Britons are sensible and shun extremes. Right? So how to explain the popularity of a Marxist zealot

TOMORROW we could wake up with a Marxist Prime Minister. And a Marxist Chancellor. I don’t say it is likely, but it is certainly on the cards. That the possibility should even exist seems to me incredible.

For it is a commonplace that this country shuns extremes, and that general elections are usually fought around the political centre. There have been far-out politicians in the past, but none of them got a tenth as close to power as Jeremy Corbyn.

How this has happened is by far the most fascinating aspect of this election. Here is a man who gave succour to the IRA when it was at war with the British state, and associated with Middle Eastern terrorists whom he described as his ‘friends’.

And while it is true that Corbyn has publicly disavowed these former allegiances — though one may reasonably doubt his sincerity — it remains the case that the Labour manifesto is an antediluvian document brimming over with wild and impractical measures.

It proposes (uncosted, of course) mass renationalisation, and higher taxes not just for the super-rich but those earning more than £80,000 a year. Millions of ordinary families would be clobbered by higher council tax and lower inheritance tax thresholds, which would entail a 40 per cent tax rate on the value of a deceased relative’s home worth more than £425,000.

That’s not all. Corbyn has spent his political life campaigning against Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, and has said that if he were prime minister he would never use Trident. In that case we might as well get rid of it. Whoever backs Labour today is voting for unilateral nuclear disarmament.

And yet many millions will do so, particularly among the young — even though Corbyn is regarded by most of the Parliamentary Labour Party as being unfit for office and, to put it bluntly, is not strikingly intelligent. Nor has he ever run so much as a whelk stall in his life.

Why have we got to the point of imagining the victory of this wholly unqualified and unsuitable man? The answers, it seems to me, are to be found in the nature of the campaign. And also in the kind of country we have become.

It’s no secret that the Tories have had a lamentable election, presenting themselves in a poor light. They spelt out badly conceived plans for funding social care which Theresa May was forced to retract. They seldom talked confidently about Brexit or their substantial economic achievements.

Meanwhile, Corbyn was for the most part successful in concealing his extremism, and looked cuddly and unthreatening. He also seemed, unlike Mrs May, relaxed and happy in his own skin. One might say that he has appeared genuine. WITHOUT doubt he also tapped into some of the grievances against the established political class which Donald Trump cultivated in last year’s American presidential elections. Some of the same winds, born of disenchantment, which propelled Trump to the White House have blown Corbyn closer to the door of No 10.

So the way the leaders conducted their campaigns does explain a lot. If the Tories had performed with greater confidence, and if Labour had been less adept, we would probably not be contemplating the (I hope distant) possibility of Jeremy Corbyn and his hard Left coterie forming the government of Britain.

But there are also deeper causes. Something strange is going on in this country. The British pride themselves on their moderation and common sense. Yet millions of perfectly sane people will today vote for a half- competent extremist whose policies would impoverish this country and make it vulnerable to its enemies.

It is of course possible that Corbyn will be routed in much the same way as Michael Foot’s Labour Party was in 1983. On that occasion its radical manifesto was memorably described by one of its MPs as ‘the longest suicide note in history’. Margaret Thatcher’s Tories won a 144- seat overall majority.

Actually, Foot was no Marxist. Moreover, he was a towering intellect compared to Corbyn, and a seasoned politician and former Cabinet minister. He was also a patriot who supported the Falklands War, described by Corbyn in 2015 as ‘a Tory plot’.

If the more extreme and far less able current Labour leader should do significantly better than Michael Foot, our old assumptions about how Britain is deep down a centre-Right country will have to be binned.

Let me offer a few possible explanations for Corbyn’s apparent acceptability. It’s true that young people are traditionally more likely to vote Labour than older ones, but the tendency is markedly stronger this time. Polls suggest that nearly three-quarters of 18 to 24-year-olds intend to vote Labour. The main reason is surely that they have no memory of the socialist excesses which virtually brought Britain to her knees in the Seventies.

It’s probable, too, that they have been educated in a more Left-wing environment than their parents and grandparents. A friend told me the other day that his teenage godson had shown him his homework about the Eighties. Thatcher was depicted in an unremittingly negative light. UNIVERSITIES also have a far more Leftist complexion than 30 years ago. These days it would be impossible for a known Tory to be appointed head of an Oxbridge college. A poll by the Times Higher Education magazine before the 2015 election found that nearly half of university lecturers intended to vote Labour, and only 11 per cent Conservative.

This Left-wing preponderance doesn’t only prevail in our educational establishments, I suggest, but throughout most of our public institutions — the NHS, the civil service, the judiciary and, of course, the BBC.

A natural bias towards Labour among five-and-a-half million public sector workers has almost certainly grown because of widespread resentment about persistent wage restraint. Such people don’t often reflect that most of those in the private sector haven’t had pay increases either. Nor do they enjoy guaranteed index-linked pensions.

As for the BBC, it has seemed more powerful than ever during this election, probably because of the relative decline of the printed Press. Scornful of Jeremy Corbyn during his two Labour leadership contests, Auntie has treated him indulgently as a mainstream left-of-centre politician rather than the dangerous revolutionary he really is.

One way and another, the political centre of gravity in British life has swung appreciably to the Left because of these and doubtless other changes. I don’t dispute, by the way, that exhaustion with never- ending austerity has understandably made some people despair of the Tories.

Looking at the manifestly illequipped Labour leader, it sometimes occurs to me in my more irresponsible moments that the only way for his deluded admirers to discover the lunatic and misguided nature of his policies would be for them to experience a dose of him in No 10. Hard- core socialism would then be expunged from the national bloodstream for a generation.

But what a terrible price would have to be paid. I truly believe that five years of rule by Corbyn and his crew would be a catastrophe. Everyone would be poorer at end of it. The NHS — which even supposedly clever people on the Left wrongly believe the Tories wish to privatise — would be less well-funded.

So let’s hope, despite the alarming trends I have described, that there are still enough sensible people in this country to resist the bogus allure of Corbyn. Let’s pray he won’t be prime minister. I still don’t think he will be. But these are going to be anxious hours.