The only chance I can see that Corbyn has, is if there really is a mass of disengaged who he alone is able to appeal to. I don't doubt that there is a generation of disenfranchised people in this country on top of the usual percentage of apathetic and uninterested, and that it's growing with each cohort. It needs to be on a massive scale to make a difference though. You might argue that UKIP represents the boundaries of the possible, but that would also be to assume that other parties across the political spectrum don't reproduce too.
Say if Labour is on something like 6.5M and loses something like 2.5M to radicalism, they need to gain something in the region of 6-7M from the disaffected and non voters to make good the shortfall to the point where by they might be able to consider government. Is that possible? I'm inclined to suggest it isn't. At the very least it's going to require a really charismatic and energetic leader to make it stick
I also think the Tories need to consider a shift to the left though. Longer term they should be able to learn the lessons of the 1990's and anticipate some kind of New Labour revival in the mid 2020's which seeks to regain the centre right territory. If the Tories pre-empt that and seek to occupy it first rather than remaining on a right wing extreme, they can probably snuff Labour out until the next economic cycle kicks in and they get blamed for something that they were only bit part architects of. Ultimately things like 'the building schools for the future' programme didn't bring about the collapse of Lehman Brothers (come to think of it, the name Lehman and collapse seem to fit rather well at the moment) but Labour spent 6 months naval gazing and talking about themselves before deciding that Ed Miliband was the man. Whilst they wandered around in the wilderness growing ever more disorientated, they surrendered the critical formative narrative allowing the Tories to set the scenery up for the play to follow
The real irony is that had they made a decision to announce their new leader within a fortnight, David Miliband would have won. Same today, Andy Burnham would have won (who would still lose).
Labour's defeat in May was poor, but it was hardly catastrophic in terms of the political history. It was on a scale similar to Kinnocks in 1992, and was repairable. I hold a view that the choice of leader was every bit as critical as any policy issue. 6 months ago though, they entertained talk of being in coalition government. Today they stand on the cusp of electing Jeremy Corbyn. They do largely have themselves to blame for introducing a deeply flawed process which even a 10 year old could see the systemic weakness of
It's funny
