The candidacy of Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour Party leadership has stimulated the party’s old debate surrounding the Left and “electability”: supporters of the Islington North MP claim that elections are won by a clear and confident statement of one’s ideas, whilst opponents universally claim that elections are won, always and in any circumstance, by limitless and feral Right-wingery, which is referred to as occupying the “centre ground”.

The version of history used to support the latter claim is often selective and disingenuous: New Labour is portrayed as Labour’s first attempt at a “centre-ground” strategy, rather than a third attempt after two instances of abject failure under Neil Kinnock, the original “moderniser”. Forgotten, too, is the way in which Labour’s long-term demographic base and its reservoir of public good will were steady and disastrously eroded by the same Blairite/Brownite political machine that had successfully delivered the goods in 1997. Continue reading →