The unelectables

Britain’s Labour Party will begin voting for a party leader Friday, with the very real prospect that members could saddle themselves with a wholly unelectable new standard-bearer.

Jeremy Corbyn is by all accounts, including among his supporters, unlikely to ever serve as prime minister. The party would be replacing Ed Miliband — a colourless, uninspiring leader who promoted a soft-left program — with a hardline career backbencher who advocates policies last seen pushing up daisies in the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s sweeping destruction of the “loony left.”

Corbyn, 66, supports renationalizing the railways and main power suppliers and rededicating Labour to “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.” The unions are wild about him. He has represented one of the most left-wing districts in London for more than 30 years and would be the most fervently socialist Labour leader since Michael Foot, who led the party to its worst drubbing in 40 years in 1983.

Labour members are under no illusion as to the implications of their choice. Since he emerged at the head of opinion polls a month ago, Corbyn has been under unrelenting attack from both inside and outside the party. Former prime minister Tony Blair said anyone who feels their heart is with Corbyn should “get a transplant.” Conservative supporters are happily predicting a generation of Tory power if Corbyn wins.

That Corbyn is still 20 points ahead of his nearest opponent in the latest surveys says a lot about the rea- son for his rise, which shares much with the incomprehensible popularity of Donald Trump among U.S. Republicans. British voters are just as disgusted, alienated and fed up with the country’s established political leadership as are Americans — or Canadians for that matter. The disaffected legions championing Trump, Corbyn or Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, may as well be cousins.

The danger with “anyone but” campaigns is that they can sometimes succeed. Alastair Campbell, one of Blair’s chief advisers, warned in a lengthy article Tuesday that the Utopian aspirations of Corbyn’s followers — many of whom joined up on an easy-pay, £6-and-you-can-vote recruiting drive — are all fine and well, but will amount to nothing without at least the prospect of achieving power.

“The Labour Party, if it elects Jeremy Corbyn as leader, is selecting someone that every piece of political intelligence, experience and analysis tells you will never be elected prime minister,” he said. Blair and Campbell are derided by many Labourites as having abandoned too many ideals for the sake of high office. Yet, Campbell noted, “Labour governments do more good for working people than Tory governments,” and choosing Corbyn would be a ticket to years of Conservative dominance.

It’s a sobering lesson about the nature of politics. Examples abound of parties that have been too willing to put power before principle, but the opposite can also be true. If parties pay no attention to what the electorate is actually interested in or willing to support, all their ambitions and ideals will amount to nothing. Somewhere a balance must be struck: a party that simply mimics its opponents in pursuit of votes is of little use, but so is a party that talks only to itself.

The policies of Corbynism have been roundly rejected by electorates in recent decades, not only in Britain but across the Western world. What is more, they have been rejected for good and sound reasons. At some point, a party that wishes to earn the voters’ trust must give some evidence of having listened to them.

If parties pay no attention to what the electorate is willing to support, all their ambitions and ideals will amount to nothing