureThe remarkable thing about the Jeremy Corbyn surge is not so much the surge. Most European countries have at least one insurgent, radical outsider party – Syriza is one among several in Greece, there is Podemos in Spain, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy, and here in the UK, Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP as well as a newly energised Green party. So, if a Labour leadership contest failed to produce an English equivalent it would have been more odd than the fact that it has.What was less easy to anticipate was that the face of the 21st-century left in England wears a greying beard and something that looks quite like a Mao cap, and has more than 30 years’ unbroken service as MP for Islington North. This new hero of first-time voters, the scourge of the Labour Westminster establishment and the man who may conceivably inherit the mantle of Ed Miliband is a 66-year-old white man from north London. Continue reading...
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