Britain’s demoralised public and confused political flailings are sought to be given a spine of principled, socialist steel.
To the much-spoken-of Rightward lurch in politics every where, attested to by the rise of a whole roster of hard-hat figures across the globe, there is a corollary. There was a time, not too long ago, when a Bernie Sanders campaign would have been unthinkable on the American landscape. And now, there is the Englishman with a beard that’s been equally derided and good-naturedly feted. Jeremy Corbyn, till the other day, would have been seen as a politician so far out on the left as to be simply unviable. But here we are in the summer of 2017, with Labour pulling up just a whisker or two away from a majority in a snap poll and young supporters greeting him everywhere with a joyous pop anthem, a reworked version of Seven Nation Army.
The arrival of Corbyn as a serious politician, a stunning makeover during the course of which he won over many sceptics, was marked by the unexpected results thrown up in the recent parliamentary polls. In a sense, it had to do with the logic of the times—the anxieties over Brexit, a general gloominess. But it’s the way he was able to harness the dissipated energies coursing through a nation that made the headlines, even if he came up short. “The way he had grown during the campaign—in selfbelief and oratorical ability and all manner of other qualities—was remark able,” wrote Stephen Moss, a self admitted former sceptic, in The Guardian.
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