Democracy has the power to astound
JEREMY Corbyn’s first major election speech shows that he plans to campaign with the same message that propelled him to astonishing successes in two Labour leadership contests.
He will portray himself as someone who is not an establishment candidate but a champion of ordinary people who confronts a vast array of vested interests and powerful forces.
In his speech delivered at a Church of England venue he turned his guns on multinational companies, the media, and people who fail to pay their full share of tax.
There was such horror in Labour parliamentary ranks at the thought of Mr Corbyn leading the party into the 2020 election that 172 MPs voted against him in a motion of no confidence last year.
The spectacle they dreaded is now before them. One of the greatest experiments in modern UK politics is underway.
Mr Corbyn is now at the helm of the party that Tony Blair led to three successive election victories. He did not sing the red flag when he stepped behind the podium but he did pledge to “overturn the rigged system”.
Theresa May clearly believes she can lead her party to a landslide. So great is her confidence she can crush Labour that this normally cautious politician has taken the greatest gamble of her career.
But not that long ago people were mocking the aspirations of a property mogul and reality television star to win the Republican nomination and then defeat Hillary Clinton.
Mr Corbyn has already twice won a resounding mandate from the party grassroots to lead Labour and now he is asking the people of Britain for the chance to move into Downing St.
We are now used to the polls being wrong but a Corbyn win would be a much greater shock than the 2015 Conservative victory or the Brexit result. It would prove that public sentiment is beyond the comprehension of political scientists. But in October last year the New York Times gave Ms Clinton a 93% chance of winning the US election. Mr Corbyn’s supporters will hope that he can prove the establishment spectacularly wrong and deliver an election result that will stun the world.
He demonstrated yesterday he has no intention of moderating his message or pursuing the traditional strategy of tacking to the centre ground. Even if there is still copy of the New Labour playbook in the party HQ, Mr Corbyn is certainly not following it.
His immediate audience loved his attacks on “gilded” elites. It will be fascinating to see whether the manifesto features policies that match this left-wing rhetoric.
He drew parallels between himself and Keir Hardie which will have caused his critics in the Labour party to splutter, given the relative privilege of Mr Corbyn’s upbringing. Nevertheless, it is true he is radically different from recent leaders of the traditional parties of power.
Democracy has lost none of its power to shock. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2014 was 78.5%