“The spectre which has long haunted Europe, socialism and communism, have passed away and returned to their netherworld,” famously wrote Anthony Giddens, a renowned sociologist, Third Way guru and Tony Blair’s favourite intellectual. These political ideologies no longer responded to the needs of the modern world, he said, and thus proceeded to propose an ideological renewal.

It is still early days to tell, but nonetheless one wonders if Jeremy Corbyn, the newly elected UK Labour Party leader, is truly turning the Giddens thesis back on its head.  His rhetoric and past stands have already earned him a reputation of being a socialist of the Marxist Trotskyist brand. Scepticism about any tangible achievements through his yet undeveloped policies is nourished by the recent failure of the left wing Tsipras project in Greece, which won power through rhetoric that resonated with the mood of the moment but barely survived six months of government when faced with political reality.

 

Thatcher without a handbag

Embracing Giddens’s Third Way and its proposed renewal of Social Democracy, Tony Blair went on to make history and win nothing less than three consecutive elections for the British Labour Party. He is by far Labour’s most successful leader but not necessarily the most loved one by party supporters.

Quoted by the Guardian, John Cruddas, a British Labour MP and former party head of policy review, who also led an independent inquiry into the reasons Labour lost the last election, argues: “The genius of early Blair was to reconcile the ethical and distributional models of justice in a quite brilliant way and this is what led to his grip and power with the electorate.” In spite of being no ardent supporter of the former Prime Minister, Cruddas argues that Labour should stop treating Blair as a pariah and should instead rehabilitate and re-own him as in the absence of that “the party cannot own its own recent political history.”

The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader in spite of vociferous advice by Blairites and Blair himself is evidence that the grass roots are in no mood to do that just yet, no matter how mistaken one might think they actually are. Many still perceive Blair as the leader who betrayed the party’s soul and its left-wing ideals for a more neo-liberal approach to globalisation: A Thatcher without a handbag.

 

Robin Hood returns

At 66 years of age, Jeremy Corbyn was not the youngest, but the oldest candidate for the top leadership position. Neither was he the new kid on the block, as he has been around since 1983, when he won the seat for Islington North. He was not the most experienced in leadership and he did not hold previous cabinet or front bench positions. His policies such as those for the economy, the re-nationalisation of the railways and the women-only train carriages proposal to tackle harassment did not leave the impression of well-thought deliberations. He did not project the image of a statesman but more that of a radical and not singing the national anthem in official events did not help. He did not cultivate a business-like image, at least not through his choice of attire and Chairman Mao-like bicycle. He is not the most media savvy and definitely not a media darling, being misquoted – deliberately one would be tempted to say – by some of them. 

And as much as he failed to lure the media, he failed to mesmerise the Labour grandees who did not anoint him as a chosen one and unreservedly came out in full force against him.  Tony Blair warned that Corbyn’s “rhetoric just makes you feel good but does not follow reason” and that “Labour would face annihilation” because of Corbyn’s leadership. Gordon Brown complemented Blair by adding that the party will be reduced from a party challenging government to “a permanent protest movement”.

But the party grass roots wouldn’t have any of that. All the above wasn’t even merely enough to hinder him from winning the leadership race. The wave of support kept constantly growing and he won handsomely, garnering no less than 60% of circa 400,000 votes cast, that is, more than all the other contenders put together. Corbyn’s election was even bigger than Tony Blair’s landslide victory.

Voters, including the youngest of age and those newly registered after the party’s defeat, did not go for the freshest, the fanciest, the most experienced. Instead they searched for authenticity, principle and inspiration. They followed someone who could make them dream. Not a technocrat but a politician in sync with their feelings.

 

The significance of political party tags

If Corbyn’s leadership election spells the death knell for Labour or the herald of a new era remains to be seen. As while it is true that 20% of those who voted Labour last election said they will not do the same coming next election, there is still plenty of time to convince those voters otherwise and to lure new ones and others who have decided to stay at home.

The Conservatives are said to be rubbing their hands with glee and quite a few believe they have a good reason to do so. Others have drawn a parallel between Margaret Thatcher’s election as party leader in 1975 on the ticket of New Right and Corbyn’s leftist radicalism.  At the time, she was also dismissed as an unelectable radical by party seniors but history proved otherwise.

But irrespective of one’s conclusions on the matter, this episode of British political history merits deeper reflections about the political state of play. Writing for The National, Kevin McKenna does not mince words and says that “the lickspittles of the right, like Blair, Brown and Mandelson, conveniently forget that whatever party they all thought they were representing in office between 1997 and 2010 it certainly wasn’t recognisably Labour”. So basically, the argument goes that while it may be true that New Labour made political inroads into the traditional support of the right, the Labour supporter voted Labour and got another conservative government under another guise.  So what is the scope of voting your party into power if the rival ideology remains the dominant one notwithstanding? Drawing parallelisms with the Maltese political landscape? But maybe that merits a whole discussion on its own.

 

Mr Puli is the Opposition spokesman for Citizens’ Rights, Civil Rights, Equality, Social Dialogue, Consumers’ Rights, Internet Rights, Communications, Broadcasting and Audio-Visual Policy