Who's afraid of Jeremy Corbyn?

For a number of months now, the British Labour Party has been going through a leadership contest. It has more than a whiff of American presidentialism about it, with the focus on how the leaders would take the party back to power (an interesting, modern choice of words. Once upon a time, it was about being in office, not in power). Perhaps not coincidentally, given America's mood for Trump and Sanders at the moment, the comfortable front-runner for the Labour leadership is a man called Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn is more-or-less the antithesis of Tony Blair. Labour has been inching this way since Blair's retirement. But Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband tried to offer a kind of balanced approach, accepting much of the basic economic policy in particular that New Labour embraced, and then trying to retrofit 'socialist' ideas into that framework.

Corbyn offers no such thing. He is passionate, he is internally consistent, and he loathes much of modern politics. He is doggedly anti-austerity, which will serve him well if(/when) the UK economy collapses. The unions like him, as they see him as the last of the old Labour union men. The people seem to like him too, partly for his ideology and partly for his honesty and personality.

This is also a big problem for the top dogs within the Labour Party. According to them, politics works on a left/right scale, and the way to win power is to be able to be 'electable' by grabbing as much of the 'middle ground' as possible. That is, after all, what New Labour did, and it worked. But they also recognise that the name of New Labour has been muddied as history has examined it more closely, and that the electorate isn't that interested in another Blair. Therefore, the party leadership wants someone who is not quite New Labour, but still close enough not to scare away modern Conservative voters.

Their favoured options are therefore Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham. Neither offers anything particularly interesting, either in policy or leadership, with Cooper being particularly difficult to grasp. But both are considered safe options because of the blandness they present, and the two were considered the favourites after the candidates were announced. Liz Kendall is the fourth option, considered the smokey to begin with and now believed to have no chance. Kendall was quite happy to present herself as the continuation of New Labour, seemingly unaware of the damage that would cause her. She will finish last.

And then there is Corbyn. Corbyn is not 'electable'. According to the Labour apparatchiks, he is 'hard left'. His economic policies are meant to be unworkable, and his leadership will apparently destroy Labour and, thereafter, the entire country. At the start of the campaign, his odds of winning were 100/1. They are now 1/2.

It seems that the Labour membership does not actually care what their leadership has to say. They see that Labour has lost the last two elections by presenting a plan of nothingness, and that their party now stands for very little. They want their party back, and are responding to the man who is offering that. This is quite remarkable in and of itself, but what is just as remarkable has been the response of the Labour big wigs.

Tony Blair got it all started by suggesting that Labour would be 'annihilated' if Corbyn won. Since then, prominent figures past and present, such as Neil Kinnock, Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, David Milliband, Harriet Harman, the vast majority of Labour MPs who think one of the other candidates would be better and Gordon Brown (without naming Corbyn directly.)

This speaks of an enormous political disconnect. Remember, MPs are supposed to be representative - that is, the represent the people of their electorates. And if they are a member of a party, it presumably because they believe in the ideology that the party supports. If Corbyn, a man who both has support of the people and holds to a clear ideology that is meant to be that of Labour, also has a very small proportion of sitting Labour MPs on his side, what does that say about the Labour Party?

So, as Corbyn's first preference polling has now hit over 50%, the other candidates are now turning on each other with each suggesting, publicly or privately, that one of the others should resign, so they can take on Corbyn head-to-head. Meanwhile, while they're all attacking each other, Corbyn continues to tour the country, talking to packed meeting halls about his beliefs.

The UK, and indeed much of the Western world, is currently in a societal deadlock. Corbyn is, if nothing else, someone who can help break the deadlock, one way or another. Perhaps this is what Labour is so afraid of.