THE Labour Party hierarchy is now showing signs of resigning itself to life under Jeremy Corbyn. There is little choice in this, in spite of lurid talk from the Party’s Blairite wing of the need for a “coup” if their nemesis wins. At the weekend some newspapers were talking about 25,000 fake voters forcing some kind of re-run. This was and remains nonsense.
Mr Corby is now odds-on favourite with the bookmakers to win the leadership contest outright and acting leader Harriet Harman made clear yesterday that the integrity of the vote was not in doubt. Only 3100 potential voters in the contest have been blocked for failing to share the party’s “aims and values” and many of those have reacted furiously, insisting they are traditional Labour supporters guilty of no more than expressing Green or Leftish views.
Others have been barred for not being on the electoral register or because they already have a vote as an affiliated trade union member, but the lurid allegations or mass infiltration have begun to evaporate.
Given that 3100 blocked votes amounts to less than one per cent of the selectorate it would be a hugely undemocratic act to attempt to disavow the result and every bit as damaging as any perceived weakness the party would face under the MP for Islington North. The more mud that has been thrown at him, the more his growing band of admirers have warned to him and the shorter have become the odds on his success.
Faced with this reality Ms Harman has insisted that the “integrity” of the process is not in doubt and even main rival Andy Burnham has been forced rule out any suggestion of a legal challenge to the final result “under all circumstances, absolutely.”
Mr Corbyn has avoided all this hype about process and concentrated on issues, while cementing his reputation as an atypical politician who says what he thinks and is not part of the usual party machine.
This may or not be justified, but what is clear is that his own campaign has become increasingly sophisticated, as befits the leadership favourite of the main Opposition party. He needs to overcome the notion that he is simply a figure of protest and project himself as a potential Prime Minister with ideas to match.
He achieved something of a coup last weekend when his campaign marshalled a group of more than 40 economists to rally round many of his ideas such as renationalisation of some banks and utilities and criticise the characterisation of these as extremist.
Many commentators on the right — usually economic rather than political for now — are starting to take Mr Corbyn seriously, recognising that if the economy should start to slide again before any recovery reached ordinary families, support for radical policies may take hold.
A tiny number of Tories, just 400 at the latest count, thought it would be a jape to register as Labour supporters in order to vote for Corbyn, at a time when the Right presumed this would be a calamity for Labour. Now there is nervousness about the prospect.
Politicians and political commentators, often drawn from the same small pool of Oxbridge graduates, are stuck in a bubble of their own making. Labour leader Corbyn may or may not be a disaster for his party. Prime Minister Corbyn may or not be a catastrophe for the country, but increasingly it looks like ordinary people not pundits will be the judge of that.
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