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These are early days for the newly-elected Labour leadership. But for the mainstream political culture there is the sense of an ending, although no-one is sure if the end is near for Corbyn or for the mainstream. Predicting that ‘he won’t last a week’, as a Newsnight discussion mused, was wishful-thinking that couldn’t find the semblance of a serious guise. Not every commentary was so misdirected, but many were the furrowed brows and hurried gasps as haunted faces tried to maintain composure as the reality penetrated the carapace of sophisticated assuredness. The general mood was not of disappointment and anger, but of bewilderment and grief. The tumbrils were beginning to roll. The impossible had taken place. It was not supposed to be like that.
It was supposed to be welfare liberalism, a free market tempered by social concern. It was to be the best of both worlds, the workable compromise between capital and labour that could ensure continuity and progress without a single contradiction threatening to invalidate the enterprise.
