Britain is in the grip of election fever once again and nobody knows where it will lead. The Opposition Labour Party - the party of Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and Tony Blair - believe (or fear) that the anti-monarchist Jeremy Corbyn could be its next leader.

Such an outcome was unthinkable when Mr Corbyn entered the contest to succeed Ed Miliband, who quit after Labour's election defeat to David Cameron's Conservatives in May, leaving his party demoralized and completely disorientated.

Spanning a 32-year parliamentary career, Mr Corbyn made it on the ballot paper because some MPs felt the Labour Party needed a hard-left candidate.

In a Europe where anti-austerity parties are on the march, Jeremy Corbyn is offering a more radical approach, capturing some of the left wing anger of Syriza or Spain's Podemos. Mr Corbyn has already won the backing of Britain's biggest trade unions and started getting the better of his three rivals at the hustings.

His manifesto of re-nationalization, scrapping the nuclear deterrent, raising taxes for the rich and opposing spending cuts - in spite of the UK's £70 billion deficit - is seen by Blairites as a recipe for disaster. But in a party seeking clear lines of attack on David Cameron, who has cheekily rebranded the Tories "the workers' party", Jeremy Corbyn offers ideological certainty.

Of course, he may not win come September, but this week Jeremy Corbyn became the bookies' favourite.

Jos Edmond Zarb

Birkirkara