The election of Tim Farron as leader of the Lib Dems barely made the news and is hardly a headline, given the massacre of the party at the general election. Yet perversely it has added thousands of new members since then and found itself a very different kind of leader. A barnstorming Lancashire christian leaning left is a new experience for the Liberals and may have a greater impact on future politics than most observers expect. Farron is far to the left of Clegg in both style and thought and his election signals a shift leftwards of his party.
Meanwhile the Labour party, looking somewhat rudderless and muddled since the election, is torn. Most of its leadership is on the right, whereas the centre has moved to the left, not just in the UK but all across Europe. Osborne has put his tanks on Labour’s lawn and flustered its leadership and many of its MPs. Yet its voters have moved left. Labour actually increased its vote in May for the first time since 1997. Milliband was not too far left but not left enough, since Labour’s defeat lay in too many of its potential supporters staying at home and too many others voting for UKIP. News that Jeremy Corbyn is ahead in private polls on the likely next Labour leader confirms this.
It will be something of an earthquake if Corbyn wins. People will hark back to Michael Foot, but they will be wrong. Foot was a brilliant scholar and idealist with little practical understanding of realpolitik. Corbyn is nearer to Harold Wilson, who was of the left, but well tuned to the public mood and political possibilities. Most likely the Labour establishment will throw its weight behind one of the other three candidates and Corbyn will lose.
This will leave Labour under Tory occupation and its core vote wide open to an appeal from the left. A Farron led Liberal party might well make deep inroads. The Liberals could bounce back much more dramatically than anyone expects.