WHEN Tony Blair attacked Jeremy Corbyn, one of the four candidates for the Labour Party’s leadership, he actually did him a big favour. Given the ex-prime minister’s tainted reputation among the party’s rank and file, his criticism is like an endorsement. In a recent article in the Guardian, Blair said those who supported Corbyn were pushing Labour ‘towards a precipice’. He went on to warn that the party not only risked defeat in 2020, but ‘annihilation’.

Other senior members of the Labour Party, from Alistair Campbell to Jack Straw, are echoing these strong sentiments. The former even suggested his ABC formula — Anybody But Corbyn. And yet the 68-year-old frontrunner has galvanised the contest, attracting thousands of young followers. According to one opinion poll, he is supported by 53 per cent of the Labour membership, while his three rivals trail far behind.

Under the rules, should he secure a simple majority, Corbyn will win outright. However, if nobody gains more than 50pc of the votes, the candidate with the lowest number will drop out, and a fresh election held, and so on until one emerges victorious. This will be Corbyn, according to pollsters and bookies who have now made him an odds-on favourite. When the campaign began, he was a 100-1 long shot. I’m still kicking myself for not having put 10 pounds on him then.

Despite all the furore and excitement he is generating, Corbyn remains an uncharismatic, reticent figure. Although he has represented his Islington neighbourhood in parliament since 1983, he had always been a backbencher. His claim to fame was that he was a marginal, maverick Labour member who cheerfully voted against the party on no less than 500 occasions.

So why has he suddenly emerged from the shadows to take centre stage in his party’s leadership contest? Largely, it is because his simple, direct words resonate with Labour voters who are sick and tired of the carefully crafted, centrist messages from the other candidates. In fact, all three are singing from the same New Labour hymnbook that is scarcely distinguishable from most Conservative policies.

Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper were both members of past Labour government and shadow cabinets, and offer only slightly different variants of the austerity policies being put into practise by the Tories. Liz Kendall, the third candidate, is even closer to past Labour policies.

Corbyn is the only one who rejects the Conservative charge sheet of Labour’s mismanagement of the economy. He insists that while the banks that caused the crash of 2008 were bailed out, ordinary people who had nothing to do with it were punished through savage fiscal cuts to welfare, housing and education. He promises to reverse these priorities. In addition, he wants to cancel the hugely costly Trident submarine programme, and dismantle Britain’s nuclear deterrent unilaterally.

While his words appal the political establishment, they clearly appeal to many voters as tens of thousands of new Labour supporters have registered to vote in recent weeks. In fact, senior leaders are probably regretting the changes to the election rules introduced by Ed Miliband during his recently ended tenure as the Labour leader. Earlier, trade unions — the party’s major financial backers — had a disproportionate say in the election. Now, by paying three pounds and signing a declaration that somebody supports Labour’s vision of society, he or she can register as a voter.

As a result of this simplification of the rules, over 600,000 have signed up. In fact, the right-wing Daily Telegraph suggested to readers that they ought to enrol and vote for Corbyn so the Labour Party would be utterly destroyed. The other three candidates have suggested that hard-left activists are joining the party’s ranks just to support Corbyn. As the votes are now being cast, and will be counted in mid-September, Corbyn’s rivals are increasing the scorn and vitriol they have been pouring on him for his old-style socialist views that are now supposed to be vote-losers.

And inevitably, he has been accused of anti-Semitism for his pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel views. To his credit, he has refused to be drawn into denials or counter-attacks, insisting he will only discuss his policies, and not descend to the level of his detractors. The argument many of his critics put forward is that while Corbyn may appeal to young people who are fed up of politics as it is currently practised, he will not be able to attract many of those who voted the Tories to power. And this will be essential in order to win the general elections in 2020.

But they forget that for a Labour victory, another key factor will be to win back the voters who deserted the party to vote for the Scottish National Party. In Scotland, Labour was virtually wiped out, and will have to win back many of the seats it lost. Currently, only Corbyn is appealing to Scottish voters. In fact, his anti-austerity, pacifist agenda is much closer to the SNP’s than it is to mainstream Labour’s.

In a way, his socialist message is echoed in the United States by Bernie Sanders, a Democratic candidate, who has just surpassed Hillary Clinton in the opinion polls in the New Hampshire primary. Sanders, too, is critical of the government for bailing out the banks that caused the recent recession, and supports a strong social welfare programme.

Although neither of these men is likely to win power, they have succeeded in shining a spotlight on the inequalities that are increasingly marring the socio-economic landscape of developed nations. Corporate greed and a lack of empathy for the weak and the vulnerable now define modern capitalism, and if Corbyn and Sanders can manage to put them on their national agendas, they will have performed a huge service.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2015

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