Corbyn has caused an earthquake which has in turn caused chaos to a whole political class of commentator and pundit who have learned their craft in the last thirty five years. They are almost all (but not quite all) out of their depth and off message, because for them Thatcherism is an everlasting verity, New labour is Labour, left means Michael Foot, the markets are all powerful and such power as is left over, lies in Westminster. There is one single message to which all believers subscribe and everything depends upon presentation. They believe it, these yesteryear commentators, their tutors believed it when they taught them, and all will judge how Corbyn conducts himself within the political weather they know, and they will measure him against all its records. What they do not see is that the political weather has changed and the new weather is Corbyn.
Take this stuff about old lines in the speech. A brilliant writer penned the line ‘the British people do not have to take what they are given‘. Evidently he has has been offering it to every Labour leader since Kinnock. They all ignored it. But Corbyn recognised its genius. To the tawdry army of self important hacks to whom few listen and almost all have given up reading, using old lines was a presentation gaffe. But I watched the delivery. The entire conference rose cheering to its feet and brought the leader’s speech to a halt with a prolonged standing ovation. The faces, especially of the young; they were lit up in way unseen at a political rally for decades. Who wrote it and when was irrelevant. He said it. To them. Now. It touched their souls.
No, he did not mention the deficit, because it had already been mentioned and the whole country is sick to death of hearing about something which is not their fault and which has now been going on for nearly eight years. They only know that whatever is supposed to be fixing it is failing and they are paying the price, while those responsible for creating it make hay. They want another way. In the end it is the people who will decide Corbyn’s fate, not the professors of politics or the political editors and certainly not the schemers and plotters of the near extinct New Labour.
And that fate is in the figures. The Tories can expect between ten and twelve million reliable voters depending on whether they are up or down. Now and again they do better, sometimes worse. On the same reckoning Labour can expect nine to ten million. But, and this is the key, there are fifteen million who are registered but do not vote. About five million of those will turn out for a change of political weather to the left and if they do they will vote for Corbyn’s style of Labour. Huge numbers of them are the hungry young. Hungry for change and a new deal.
The question is not whether Corbyn will make it, but whether anybody can stop him.